Sunday, November 8, 2009

not yet ready to go!

Despite referring to 'my Memorial Service' in the poem 'the last laugh', I'm not yet ready to leave, if only because I'm still having such a good time.  As one accumulates more years, two things stand out as important, and equal; they are surviving, and having fun. 

I've had a great deal of fun in my life.  I enjoyed my time in the Air Force, especially as I never fired a gun in anger, and as an astronomer I once told some very weighty scientists at a conference that all the fascinating work that they did and published gave me a lot of pleasure, ie, fun.

At an age I won't mention, I fell in love with a beautiful young actress, and though it has been a relatively chaste love, still it has given me more happiness than most people have in a lifetime.

Writing poetry is fun, and seeing it in print is even more fun.  Theatre is great fun, and when one is able to act on the stage, that's the greatest fun one have have standing up –
well, almost.  And my partner last acted in a wheelchair and didn't have to stand up. 

So life has been good to me so far, and long may it continue the same!

oh be my love and lie with me

    Christopher Marlowe's poem "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" inspired this erotic poem by Malcolm Miller.

    Oh be my love and lie with me
that all your beauty I can see
my hands so warm on each bare breast
as on your lips my own are pressed
and next my hands will loving roam
between your thighs, on Venus’ dome
my kisses  mark a trail of love
from shapely feet to hair above
my arms embrace your naked form
delighting in your skin so warm
your curving hips I will caress
your back and belly no whit less
so lie with me and be my love
be under me or be above
and I will celebrate in rhyme
the love for which at last it’s time!

              ©  MM 29.9.2009

the last laugh



The last laugh shall be mine
for I know things that you will never know
and I have known happiness, and unending delight
even as death reached for me
and when his hand clasped mine
I welcomed it, for I had known joy
and also parting, and now my parting time had come
and I leave you behind, without regrets.
Though I’ve tried to put them into words
like any budding poet certain that people want to hear,
it was a waste of time, since few of you knew of my rewards
that made my life a dance in which I held the lovers’ hands
a song I only heard in full, a poem of great beauty
that had its beginning and its end
but never needed to be seen in print,
a painting whose colours ran the gamut
from sombre black to brilliant rainbow hues.
Read this at my memorial service,
and murmur. “I didn’t really know him
but by God he knew one thing well –
how to enjoy life on his own terms!”

            MM ©  2.11.2009

Saturday, November 7, 2009