Empty Monkey (Dot Com) - The real-time story of how the book is written

After you’d gone
Before wits coalesced
As realisation
Coldly reassessed

Words almost unheard
A warm recollection
Assailed my mind
Through opaque vision (more…)

Birthdays come but once a year
They are a fact of life, it’s clear
But if at Christmas, they appear
They must come twice for one who’s dear.

Night makes loud the sound of rain
Drowns the whistling in his ear
Trembling hand at window pane
Clears droplets so that he can peer
Upon the empty glistening lane
Willing the doctor to appear.

Dampness permeates the air
Emptiness he cannot feel
Thoughts are replaced with despair
Begins to doubt if this is real
Too fatigued to shift his stare
From what the night conspires to steal (more…)

Curving colours soon proclaim
Your coming, which I now await
Visions clear without disdain
And dreams that surely will abate.

What tangled course brought you today
Once more to pass my windowsill
How many others on the way
Have added to your tale until (more…)

Canon Clive Cadwallader
Was very fond of Port
He drank a bottle every day
But never did the thought
Come to him that his habit
Could be making him so fraught.

Every day he wondered what
On earth could be to blame
For the terrible affliction
That made him feel so lame
He vowed that he would find a cure
To rid this awful bane. (more…)

Unblinking eyes without reproach
Past glories lay behind them
Unfathomable thoughts, as when
Your measured steps approach.

Resignedly yet full of trust
You are the gift you bear
Compliant, you expect to share
We both do what we must. (more…)

It’s lovely and sunny
My nose is not runny
My friends have come out to play.
The dog doesn’t bite
He’s no teeth, it’s all right
And our worries have now gone away.

We haven’t a care
No need to beware
Cornwall’s a wonderful place.
We laugh every hour
Because no one is dour
And we all win each time that we race. (more…)