Sonnettics

Beneath the lake of god I slept for years
until my flesh was cold enough to feel
the heat within my veins, and heated tears
became a revelation to reveal.
Beneath the lake of god I heard the voice
of all the prophets’ dim and distant cries.
I dropped the book, a solitary choice,
and in my lightened state began to rise.
Then through the lake of god, its waters clear,
I rose and noticed suddenly how deep
the water was, and though I didn’t fear,
I wondered what had kept me fast asleep.
And as I broke the surface of the lake
I felt the air, the breath that I could take.

It’s night; it’s like a metal chair again
inside a concrete room with concrete floor.
The air is thick and silent, like a sin
that keeps you trapped behind a concrete door.
It’s night; you sit and stand and sit again.
You pace the dark, unyielding, dirty floor,
unswept, just like an unrepented sin.
You hear the clicking steps and locking door.
It’s night, and night is sleepless yet again.
You’ve curled up on a thousand sleepless floors.
And what you thought were dreams were only sins
that crawled you toward their locked and concrete doors.
It’s night, and so you sit and stare in vain
into the concrete darkness once again.

You’re dead because you haven’t learned to live,
to suck the marrow from the bones of life.
And if you resurrect enough to give
yourself a chance, like sharpening a knife.
Then life becomes the death of death, the time
between the birth of flesh and birth of dust.
And all the knives you sharpen seem to shine
or else they dull with oxidating rust.
Then breathe before your breath becomes a mist,
a cloud of trouble stitched to life and death.
And breathe the air as if it had been kissed
by something not less passioned than your breath.
And cut the ties you’ve tied to time with love;
and pray to god within and god above.

Her breath becomes her voice, becomes her song;
the air becomes a beauty to perceive.
She shapes it right where others shape it wrong,
and silent doubts give way to just believe.
My god, she pulls the life from where it starts,
directs it in its rise of fertile grace,
and time becomes the now her voice imparts
to fill the barren void of empty space.
Her song creates the world. Her song is joy;
it resonates like something like a soul.
Her song transcends devices some employ
like simple mortal poets, less than whole.
Her breath becomes her voice, becomes her song,
shaped right, eternal beauty all along.

I don’t know what it means; I just don’t know.
Did I do something wrong, some kind of sin?
I’ll tell you what I can. I’ll take it slow,
although I’m just not sure where to begin.
You know, He came and spoke to me each night
in Perfect Glory, stood there with his Son
above the floor in robes of brilliant white,
for twenty years perhaps or twenty-one.
But not last night. His presence didn’t shine.
His voice was mute; His Son was absent too.
I’m left without the water or the wine.
Is false still false? Is true no longer true?
If silence was the voice I’d always heard
then god was nothing more than just a word.

A thousand miles away the sweetest sigh
Of love and longing leaves her lonely lips
A prelude or a postlude to a cry
Accompanied by trembling fingertips
A thousand miles away I hear her hair
Brush gently as it falls across her face
The softest sound of which I am aware
A subtle sound she amplifies with grace
Nearby the howl of autumn winds and rain
Is deafening in all its autumn rage
A furious sound of cacophonic pain
Which struts and frets upon a noisy stage
A player poor I’ve chosen not to hear
And press the telephone against my ear

My hope is to be found when I am lost
In place or time, in reverie or thought
By my own will or circumstances tossed
Into that realm where wanderers are caught
Between confusion’s gate and some broad field
I see myself alone and turned around
The stars by clouds are suddenly concealed
And I am staring blankly at the ground
I need an angel’s prayers to guide my feet
I need an angel’s wings to guard my heart
An angel’s song would never sound as sweet
As when it’s sung while we are far apart
What hand will find my hand and be my guide?
What angel comes to stand here by my side?

I never found Elysium, did you?
Behind my house there’s just a little patch
Of trees. An easement with a trickling stream
That fills with leaves of red and leaves of gold
This time of year. The wind is blowing hard
Against the branches, slowly stripping bare
The last remaining vestiges of life,
At least that life which stretches toward the sun.
Were we misled? Did we mislead ourselves?
The grass is getting long before the snow.
I think I’ll only cut it one more time.
Then, if there’s time, I’ll build a little bench
Beneath the patch of trees, beside the stream,
And watch it through the winter, from my house.

Am I too late to note the past which passed
Without the notice of a poet’s pen?
What then would you or youth portray, unmasked
In these–these silent pictures now? What then
Will lace avail if what it frames is scarred?
Am I not clear? What words suffice to mark
The pale perfection of the page unmarred
By life? What skin escapes the Poet’s art?
In time the soundless scrawls of meaning fade.
Nepenthe left unquaffed evaporates.
In time the time when beauty was portrayed
As vanity like mist will dissipate.
Beneath your skin your pulse remains as strong
As when it first began its steady song.

Don’t stare too long; the shadows ’round her eyes
Absorb your soul. Don’t linger on her mouth,
The petals of a pout. Don’t sympathize
With milk; her skin is milk. Don’t be devout.
Look once and note forever how her hair
Asserts itself forever, like a stroke
Of paint that’s brushed by one who doesn’t care
If art is beauty or some cosmic joke.
Take all the time you need when she is gone
To press your head against some velvet thought–
Some thought divined, forever lingered on,
Rejected and embraced, escaped and caught.
Her youth is not the youth you meant to find
Upon the edges of your mortal mind.