Sonnettics

I can’t believe the shit that sets me off
It’s like my fucking head’s a powder keg
The sparks are all around me; you may scoff
But wait until one lands, ‘cause then you’ll beg

You’ll beg me to be decent: I don’t care
My decency is mine and mine alone
You’re just a fucking spark; you’re everywhere
I should have listened, should have fucking known

I should have known my brain would never heal
I should have listened to the voice of doubt
I should have followed fantasy that’s real
I should have lit myself; who’ll put me out

Ka-boom! It doesn’t matter anymore
I guess we know what powder kegs are for.

Importantly you turn to face the thing
The thing that mocks your pain with gilded rage
It knows the words to every song you sing
Regardless of the way you flaunt your age

As young as any seed before it sprouts
As old as any wisdom in that seed
It knows the grief of all its ins and outs
It feels the callous charms of every need

Wait, wait. Go back. Go back to quatrain one
Lets talk of gilded rage and songs once more
A volta doesn’t mean a sonnet’s done
It only means that after comes before

Before the end of poetry we sell
The words that find their way to some new hell.

We wait for words like forests wait for trees
And when we’ve waited long enough, we speak
As quietly as honey waits for bees
A metaphoric jar will crack and leak

Our sense of equilibrium is spilled
In sticky puddles on a shiny floor
In time the time we sense can yet be killed
If killing time is what your words are for

Be quick if you must wait for words to pass
Be more than less, unless you’re anymore
Be anyone you want; be polished glass
Regardless, you can shatter on my floor

If love becomes a word that you must hate
Your words will grow as forested I wait.

The sonnet's Fearful Symmetry is found
Within both forests of the night and day
Where similes and metaphors abound
Where fourteen rows of iambs kneel and pray

The prayers of Fearful Symmetry compose
Pentameter that keeps the form in check
And thus the prayers are forested as those
Who twist their hempen cords around their neck

Alas, a volta turns to find a Lamb
Sonnettics Tygers turn to face the stars
A cry is raised: "I am, my God! Iamb!"
The spears are tears that find they're yours; they're ours

Then back to Fearful Symmetry we're brought
To learn the things the trashy rhymes have taught.

As if we choose the meaning of the song

We let the lyrics wash upon our shore

Declare ourselves the right to right the wrong

Harmoniously humming evermore

And though we know the words we choose to sing

We find we lose some meaning in the beat

The circle of the beat’s a rhythmic thing

And where we linger, lingering’s complete

The sound we hear compels us now to be

To be the sound complacent we can hear

And so we listen to complacency

And wonder why our silence sounds like fear

The fear of little songs that sing our tale

And in such fear we find what we’d regale.

The words of Blake are still alive and well

Imagination’s metaphors are here

To rescue such ideas from our Hell

We must Create before they disappear

Within the mind of men, the mind of God

We see the life of stories we would tell

Creation’s realm: a place we find unflawed

A simple place where simple truth will dwell 

Simplicity, like growth through birth or death

Is never simple, like the words of Blake

Imagination’s words are living breath

We live and breathe with everything we make

The Mental Fight unfolds as we Create

A life within Imagination’s state.