It’s all about perspective. For example,
the imaginery landscape behind
for Leonardo was the perfect contrast
to my reserved posture but, to me,
is theatrical and over-the-top.

He so desperately wanted my portrait
to depict ideal womanhood like
the Virgin Mary yet he painted
a frumpy plain Jane housewife.

Although I’m known as La Gioconda,
meaning jocund, I didn’t see the funny
side of that, nor the sitting for an eternity
on that rickety pozetto armchair.

There is a hint of a smile in the upturned
corners of my mouth and eyes but it’s no
laughing matter to be stared at constantly.
I never wanted to be famous.

You probably think I’m ungrateful and
should be called Moaner. You’d be right,
but I’m laughing on the other side of my
face now. As I said, it’s all about perspective.

I would like to say a big thank you to Lorette C Luzajic, editor of The Ekphrastic Review, for publishing my poem ‘Mona Lisa Musing’ today.

http://www.ekphrastic.net/

the Irish Sea and Mersey meet with iron fists
winter still slices through March days that
make cloaked crows distrust black clouds

that blanket Liverpool towers in ghost-town
mist and haunt high above this grave where
New Brighton’s Eiffel stood, a ballroom

where the Beatles played, now lego-estate-
still-life, stamp-sized gardens in cul-de-sacs
standing atop timber steps down to the prom

past foraging grounds of sandpiper
and redshank, camouflaged by spring tide.
as silver arrows stab through storm clouds

to sharpen the lens on Liverpool’s waterfront
I embark the aged ferry, distant Cheshire hills
outlined above waves that stretch out like space.

First published by  The Open Mouse, July 2017

A Long Walk the Irish Sea and Mersey meet with iron fists winter still slices through March days that make cloaked crows distrust black clouds that blanket Liverpool towers in ghost-town mist and haunt high above this grave where New Brighton’s Eiffel stood, a ballroom where the Beatles played, now lego-estate- still-life, stamp-sized gardens in […]

via Paul Waring — The Open Mouse

Erich Fromm’s ‘Art of Loving’ is the book
I never read in teenage years before
I fell madly in love with just one look
and so often after I’m not quite sure
why I placed trust in lust in the first place –
experiencing shame; and mistaken,
diving head first, landing flat on my face
far away from Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ –
one less travelled; the path I didn’t see;
though pain taught me to be less short-sighted,
self-loathing, desperate, unhappily
driven by lust; my love unrequited –
and here Shakespeare has described my plight well;
heaven’s attraction had kept me in hell.

First published by Poets Online June 2017

My poem ‘Inspired by Sonnet 129’ has been posted in Poets Online’s Sonnets May 2017 (via link below: poem in Archive section under Sonnets)

http://poetsonline.org