Thursday, October 05, 2006

It's 5th October and...

...Happy National Poetry Day from the UK!

To celebrate, here’s a draft sonnet on the theme of identity written inside 30 minutes. I still haven’t managed a 15-minute one:


Not who you are but what you give away.
The fingerprints, the ruminations deep
in the brain, boots that shield your feet of clay –
each cover your identity. I peep
into your image: a unique splash
shaping the world’s tall cliffs; or thinking small,
at least a hieroglyph or fake moustache,
some chalk to scratch the surface of a wall.

Images can always be replaced
by other images. And when the purist
in you recoils, the sophist can be traced
in layers through your skin. I’ll play the tourist,
you the treasure map. The X I’ll trust
until it disappoints my wanderlust.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the reading and also a fine sonnet, though I wish you'd saved it for Sunday. We are the only two practitioners for Sonnet Sunday so far; I attribute it either to the fact that most poetry bloggers haven't mastered form, else we're just effin' unpopular (or relatively unknown). Keep up the good work my Scots brother.

Thine,

Craig Erick

Rob said...

CE, Sundays are really bad for me to write poetry, as I'm always busy. Maybe I could write one sonnet each week and post it on Sunday. Maybe...

Unpopular? Probably!