Webcharms

Near Dronkaard in the province of Vlaams-Brabant, Flanders, four business men in a Rover car swept through the border into Belgium. The Flanders Fields flashed by the autosnelweg to Ghent and the language of road signs was Flemish.   But maybe there never was a road to Ghent though the night train could have sped into Li è ge south west of Aachen. Brussels, the Grand Place soot encrusted buildings with pale boned facades like well-drilled guillemots on a cliff, a chiaroscuro of filigreed stone seen through the November rain of an Émile Verhaeren poem from the shop of a celebrated chocolatier.   For all the grandeur a small dark fondant is the heart’s desire. Such overpowering experience make it hard to plan an agenda for a day when I can watch green fig leaves trembling as the raindrops fall on them. Moules aux chicons at La Villette red and white checked tablecloths someone said Belgians were both apes and molluscs mussel shells like seabirds’

In August 2018 I wrote this sonnet for my friend David Thornton who had been publishing his poems (which I described as 'Thorntonesque') on line.  He asked me what Thorntonesque meant. That style of wordplay known as Thorntonesque Is like a fresh caught smiling arabesque, Neat verses wrote to catch the reader's eye Lifting flagging souls from low to high With unexpected puns and metaphors Laughing at all those tiresome literary laws Displayed in style on blue computer screens Where cyberspace transmits thorntonic scenes That sing the spirit of the Isle of Wight From Bembridge to The Needles shining bright. This bird of words will soon fly to a city, Bold Sheffield craving its own pretty ditty What then? Maybe an opera of rhymes With wicked thoughts for these distracted times.

I found on my tongue a fragment of yellow oat straw from my morning biscuit. What are we going to trade?  Bombs for oranges? Tanks for redbush tea? Such stray thoughts pierced my mind like tariff free polished poison arrows.