Sonnettics

A festival that celebrates our town
We're Hebron, a community of friends 
The maples here achieve a great renown 
And every year we hope it never ends

The sugar from our maples is so sweet
It flows when trees are tapped in early spring
It flows like friendship flows down every street
It seems to make the people want to sing

A festive song, a festival we love
We welcome all with hope that always grows
Like maple leaves on lofty limbs above 
Through which the joy of maple syrup flows

The winter snows will melt and go away
While Hebron’s Maple Festival will stay.

I watch the maples sway across the street 
The wind seems gentle, tinged with gentle rain
The gentleness of morning is complete
As gentle dreams of reverie remain

The reverie of gentle autumn days
Remembered in the winter times of chill
I wonder if a maple tree that sways
Remembers when it used to stand stone still

The memories of trees are like the wind
A paradox with roots that wait for spring 
A memory no weather can rescind
The maple tree has other songs to sing

I watch the maples watch as I compose
A gentle song as gently I repose.

As odd conditions find their tongues are slit
Like fiendish fangs they drip with mothered blood
If born with light they start before they quit
Eternally what bombs becomes a dud

Explosions of conditions draped with fur
Expressions make the most of rancid dawn
Untold by children told to be unsure
The offer states the honor which has gone

We find the bitch of all we might expect
As heinous scars of rotten-rendered-meat
While more than this is what we recollect
And recollections hold what gods repeat

My mistress finds a place to don her hat
While screaming faithless fiction to her cat.

I watched Surreal suck cobwebs from my eyes
That bitch knew how to blend the disks of time
He painted worms like carnal squishy thighs
And only cared for things that wouldn’t rhyme

Like god-below-confusion camping out
Where sultriness enjoys a drink or two
I’ve seen Surreal behave like Holy Doubt
He knows what Holy Doubt can often do

My God, My God is this what Dreamers feel
I Am My God, I Am The Fucking Word
Confusion leads to everything Surreal
True visions run the risk they might be blurred

So blurred in blood the veins of time congeal
As cobwebs dance with God who is Surreal.

For Valentine's Day

Every good love story needs a good sonnet. 
This one is for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce:
-----
They found each other somewhere in the light
A metaphor that knows just where to look
To see beyond the limits of plain sight
A simple story in love’s storybook 

She sings her songs of love with dulcet voice
A song becomes much more than what she sings
The words of love become a lyric choice 
Like songbirds know the tune of precious things

He must have known true love will know it’s true
It overcomes uncertainty and more
It seems to know precisely what to do
To show the love beyond love’s metaphor 

And now together they are TNT
An acronym for what was meant to be.

They say that Pandæmonium’s design
Was drawn by heaven’s architect as well
A place that was approved by One Divine
The place they call the capital of Hell

From heaven cast, the demons found a place
Where all created demons always dwell
Then suddenly there seemed to be a race
To what they call the capital of Hell

If Pandæmonium begets blank time
Or time becomes a god like me or you
We see the Word become a goddamned Rhyme
As if it all depends on order too

Is all we need from life, a simple song?
The place where Pandæmoniums belong. 

What father leaves his child with a witch?
By Setebos I curse the wretch to hell
The wretch will from humanity unhitch
The wretch becomes a story I must tell

By Setebos we live before we die
To live or die is often quite the same
Each life is but the telling of a lie
A lie which knows that truth is just a game

Play on, play on, we’ll die in wretched time
What father leaves his child with a witch?
By Setebos you recognize the crime
The players come and go; with you they switch

With Sycorax the witch you had your fun
Your Caliban exists in everyone.

At night I close my eyes and thus go blind
I hope when I wake up I’ll see the light
It seems I always do; I always find
My blindness only lasts throughout the night

Sometimes when I go blind I live my dreams
Sometimes the Mares of Night assault my peace
When I go blind, reality, it seems
Is lost as subtle fantasies increase

It’s only sight, they say; it’s just one sense
We all go blind at times; sometimes it’s choice
At times the thought of darkness is intense
At times it seems my blindness finds a voice

You see the noise that lingers in your mind?
The noise of darkened dreams proclaims me blind.