Sonnettics

We close the subtle clarity of night
with days consumed by motes of dusty beams,
with visions of perception where our sight
subsumes the wrath of sunlight in our dreams.
The air exhaled from humid throats is not
the air we welcomed in with subtle hope;
while throats are dry, the words we breathe are hot,
constricted like a hangman’s dusty rope.
Come kiss my subtle mouth with grieving lips
of promises; I’ll pay you for the trick
of light that makes the word which simply slips
into the dusty air, congested, thick.
It’s love, the subtle whore of night and day
who laughs the most as she collects her pay.

One foot betrays the gravel, coarse with wet
communion of the clouds, electric sky.
If god could kill the walker he might let
the path remain betrayed, the right to die
would slip from god’s control into the stream
of footprints left depressed in muddy ground.
Ridiculous is god’s eternal scheme–
ridiculous, eternal fucking round.
One foot, one step compels the walk of one
who lives in bright denial of the night
where dreams compel the fear to overrun
the banks of god’s oppression, wrong or right.
As swift as water roiling toward his feet,
the one will find his drowning bittersweet.