Sonnettics

Don’t read this if you don’t intend to call,
or write, or email; you know what I mean.
Unless you don’t, unless you think that all
a poet needs is words. Don’t be obscene.
I need a muse, my last one went insane,
a thing my muses seem inclined to do
while wandering around within my brain,
my heart, my soul—she knew. Of course she knew.
You may insist, like her, that you’re the one,
who knows the inner workings of my heart.
You should be willing (she was not) to shun
the urge to go insane when we’re apart.
Profess your love, if that is what you choose,
but I must write, and so I need a muse.

The clouds that under-sweep the moon are burned
by frozen nothingness that coats the air
with quiet blue ferocity, discerned
by freezing eyes turned up in doubtful prayer,
through bitter glass, in semi-warm embrace
with life, or what will pass as life.  The lie
is not within the clouds where shadows trace
the moon.  The bitterness is blue, but why
would anybody pray to what’s above,
beyond, and further than the distant reach
of what can be perceived?  Perception of
a thing is more than faith; it is the breach
of darkness where the faithful burn too soon
while watching clouds that under-sweep the moon.

Some squirrels have burrowed in to get the seeds
from rotting pumpkins buried in the mass
of carrot peels, and onion skins, and leaves,
and countless mower-bags of summer’s grass.
Compressed within a frame of chicken wire,
a heap of rotting vegetable decay
is simmering in metamorphic fire
and decomposing further every day.
Inside, the worms of god’s creative spark
fulfill the great creator’s purpose too:
consuming waste and defecating dark
and fertile soil, unlike me and you.
The best that we can do is pile the shit
and in the spring make ready use of it.

This sonnet is a reworking of an earlier one:
First Touch of Our Second Child

I watch you place your hands upon your hips
and trace them to your belly, where they pause.
I watch your subtle, gentle fingertips
trace lovingly and linger where the cause
of this, your life’s creation makes you smile
again, like when you kissed me, skin to skin.
So half a life with him was worth your while
to bear another child of his within
your perfect body. Solemnly you turn
to find my eyes upon your reverie
of life.  What fitful thoughts can you discern?
Does life create rapport? Then come to me
and place my dying hands upon the place
that bears the evidence of his embrace.

So there you sit one day, today, your mind
awash in something that you drank to keep
you sane.  You think you see the stream that flows
through time, your time.  But high or low it’s all …
all omnipresent; you are god, you fool.
The time you dined with her is all the same
as when your sons were born and when you dreamed
you died, you drowned in crystal waters, deep
or when you swam, not caring if you lived
or like a happy fly, you died.  So fast
it flies, your life, down Oran-Delphi hill
as if you train for something you might win.
As yesterday the music that you fear
is played again and draws you ever near.

My prayers, like snow, fall gently to the ground,
accumulate in drifts of quiet words.
I watch through frosted windows as the sound
of hallelujah’s beauty lies unheard.
The god of winter listens to my song
of joy with grace as cold and blue as ice.
My liquid soul is frozen, fast and strong,
entombed in patience.  Patience will suffice.
My heart beats once; a billion snowflakes fall.
I give each one a blessing and a name.
The overwhelming stillness of it all
becomes a benediction to proclaim
the love I feel, the love I want to sing
when beauty melts, when beauty blooms in spring.

It shocked me, and it hurt; my god it hurt!
when evil tore my soul when it was weak.
My mind and body hardened to divert
the enemy of whom I now can speak.
I almost died; the devil almost laughed
to empty out my soul before it healed.
While powerless to stop the violent draft
of life, I caught a glimpse of what’s concealed
within my soul. I saw a burning flame,
like glass and fire, penetrating light.
I saw a stone engraved with a new name.
The name was mine; the stone was brilliant white.
I healed, but not before I fell from grace.
And now my soul is whole, though out of place.

My thoughts are boxed in paper-folded squares
and lined like soldiers on my window sill:
my thoughts of you in dreams, caught unawares
of all the paper boxes I would fill
with images of how your wrist is curved
or how the sunlight combs your scented hair,
in hopes that every thought might be preserved
and let me always find them standing there.
But thoughts in paper boxes blow away
when windows are left open in a storm.
The paper melts in rain from clouds of gray
and dissipates the thoughts, no longer warm.
Like wisps of wind I watch them through my tears
and whisper their return through silent fears.