MY PAINTINGS AND VARIOUS PARAPHRENALIA

My paintings give insights into my complex psyche, as do my poems

Gabriel, Dark Knight of Heaven, by Hugh D'Arcy

My Dark Knight by  Thomas Hoskyns Leonard I’ve seen you walk my love, Nimbler to the cultured eye than any fair lady; No! You can’t take that away from me. Your intellectual prowess radiates youth and harmony. You’re straight, straight as any arrow can be. And yet you’re my Octavian; You cuddle up to your Caesar in my fantasy. You can’t take that away from me.

                                                 The Mayflower Rose by Fabio Cunha

THE MAYFLOWER ROSE

by  Thomas Hoskyns Leonard

In what wondrous dream Do I suppose I met the Mayflower Rose? Her petals turned to pink In a hug and a blink; Her stem twisted in the breeze When I fell to my knees; Her aura turned heavenly and angelic As I plied her with Dumnonian magic. But when the prickly thistle flew in, Rose was gone in the din. I twisted and turned, As I drank like a tank for ever and a day. When Yank fought Assyrian in the Gulf of Tears, She, the Voice behind the Screen, Spoke as if I’d never been. Now she beams across the mind waves In my wondrous dreams.

                                                 

                                                Hamlet, enslaved on Qinsatorix, by Fabio Cunha


            

                                                              Prince Hamlet of Denmark




                                                                

                                                     Princess Natasha of Qinsatorix





                                                                             

                                   

      The Planet Qinsatorix, its Inner and Outer Moons, and the Space Station Castellos

                                                  by Mike Rex





                                                                        

   

The Blue Preying Mantis

Thomas Hoskyns Leonard

by Thomas Hoskyns Leonard

It appeared during my dear Hypatia’s wedding
Man-size by the pulpit,
Prancing in prayer-like posture,
Its dark green pseudopupils bulging

Out wide
From its bulbous compound eyes,
Its spiky forelegs grasping
The sacred Book of Kells,
Flashing its leathery outer wings
And revealing
The four meaner things behind.
‘I’m Bishop Galloway,’ it cried,
Even though His Grace had gone away to hide.

‘Not the blue preying mantis!’ I shrieked.
The worthy canon was confounded,
The kilted best man turned around,
The youthful ushers ran up with a bound,
And I was bundled into the Lady Chapel
Where they gave me a rough grapple
And throttled my Adam’s Apple.
Thereupon, Hypatia happily married Damian
Attended by the Rose Gang from Granton
And an alsatian.

It appeared in the Havana
Just as the schemy Aussie
From Sydney with a single kidney
Was trying to get off like a toff
With a bent Dorothy from Tranent
Who wasn’t exactly heaven sent.
It tried to pull tricks without feeling,
Its sensors scraping the ceiling,
Its reptilian jaws munching the treats
With a surfeit of crunching.
‘Not the blue preying mantis!’ I shrieked,
And two hefty bouncers from Saturn’s Rings
Ran in, with jagged scars on their faces,
And threw me headlong onto the street.

It appeared in the respected Professorial Ward,
While Dr. Heinrich Vespasian was on his rounds.
It was leaping like a cricket,
Scampering like a cockroach,
Ever keen to encroach
On my King Gadeon broach.

‘Not the blue preying mantis!’ I shrieked,
And two ginormous prop forwards sped in.
‘Yank him, jag him, and make him do the splits!’
Snorted the kindly consultant from Auschwitz.
The guys from Hawick ground my face into the floor,
Koshed me with flupentixol,
Threw me into windowless, furnitureless solitary,

And locked the cast iron door.
What a way to jag a philanthropic young stag!
Thank goodness they didn’t acuphase me with clopixol.
Rat attacks are a snip compared with painful palpitations
And mind-bending heart attacks.

Their witches’ brew paralysed me waist-down
And put me on crutches.
So they switched me to modecate,
With an occasional pill of Largactil.
Now, after eleven years of scorching sunstroke,
Sleepness nights and scary days,
Red multiple scar tissue a posteriori,
And prolonged painful erections a priori,
I chase after every lady in sight,
And heavily salivate
While I give them a fright.
I’m the blue preying mantis,
Who returned in the night.