Sonnettics

If how to write a sonnet is your aim,
Or what a sonnet is you wish to know,
Read on, this sonnet seeks to do the same
In just ten lines remaining down below.

A sonnet is a song of fourteen lines.
“Sonneto” is the word for “little song.”
Italians wrote them first, but different kinds
Of sonnets through the years have come along.

To write a sonnet just remember this:
Each line should sound just like these lines you’ve read.
Ten syllables whose rise and fall persists
Right through the end, which lies two lines ahead.

And if I had a little bit more time
I’d tell you how a sonnet’s lines should rhyme

The things I feel remain still unexpressed
As if expression never found a way
To guide me through the strangeness of that day
On which I found her searching, sharply dressed,
For where I kept the passports. I confessed
That I had locked them recently away
Because . . . I stopped, unsure of what to say,
And felt a sudden sinking in my chest.

Don’t frighten her, just play along. Now go
Put on your pinstriped suit. Now go and get
The passports from the safe. Be calm because
She’s standing at the edge. Don’t cry. You know
That sudden shifts of mind will just upset
Her slant reality. Don’t stop. Just pause . . .

We didn’t try to kill the president
We only sought to rough him up a bit
Like Moses, who we know by accident
Killed someone who was giving someone shit
We held him down, removed his kevlar vest
We stuffed the Constitution in his mouth
We tattooed five commandments on his chest
At number six the whole affair went south
Apparently his clothes were soaked in crude
When someone lit a match to smoke a cig
It’s odd how our intent was misconstrued
And how he smelled just like a roasting pig
In retrospect, we should have put him out
But then, that’s what elections are about

It sucks when you and I are out of synch
It’s like a comet slamming into earth
Our world explodes as fast as we can blink
And what remains? Debris of little worth
The chunks are ripped apart by gravity
And fall into an orbit in the space
Where once before our planet used to be
Which now is just a lifeless littered place
Then off we fly in hyperbolic arcs
Unsure of what just blew us both away
Toward our individual destined marks
The apogees where we refuse to stay
It should be plain for both of us to see
We’ll never reach escape velocity

Dig down below the dust that coats this road
Which stretches to a flat eternal point
Ignore the pilgrim passing with his load
Ignore the way his bleeding feet anoint
This dusty road which seems to have no end
Pay no attention to his solemn stare
And if he stops to help you, just pretend
You’re resting for a moment and that there
Is really not a need for him to wait
Encourage him to journey on ahead
His perfect circumspection is oblate
Because he only walks toward the dead
Dig down below the dust and you will find
A vein of gold which hasn’t yet been mined

The stars and stripes are raised to greet each dawn
And we salute with clean and righteous hands
The sounds of reveille have come and gone
For what we stand, Guantanamo still stands
The chain of strength links liberty to deeds
When times of terror make us weak with fear
But chain-linked strength is what our nation needs
And what it doesn’t need stays hidden here
At dusk the flag is lowered for the night
Its vigilance not needed in the dark
To justify the end beyond our sight
With means that may or may not miss the mark
The cry of tortured Liberty is clear
Regardless of the voices silenced here

Improvidence is all that smiles on me
And then it’s just a Cheshire smile at best
It’s seven years since I was thirty-three
And seven more, at least, before I’m blessed
Or maybe I’m the one in bad decline
I’m not the one emerging from a tomb
Five hundred thousand dollars could be mine
If I could coax my verses to subsume
Improvidence, and make it reappear
As if it were a savior or a ghost
I wonder then if anyone would hear
My little songs, the ones I sing the most
I doubt it as I turn a shade of green
And fade into another mundane scene

I say my words are forced and water-bland
You laugh and say that water fosters life
I yell and drive my pencil through my hand
You sound just like my god-damned, fucking wife!
I feel the pencil throbbing in my palm
And suddenly a line occurs to me
I don’t know where you’ve gone but I am calm
And how can I be calm so suddenly
I turn my wrist; the pencil is a mast
Protruding from a raw stigmata hole
The words come to me easily at last
As if they were escaping from my soul
But irony flows easier than words
And all my lines by blood are now obscured

I keep a bag of blood beneath my bed
That’s turned into a moldy clotted lump
It oozes shades of fascinating red
And smells like something from a rural dump
I keep a second bag behind the stair
I haven’t checked on it for half a year
A third and fourth are sitting by my chair
A metaphor for hope and one for fear
And every night I tap a willing vein
(I tell myself the vein has got a choice)
And every drop of blood that I can drain
Before I faint is reason to rejoice
Then pale and weak I drag myself to bed
And dream in shades of fascinating red

I think we drank too much that starry night
Remember how we laughed ourselves insane
We held each other close, but not too tight
Professing love the wine could not constrain
I told you that it wasn’t just the wine
That nothing in my life had been as real
And nothing had, I swear you crossed some line
Some line I tried my whole life to conceal
It sounded trite; it sounds as trite today
And yet it was the truth, or not a lie
In eighteen years I haven’t found a way
To tune it out, forget, or to deny
Nor can I cross the lines which you have drawn
As you’ve tuned out, forgotten, and moved on