Luigi Coppola with Mark Shuttleworth

Two Poems & Accompanying Illustrations

Art by Mark Shuttleworth, Words by Luigi Coppola

The Pigeon

after The Eagle by Alfred Lord Tennyson
art by Mark Shuttleworth

He claws the curb with crannied digits;
Near to a bin he pecks and fidgets,
Wrung with salmonella, rickets.

Between the frothing cars he dashes;
He flops with fractured wings and thrashes,
And like a stumbling drunk he crashes.

Death Writes an Open Letter

I have set my scythe down
for only the third time in eternity:
the first was at 11am on the eleventh day
of the eleventh month;

the second was at midnight as Attlee
spoke of last enemies laid low,
though he and I would come to know
the end of that fight was only respite.

This third time, today, now,
this very moment you read these words
that I have wanted to write so
many times before to let you know:
you have filled my home

with too many of your own.
And be sure that this pause,
where pen and paper
replace gun and sword,
is not for long
for I will do my duty
as you will do yours.

Then when we meet
and you have lived a life
and sought for right
and fought the good fight
and did all you said you would,
I hope you are old and wise and grey
not young and green and red.

Yours faithlessly,
Death

Bonding over a love of the written word, the visual arts and alcohol, Luigi Coppola and Mark Shuttleworth collaborate to bring their twisted, twined and transcendental take on the world to the masses. Visit www.ArtAndWordsAndWordsAndArt.blogspot.com for examples of their Art and Words and Words and Art.