for PATTAYA TRADER 224 (A)

SALTBURN SCENES
Scenes from Saltburn
caught in these snaps
of my old-memory
like vivid photographs.

The town's very-first
was my magazine,
launched like a ship.
Her masthead's clearly-seen.

A-SEASIDE'S-SEASONS
Time-and-Tide. Find Death
will come set you free
when spent are your seasons
by the ticking sea.

A-PAST'S-PORTRAITS
A people's parade
of 'characters' cast.
Art museum dim muse (?)...
'Portraits of the past?'

DIZZY DIDDY
I am 6ft 2,
what more the proof
when at 5ft 3
she calls me aloof !

She takes the view
that ever takes she
from her dizzy height
of 5ft 3 !

A-GIRL'S-GOLD-BIND-RING
She used her beauty
to buy his gold,
and into marriage
she herself sold.

The binds that bound
the very-girl to him
were greed, green-envy
and a wedding ring.

EDWIN-THE-BEHEADED
There ravens perch
upon the headstones
in the graveyard where
lie buried the bones
of York's King Edwin
whom, in battle beheaded,
in Whitby Abbey's grounds
was then bedded.
Hilda of the Abbey
was his great-niece.
Now, like Dracula,
the King's at peace.

HIDES-THE-HAWK-INSIDE-
DOES-THE-COOING-DOVE
You hate life's hate?
Hate is hateful, isn't it?
You hate being poor
and you hate the rich.
You preach love, love, love.
A hawk within the outward dove.

THE PERFECTIONS-AND-MUTATIONS
You say I move, girl.
from left to right,
as if change was not
my very birthright.

No more the youth,
let alone the child,
that I once had been
you are beguiled,

believing as you do
in a perfect state.
Such cannot last.
We all mutate.