Sonnettics

[note: The following poem was my entry in a writing contest sponsored by Jason Evans at his site, Clarity of Night.]

I see the Blue reflected in the rise
of interwoven memories of steel,
which carries me to places I despise,
yet guards me from the gravity I feel.
I wear the simple wrinkles of the Blue
as simply as the shadows I ignore.
When darkness frays, the light comes shining through
and drags itself across the rising floor.
Anticipation glides in noiseless dreams,
like deus ex machina, oiled well.
Ascension into heaven fades and seems
to only rise above the Blue of hell.
There’s no one left below, no turning back
to where the Blue has faded now to black.

We see a man in reverie of words
who sits, transfixed by some poetic trance.
We see his life divided now in thirds:
his future, past and present circumstance.
His rhyme, anticipated, builds a line
which hides within the concept of a scheme.
He knows it’s wickedness to seek a sign,
and hides his wickedness within a dream
Behind him and below him beats his heart;
below him and behind him draws his breath.
His birth, now un-remembered, was their start,
nor does he bear the memory of his death.
He’s caught the Word, unspoken, undefined
that lingers in his soul and in his mind.

Goodbye, as hate propels the wasted glow.
No sleep contrives the grinding of my brain.
The words were fast but now the words are slow,
and burn my eyes to write or to refrain.
Goodbye, as love consumes my paper heart
with matchless wonder, warm and full of lies:
a stone to smash the monument apart,
and blood that runs like death attracting flies.
Goodbye, goodbye, the waters all recede.
Goodbye, goodbye, the stars are all obscured.
A common whore knows better than to breed,
but poets feel compelled by every word.
It makes no sense to breathe the fire’s smoke;
inhale, inhale, inhale, inhale—and choke.

Sing out with heaving breath and frantic heart
in transitory tones that pierce your brain
like footsteps crunching through the crystal art
of snow that wears a coat of frozen rain.
Run faster if you can while shards of ice
rise up in splintered pain against your shin.
Consider how mechanically precise
these temporary shivs incise your skin.
The hurt you leave behind in globules, red,
once carried heaving breath and frantic life
to memories of love within your head,
but now congeals on winter’s passing knife.
Your tracks are fresh and punctuated deep,
defiant as the warmth of dying sleep.

As time again becomes a thing to pass
in nights of seeking solace from the day,
becomes again the sands within the glass,
again the heap of autumn’s slow decay.
As time in cheapened metaphors is sold
to anyone who pays the poet’s price
of baser substance fooled to think it’s gold
to fools who think the metaphors are nice.
It seems eternal love is just a joke.
“Forever,” just three syllables to place
within a volta turned to be invoked
for nothing more than nothing can’t replace.
Eternity will heal the wounds of time
as surely as a final couplet fails.

She curls her knees against her broken heart
as streaks of black deception stain her shirt.
Her tears distill her sadness to an art
of fresh, un-laundered pain and brightened hurt.
She knows the words by heart of one sweet song
which fills her aspirations.  The refrain
is muffled by her shirt.  It all went wrong
when Candace tried to sing that song again.
Her little boy sits quietly beside
his broken mommy, gently strokes her hair.
With tenderness he manages to slide
his hand into her hand.  She is aware
of comfort in a voice that sounds like his:
“I want to be your happiness,” he says.

It starts the way it started, suddenly;
her words appeared and she became my muse,
before I sensed the coming harmony,
I heard her voice and I could not refuse.
My heart reached out and gave itself away.
My mind rebelled, my stupid fucking mind.
My soul rejoiced and knew that it would stay.
My words prepared with her to intertwine.
It starts again when fate has grabbed my throat
and squeezed the breath from my constricted chest.
It starts when I have nothing to denote
the words I want to say, the worst and best.
In hope that from fate’s grasp I may be freed,
I gasp, and simple poetry concede.

Goodnight to these soliloquies of waste
which coat the page like rancid, holy oil
as if it were my head.  The day’s replaced
with night.  Goodnight to light that also spoils.
The light of words decays in putrid lines
of poetry.  Bend closer; smell the page.
It reeks of death, a coffin; it consigns
the cells of knowledge to some lytic phage.
They say the king is dead; long live the king.
I’ll say it too.  Why not?  They’re only words.
Goodnight Laertes, Gertrude.  Now let’s sing
goodnight to poor Ophelia.  How absurd.
Don’t signify the candles no one lights;
just kill them all with Juliet’s “goodnights.”

Her judgements made in ignorance ignore
the voice I hear, to which her ears are deaf.
She pounds her gavelled words upon the door
of accoladed variance.  I guess
it saves her tender hand from getting bruised,
to bang her little hammer, making sure
it skips the rhythms others may have used
in trite conformity.  Don’t make it pure;
try holding by its head and tap the end
that normal people hold.  Now make it scrape
in circles.  Make it chatter; let it bend
the noise of wood-on-wood.  Can you relate
to anything as simple as a rhyme?
Or do you find cacophony sublime?

I trust my life to silk and nylon cords
that promise to suspend me from the sky.
I trust the weeks of training that awards
the silver wings that money cannot buy
to every volunteer who stays the course,
like every paratrooper has before.
I trust them all, their strength; I know its source.
I’d follow them in peace or bloody war.
Stand up, the door is open; check your line.
The light is red, but soon it will be green.
Your courage is the courage you define
by leading from above, by being seen!
The eyes of generations look to us,
the strength of Airborne, keepers of the trust!