Sonnettics

Each star is just a single grain of sand
Each galaxy, a dune of sand, piled high
This universal metaphor is grand
It’s poetry that lights the desert sky

Come contemplate the sand within the dunes
Look up, look through the telescope and see
A thousand stars with planets and their moons
Celestial grains of sand for you and me

Look down to see the sand on which you tread
One grain on which we orbit ’round the sun
One million grains beneath your feet instead
Come contemplate one million grains or one

This metaphor of stars and dunes and sand
Is poetry that fills a dusty land.

https://youtu.be/iPeNPs4qFxk

God’s poetry is written in the rocks
God’s poetry? Of course. The Word is God
Come listen to the way the landscape talks
Come hear the Word; come listen and be awed.

High verse is thus composed by God for man
High verse is how God touches hearts and minds
Poetic beauty justifies God’s plan
When man forgets God’s work, high verse reminds

High verse is made of words we understand
Its beauty is revealed in works we see
Like pinnacles and arches that are grand
Like mountains raised by God for you and me

And thus, by art, the holy landscape talks
God speaks the word with metaphoric rocks.

I feel the plates and screws beneath my scars
Securing bones that ripped and tore my skin
Like hardware one might find on bikes or cars
Without the need to show the strength within

Within my leg, titanium was placed
Although it hurt like hell for months and weeks
The pain is less than pain at first I faced
Although the scars are still, their silence speaks

My silent scars are history, engraved
Of how my skin was ripped and torn by force
They also show the way my foot was saved
So I could walk and run again, of course

And still I battle silent scars, unseen
Where rips and tears are seldom ever clean.

Iwo Jima Memorial

The red is for the hearts, both brave and true
That beat like drums from sea to shining sea
At times they cross the seas for me and you
To bring to others, ringing liberty.

The white is pure like freedom’s pure intent
Unmarked by any blemish, burn, or stain
It signals how it’s days are freely spent
In righteous winds no tyrant can restrain!

The blue is like the sky from which it waves
As waves of human hearts salute its strength
The strength in every human heart it saves
It waves a broad horizon without length.

From freedom’s heart it waves for me and you
It sanctifies us all: red, white, and blue.

One final word before the break of dawn
Sing if you want, the melody of time
Sing words that make the song you sing go on
Find simple couplets that conclude in rhyme.

One final word becomes your voice, your will
Song is the way you let your voice be heard
Music is just the sound that breaks the still
Stillness is broken by one simple word.

Light as the sun, your word becomes a song
Light as a song that rises like the sun
Words know exactly where their sounds belong
Like morning knows the sunrise has begun.

Sunrise is more than just a word that’s bright
Sunrise gives harmony to morning’s light.

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.