by Robert Sheppard

Overdub of When lovers’ lips from kissing disunite
by Charles Tennyson Turner

Move back from her breaking lips. Taste
as soft as melting fruit. They’d have to tunnel
through time to reach the free world now. Her
first words ushered to the night are fraught
with breathless thoughts of ‘wealth or health’

Revelation unburdens in the boudoir
Suspended rights. One regulation afternoon
spent dodging a jogger whose merest huff ’s
deadly as gunshot. Zigzag tacks across the grass

The nearest kiss is a memory–print on electric
skin. Thrills still pledge where thrusts are deep
and long. Slip from history’s distant night

Doves fight over an olive branch. Crows
scrabble for negative crumbs on silent slates

22nd April 2020

by Robert Sheppard

Overdub of Written in the Workhouse
by Thomas Hood

I’m ‘addicted to furlough’, binge–reading, Time
on my washed–raw hands. If this is lockdown, Big
Bo’s the governor. He confesses he’s a
porker like us inmates: we go to the morgue
quicker than svelte Svens. I gorge on prose to breathe
out poetry, locked in with Maturin, lost
on the sickbed with Perdita. I snack on
Minton’s Westbrook Blake, Byron’s Woolwich Free, bob
in Raghavan’s propulsive wash, wave off his
calls to action. Standards: Solitude springs fresh,
recorded by Kandace, Recorda Me on
Braxton’s pip–squeak sopranino. No time to
think about reviewing the book of reviews
that reviews the books I’ve already reviewed.

16th May 2020

by Robert Sheppard

9

Overdub of Ozymandias by Horace Smith

crown strips

historic pitch flaking virus on hot plastic
car seats parked at testing centres you’ve
no thing to express police crunching shells
pour cold water on distancing day’s blue
wash fist threatens mist wiped Brighton’s stony
silence dispersed in spores you leap under
the pier for long nights gulls pound
pared dash of rubble sound harbours the
annihilated everyday looks to you as principle
of looking for mountain goats come down
from their nominal mountains wolves in cheesecloth
buried ear worm undegradable latex glove long
washed free of its grubby fetish waves
from its pebbly pork chop barbie cromlech

6th April 2020

by Robert Sheppard
from 14 Standards: overdubs of sonnets of the Romanic
Period, part of British Standards (The English Strain Book 3)

Overdub of Written at Killarney. July 29, 1800
by Mary Tighe

Weed drips into water     silent
As lockdown streets     low cloud rolls
Over unrolling news     emotive tide
That may not be stemmed     ‘operation
Last gasp’ co–opted to Bo’s canonised
Breath    police stop the jogging mother
With her skipping daughter     blot clouds
Billow inked    lake super moon     thin cover
Ministers cramping up testimonials
Before futurity’s magpies      bleached streak of
Ruffled hair wrinkles across the wildlife
Soundtrack     the park growls      authority’s
Inexorable frown       binding before our eyes
Each roomy sonnet locked with a hermit’s clue

8th April 2020