Fill thy Purse by Jakob Chapman

O thou lout with surly folly-fallen nut-hooks!
Wherefore art thou a clouted crook-pated pumpion!
Thou didst leave me like a cockered ill-nurtured horn-beast!
Quench my spleeny pottle-deep desire, thou mammet!
May a tottering onion-eyed harpy give birth in your bed.

O thou bugbear with jarring rump-fed measles!
Wherefore art thou a cockered pottle-deep clotpole!
Thou didst leave me like a warped tardy-gaited flax-wench!
Quench my fawning fat-kidneyed desire, thou malt-worm!
May a vain base-court fustilarian give birth in your bed.

O thou fustilarian with puny spur-galled dewberrys!
Wherefore art thou a gleeking rude-growing haggard!
Thou didst leave me like a infectious ill-breeding pumpion!
Quench my spleeny weather-bitten desire, thou hedge-pig!
May a gleeking fool-born strumpet give birth in your bed.

O thou canker-blossom with villainous doghearted codpieces!
Wherefore art thou a reeky rude-growing baggage!
Thou didst leave me like a bootless knotty-pated hedge-pig!
Quench my droning weather-bitten desire, thou malt-worm!
May a vain hedge-born flirt-gill give birth in your bed.

O thou nut-hook with droning shard-borne hedge-pigs!
Wherefore art thou a puny tardy-gaited apple-john!
Thou didst leave me like a infectious fat-kidneyed coxcomb!
Quench my mewling flap-mouthed desire, thou lewdster!
May a droning rude-growing flap-dragon give birth in your bed.

If sticks and stones be the food of hate, break on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Dam By Jakob Chapman (Inspired by Barry Seiler’s “Window”)

The gate opens early morning
But ends in flood

It would like to gush fountains
Water-spilled mote

It would like to be an ocean
Suddenly fluid

It would like to be something

Something like this

A dam without a crack

Dam #2 By Jakob Chapman

If spring had a name,
how could I speak hers
in its presence
without offending
the same season
with the sound
that suits her best?

If water could be bound
to only one place,
I would use
the new-found
impossible method
to contain my heart
and shut it away.

Until all bitter captivity
one day turns the sad
broken organ mad,
and sends its contents
bursting the dam wall,
racing around
desperate avenues,
until it finally finds her,
pools about her,

her white bare
ankles.