Sonnettics

To be the Word, I must admit I Am
I Am the Word, Iamb, and Thou Art God
Peccavimus! Pentameter’s a sham
This little song of fourteen lines is odd

Sonnettically, my metaphors are blind
My similes are like a cloud of smoke
Iambic darkness must have been designed
By someone who was not afraid to choke

But faith: the world will turn, the sun will rise
All voltas call the dawn, that we might see
The volta’s dawn illuminates our skies
And by such light “I Am” becomes “to be”

I Am the Word, Iamb, the Word is God
Within the Word my couplets will be shod.

I’m not the song I think I thought I heard
The tune is not my life; I will not sing
Each verse concludes with some pathetic word
That takes its meaning from intents I bring
I choose the words you choose to hear me use
Poetic dust with which I try to build
A monument that seeks eternal views
As if its paltry bricks could not be killed
But when it all comes crashing to the ground
I watch the dust return to desert lands
They’re only words that wait until they’re found
Come dig until they fill your hollow hands.
Enough of me and words, let’s talk of you
Oh right, we talk with words. No words are true.

There’s time for one more glass and then one more
as time begins to fade into the taste
of complicated sweetness which we pour
in timelessness, devoid of bitter haste.
Aromas gather slowly in the dim
quintessence of the presence of the thought
of lips that linger lightly on the brim
of sweetness and the essences now caught:
the musk of sunlight captured in the skin
of fruit from fertile vineyards far away,
the tang of inspiration from within
a bottled soul, consumed like night by day.
The soft and subtle glow of nurtured bliss
compels her to release a Riesling kiss.

With music.

He turned the fourteenth glass and said, “Begin.”
and I had fourteen minutes left to live;
and I had fourteen unrepented sins,
and fourteen people whom I would forgive,

and fourteen unread books upon my shelf,
and fourteen loves I knew I’d loved in vain,
and fourteen dreams I’d kept within myself
(the fourteen I’d most wanted to explain.)

But fourteen minutes quickly passed away.
I filled my pen with fourteen drops of ink-
the fourteenth glass had offered one delay;
and fourteen final grains retained the brink.

This sonnet flowed like fourteen final breaths-
the fourteenth line, the fourteenth grain, then death.

I am my song, my pulse, my turn, my scheme
If that constricts your mind then you should leave
I’m more than just a vision or a dream
In which some simple acolytes believe
And yet, I’m not a temple on a hill
I’ve seen too many temples come and go
To make pretenses which I can’t fulfill
Pretend I sound like somebody you know
I wear a modest dress, but I’m a whore
Reach just beneath the fabric and you’ll find
I’m rutting hot and eager for some more
You know I’m only fucking with your mind
And in the end I only give a damn
Because I am the sonnet that I am

Analysis:
“The Sonnet That I Am” is a bold, self-reflective poem that dramatizes the tension between the sonnet as a fixed literary form and the sonnet as a living, evolving voice. From the opening line, the poem asserts its identity: “I am my song, my pulse, my turn, my scheme.” The speaker here is both the sonnet itself and, by extension, the poet, declaring that the poem is not an inert structure but a heartbeat, a shifting rhythm of thought and emotion.

The sonnet challenges traditional expectations by pushing back against attempts to confine it—“If that constricts your mind then you should leave.” The voice rejects the idea of being merely a “vision or a dream” or a sacred monument, reminding the reader that too many such “temples” have risen and fallen. In place of reverence, the sonnet offers a performance of provocation and disruption.

Lines 9–12 are especially striking, as the sonnet adopts a startling metaphor: “I wear a modest dress, but I’m a whore.” Here the form insists on its duplicity—it appears restrained, dignified, and conventional, yet underneath it pulses with raw desire and irreverence. The metaphor turns the sonnet into a trickster figure, simultaneously seductive and mocking, capable of destabilizing the reader’s expectations about poetry’s supposed purity.

The closing couplet, “And in the end I only give a damn / Because I am the sonnet that I am,” brings the poem full circle, echoing the self-declaration of the opening line. The sonnet embraces its contradictions—formal yet unruly, modest yet carnal, traditional yet self-defining. Rather than conforming to an external standard, it reclaims its authority by asserting its own unapologetic identity.

Ultimately, “The Sonnet That I Am” is less about what a sonnet should be than about what it chooses to be. By personifying the sonnet as rebellious, sensual, and self-aware, the poet reimagines the centuries-old form as a living entity that resists domestication, embodying the power of art to surprise, challenge, and reinvent itself.

My legs are not my legs, they are my wings
The power of my horizontal flights
Although it’s true that birds are graceful things
They watch me run from simple jealous heights

My legs are not my legs, they are my wings
They split the rushing chaos of the wind
I love the sound it makes when chaos sings
A sound not even order can rescind

It’s true my feet are cadenced on the ground
It rises like a challenge to my pace
But quicker than they fall, my feet rebound
And like a wingtip, barely leave a trace

For gravity and I have drawn a truce,
And though it holds, I feel it breaking loose.

Rewrite of the following sonnet

My legs are not my legs, they are my wings,
The power of my horizontal flights
Above the pavement clouds. Such graceful things
As birds look down from simple jealous heights.
My legs are not my legs, they are my wings,
They split the rushing chaos of the wind
And push it side to side. Such striding flings
The eddied air awash and far behind.
It’s true my feet are cadenced on the ground
Which rises like a challenge to the pace.
But quicker than they fall, my feet rebound,
And like a wingtip, barely leave a trace.
For gravity and I have drawn a truce,
And though it holds, I feel it breaking loose.