BRAZILIAN BEACHES

When there are so many beautiful bodies

nearly naked in tiny bikinis

little is left to male imagination

and little as well for feminine mystique.

IPANEMA TOPPING

When there are so many beautiful girls,

hundreds and thousands sprinkling the beach,

it's only natural that those pearls

attract the swine though out of reach.

Faces

There's usually no difference in the elements concerned:

two eyes, a nose, a mouth and chin, ears and hair and skin.

But half a centimetre here, two millimetres there,

a slight tilt upwards instead of down, a smile instead of frown,

can make a major difference to everybody's face,

transform normalcy to beauty, a matron to a cutie.

We stared and stunned each other 'cross the room.

I shouldered through the crowd to reach her.

I took her hand and kissed it. Then her mouth.

"Get off ! What are you doing ? Who are you ?

"Don't be upset." I said, "We know each other

from eternity. You're in my dreams

and I in yours. We share a common soul."

"You're mad !" she said, "completely off your head."

"No, no, not so ! Marry me!" I beseeched her.

"This is ridiculous."

"Come with me now."

"With you ? Where to ?"

"My car. My house. My life. My bed."

"I don't believe I'm hearing this." she said.

I kissed her hand and then her mouth. She came.

We made love more than sex yet in the gloom

there wasn't anything I could teach her.

The early morning light peered round the blind,

the herald of another Monday murk.

The pillow held no memory of her head.

I ate some breakfast. Went to work.

A message from The God Father

This is the offer you can't refuse !

No upfront costs; just pay as you go.

You'll need two sponsors that you can't choose

and at the start they'll run the show.

But in due course you'll be the gaffer

though hopefully helped by a loving other

so to new starters you extend the offer  -

some eighty years of life's adventure.

Christmas and the barbarians

I guess the northern hemisphere pagans didn't like

those upstart Christians stealing their winter festival

but, for the gloomy serious newcomers to hike

something to brighten the dark was only sensible.

Now though the barbarians are taking it back

with tantalising orgies of indulgence,

exchanging presents of things we didn't lack

and decorative frippery in abundance.

Commerce doesn't bother about complaints

totally intent on finishing the heist

by Mammon's latest pantheon of saints

where Father Christmas outranks Jesus Christ.

Love is a new invention; sex is old.

Missionary position was a bold

un-natural perversion which controlled

grosser imagination and extolled

face to face coition as a mould

for mutual passion both to enfold.