Sonnettics

I hear the sound of actors on the set,
one ear pressed to my mattress while my arm
is bent protectively around my head;
my breath is even, deep, reflective, warm.
The noise of words distracts my reverie.
Deep inhalations fill me with regrets.
Deep expectations void my memories.
The play is done; the actor soon forgets.
I contemplate the sheets for lack of sleep
and dream of acts to play with words obscene.
Alone, I place my head upon the heap
of everything the metaphor might mean.
Then silently I pull the words apart
and let the curtain fall upon my heart.

Too long since I have held her outstretched hands,
her hands that hold my son throughout the day.
Her touch, through which her love for him expands,
exudes my own; I think of him.  I pray
his hands will always have her hands to guide
their courses as he learns and as he grows.
I held his hand and walked with him beside
before he walked alone; I hope he knows
I also held her hand, and will again.
We’ll take each hand in love and we will walk,
him on my left, her on my right and then
we’ll find a bench to rest upon, to talk
of love and how each touch of love demands
that love be felt and held in loving hands.

My words are all as pale as shock and grief
upon the dead man’s face before he dies
from loss of blood or loss of his belief
in godly grace or truth or even lies
She thinks I’m strong because my stoic face
is not as pale as all my words of gray
but color never could nor will replace
the warmth, the dawn, the memory of the day
When all I knew and all that could be known
was love as real and living as a child
who knows that he will never be alone
on whom the gift of godly grace has smiled
until he finds the strength of love is weak
and all his words have failed, too pale to speak

I’m sure my hands have never been this cold
Unless it was the time I died, I died
Inside my grave with nothing warm to hold
Not even all the tears I cried, I cried
My heart has never felt like this, like lead
Except for forty years before, before
When all I knew was that I wasn’t dead
And no one ever sang there’s more, much more
In time I’m sure the sun which set will rise
In time I’m sure the clouds will rain, will rain
In time I’m sure of nothing but the sighs
Of time each time I cry in vain, in vain
I’m sure my hands have never been this cold
Inside my grave with nothing warm to hold

Although the slice of moon is fiercely bright
at 5 a.m., the canyon’s fiercely dark.
I’ve run beyond the artificial light,
and passed between the gates behind the park.
The cool, dry air falls gently on the stream
which, in its turn, falls gently through the trees.
The moonlight shadows falling like a dream
upon the road where newly fallen leaves
lie still are only echoes of the fall,
the early fall.  My early morning run
anticipates the lateness of it all
before the early rising of the sun,
by this: a simple trip by which I’m found
with hands outstretched before the shadowed ground.

We slowly drive from happiness to guilt
Enjoy the casual stops along the way
To see some monument that someone built
Or watch the purple sunset turn to gray
The road is so much quieter at night
The wheels are so much softer in the dark
Don’t try to read the map without a light
Or analyze for miles my last remark
The song begins to crackle and to fade
The farther from the signal we proceed
The tune begins to sound like its afraid
Of interfering with some silent need
But silence is a humming static hiss
That never thought its words would come to this

He spins a little flower by its stem
between his fingers, staring at the ground
obliquely at the place from where he plucked
its life.  A dozen others lie around.
Each broken stem his nervous fingers tore
with thoughtlessness he never will surpass
then spun it once or twice before he dropped
its dead potential on the verdant grass
In time the stems and flowers will decay
and fertilize the lawn, both blade and weed
will benefit from his uncaring gift
and equally uncaring they will feed
to grow, to be a place both soft and strong,
a field to be mowed down and walked upon.

The rising blue she feels beneath the street
betrays the way she longs to dance away
with clouds that drape the moon in cold defeat
that beg her in their luminence to stay
She laughs at how the moon has no control
of ripples in a puddle she has splashed
She laughs again to feel its sudden pull
then suddenly she feels her hopes are dashed
The crowds of night’s reflections pass her by
The rising blue is swirling overhead
The dance betrays the dancers who would fly
beyond the clouds and moon.  They’re dead.  They’re dead.
So down she lays her body in the street
And to the blue surrenders her defeat.

This one is like a pile of orange cloud
Obscured by dull apartments on the hill
It’s like the bluest sky that god allowed
Constrained within the confines of his will
It drags its feet across the perfect grass
Where just before the summer children played
It comes to stay but never comes to pass
This is the one of which I am afraid
I only want to hold my wife and son
Who seem too far away from me tonight
It isn’t done, my god! It isn’t done
It isn’t fair, my god! It isn’t right
This one consumes my solitary rage
And makes me feel a thousand times my age

The curve of flesh reminds me of a lake
How water bends the earth to seek its rest
The liquid soul rests for the body’s sake
Or makes the body flow at its request
The gentle way the water laps the shore
The way the shore responds to every touch
As if the soul knows what life has in store
And helps the flesh conform to life as such
And only when one soul has split apart
And only when one half has found its mate
The flesh responds by flexing from the heart
Where life divine seeks only to create
The curvature of love begins to swell
And deep within the miracle will dwell