I suppose I should publish...

a poem on here to justify my Url. This is from a sonnet series I'm working on in the voice of a 40-something academic. This occurs during a night on the road having given a guest lecture.

Stopover

Early evening, artificial light

drowns the bar of Oxford's Premier Inn.

After ten minutes opposite a forthright

blonde you're sliding your ring

to your index finger in the bathroom,

and suddenly you've another beer,

one for her, a nom de plume,

and are trying to journey the sheer

of her dress, hinting at bed  

too soon - then drinking stronger stuff to assuage

the elegant swish of fabric as she fled.

Morning, you wake and find the scrawled page

of four-letter words your hand had been guided

to write in last night's crimson, whisky haze.