Sonnettics

I wonder what the world will think of next
I wonder if it gives a shit at all
The world is just a word of simple text
Simplicity, the god before the fall
So now I watch and wait and wonder too
The world is more complex than what it was
The world was once simplicity I knew
So does it give a shit? Perhaps it does
Perception is the mirror we perceive
Reflecting what we think we ought to see
The blindness of humanity may grieve
To find what’s next reveals what’s meant to be
A simple couplet ends the world’s great verse
A simple wondrous rhyme. It could be worse.

The rockets tear at night above Ukraine
While Gaza burns and children choke on dust
Taiwan is warned by shadows in the rain
And treaties rot, corroded into rust.

Here in America the guns don’t sleep
They prowl through schools, through markets, through the night
Our blood is cheap, the graves are dug too deep
The headlines blur, yet never end the fight

The planet scorched, the oceans forced to rise
Refugees march where borders slam them shut
We call it peace, but peace itself now dies
A word that’s strangled, ravaged in the gut

Don’t ask what front: the front is everywhere
This war is now. It thickens in the air.

We wait like raindrops, contemplating drought
We wait, for what? The end that might begin?
To turn perceptions into certain doubt
We wait for changes, much to our chagrin
It doesn’t pay to wait for certain change
It doesn’t pay to change when we must wait
Dichotomies are nothing if not strange
It’s strange to think of all we contemplate
Then back to being raindrops in the drought
We contemplate perceptions which will change
Is this what dried up life is all about?
Is waiting thus the way the gods derange?
Deranged in waiting, everyone is god
A metaphor perceived as simply odd.

I watched her disappear in songs of smoke
I thought she’d be the one to prove them wrong
But breath is only life until you choke
And brilliance fell to shadow in her song
She moved through rooms like rumor, half-believed
A trailing laugh, a shadow at the door
I’d turn to speak, but find myself deceived
Her voice remained; her motive was impure
She danced on coals and called it poetry
Mistook the glow for grace of ashen youth
Her exit staged in careful tragedy
A burned out lie she passed off as the truth
Let smoke recall her, beautiful, unwise
A flash that sang of air and smoky lies

(This is my first attempt at a new form called a Cadralor. Featured in Gleam, Issue 9):

———-

A hand skims the surface of an old record,
dust rising like breath. The needle catches, crackles,
then the voice of a singer, younger than memory.

In a café, a woman stirs her coffee clockwise,
watching the door without meaning to,
without admitting she is waiting.

The abandoned orchard still bears fruit.
beneath a tangle of overgrown branches,
a single apple, split open hums with bees. 

Two names carved into a rail by the river, 
edges softened by years of rain. Wind runs a hand
through the reeds, whispers its question. 

At the train station, she turns at the sound of her name,
spoken as it used to be. The weight of years
is nothing; the distance, already closing. 

The quiet roar of stillness in my dream
Invites the little songs to find a voice
Like fabric finds a bordered stitch, a seam
Or finds it never really had a choice
The way that stark precarity ascends 
To other worlds above the damaged plain
I like the definition it defends
The etymology of tender pain
When little songs awaken in my heart
Then find their little way to where I write
I wonder if they end up where they start
They may not be true gods, and yet they might
They might proclaim divinity with grace
And dwell forever in a holy place.

A kilt is how we show the world we're free
From all the world's conventions, which would bind
The Highland soul and strength we seek to be
Through freeing both the body and the mind

A kilt is freedom's comfort, worn with pride
The pride of independence, bought with strength
It shows the strength of freedom born inside
That liberates the soul, at any length

The man that wears the kilt is strong and proud
Of heritage that bears his clan, his name
He speaks his words in silence, and aloud!
He knows his life is more than just a game.

And yet he knows when games are meant to be
A kilt is how he shows the world he's free!

I walk on faith, a splinted, golden crutch,
Where once I flew in knowing’s native air;
The wound is old—no memory of the touch,
Just phantom wings and ache I cannot bear.
The veil was stitched before my birth, they say,
By archons blind, who rule the things that rot;
They named it “truth,” and taught my lips to pray—
A borrowed speech for what my soul forgot.
But still I limp toward light I do not see,
My balance held by hymns I cannot feel,
Each creed a cast around the mystery,
Each sacrament a brace that makes me kneel.
Yet in this bracing faith, some ghost remains—
The shape of knowing pulsing through the veins.

To find the truth of poetry within
One knows the word of god must be revealed
To hide the word is thus poetic sin
And wounded poets know they must be healed

And so we seek the words by which we feel
True knowledge is the poem we become
Beyond the tombs that others seek to seal
We rise and wait for Magdala to come

Thus gnosis sets us free beyond this world
In which we have been trapped to just perceive
Material perceptions, flags unfurled
And simply sit and wait and weep and grieve

Our knowledge of the trap won’t set us free
But we will know the place we need to be.

I like to play with words; the Word is God
They say, “You play with God? That’s fucking cool!” 
I guess you’d say by words at times I’m awed
At times I’m awed and odd. At times, a fool

The fool is wise when words ae more than true
What’s more than true, you ask? I’ll tell you this
The Word is like the Monkey in a zoo
The Poem is the cage where It finds bliss

So God’s a Word and poetry’s a cage?
The poet can be odd and awed at once?
I’ve also heard it said, the world’s a stage
At least it isn’t school. I’m not a dunce!

Reality is often most absurd
And Fantasy’s fantastic! There’s a Word.