Sonnettics

I feel good morning, even though it’s cold
The warmth of coffee mingles with my words
I call them “mine” and hope they don’t get old
Or fly away like silly little birds

To fly away is freedom’s final gift
To birds or even quick poetic lines
The warmth of freedom rises as I lift
My coffee mug with other prescient signs

The signs of life will change from day to day
Like seasons change their warmth throughout the year
And yet, the warmth of words will always stay
And share themselves with those who stop to hear

I feel the words “good morning” in the light
That waited for this freedom through the night.

We’re free because we live where freedom reigns
We’re free to celebrate the lives of all
Let’s celebrate with beautiful refrains
Accompanied by those who hear the call

We live where folks are brave enough to serve
True service comes in many shapes and forms
Our celebrations recognize the nerve
Of men and women standing through life’s storms

Our town was built with strength and love and care
It stands, a model of it’s brilliant past
Our history is stories all can share
Our future knows the way to make us last

Our town is Hebron, watch now as we pave
A future pathway for both free and brave.

–Scott Ennis, July 4th, 2021

For times when my capacity is small
The neural pathways glide to comtrovee
I wonder if it threatens one and all
Of fleegunds in repooh confrasticly

Will flesh bespeak the hidden garlemphew
Will garlemphew return to days of creel
An accident of sounds the chawg renew
With irons dull by rotten lastig steel

True times will bind the hands with which we speak
We speak of words as if the gods will die
The strong will end below the waves that freak
The nouns and verbs on which the gods rely

It doesn’t really matter when they come
The sound of stains enhance a hardened scum.

Iambic Ladies


14 sonnets about 14 ladies whose names happen to be iambic, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. 
Accompanied by AI generated pictures of each lady.



01-Colette

Colette arrives and tells me what she wants
Like heavy rain upon a metal roof
Her eyes are dark and still like raven’s haunts
Her look is one of arrogance, aloof

Colette believes she’s better than the song
Of simple sirens calling men to drown
She knows the place where all my words belong
And so she wears a haunting fitted gown

Her beauty is as dark as ebony
The forests of Ceylon invite her form 
A place where foolish men should never be
A place where darkened clouds become a storm

Colette does what Colette will do with me
Like hold my heart and never set it free.


02-Corrine

Corrine becomes a mist when nights are short
Like summer solstice, dancing where she goes
Her piercing eyes are like a sharp retort
I often wonder what her spirit knows

But I would never ask her to explain
The reasons for the words and looks she’ll choose
When floating like a mist of summer rain
Without the comforts other women use

What comforts her is still a mystery
Perhaps she doesn’t need the soft or warm
She holds her thoughts with quiet dignity
But speaks her mind like thunder in a storm

Regardless of it all, she lets me in
To learn the subtle secrets of Corrine

03-Elaine

Elaine is simply classic, simply bright
Like beauty that must be upon display
I’d paint her, if I could, with shades of white
But that dichotomy might fade away

I’ve never seen her fade, she simply waits
For you to notice every line and curve
She knows the form each line and curve creates
She knows her form is more than you deserve

She isn’t coy; it isn’t her intent
Alluring is just how she will appear
At unexpected times, like when she went
To places that I thought might trigger fear

Elaine is not afraid to be Elaine
She dwells beyond all thoughts of loss or gain.

04-Marie

Marie is a reflection in a pool
Although I know her touch is more than real
When I’m too warm, her touch is nice and cool
Like when I’m sick, her touch is quick to heal

Her healing touch can fix a broken heart
A lady and a doctor of amor
Much more than just an artist with her art
She seems to hold the key to every door

No door is locked for long when she will go
To find the things she needs or simply wants
Including things unseen that she would know
On streets that her reflected beauty haunts

At times I sense the wraith of sweet Marie
And know she knows that what will be will be.  

05-Cosette

Cosette can walk through fields where flowers grow
Without becoming lost in reverie
She’s always in the now, but she can go
To any place or time she wants to be

Like water in a river, she moves on
Like water in a lake, she may be deep
Like sunlight in the shades of dusk or dawn
The rainbow of her soul, you’ll want to keep

But she belongs to no one, like the sun
Her light and warmth are gifts she freely shares
The way the air is breathed by everyone
The way a field of flowers shows it cares

Each flower, like Cosette, will grace their field
And like Cosette their beauty is revealed.

06-Helene

Helene is not as simple as you think
And yet she’s not complexity at all
Perhaps she’s just confusion that will sink
Perhaps she’s innocence before the fall

Her will is like a subtle slant verse rhyme
It calls you in to memorize her form
But once you're there you find you’re out of time
And she becomes a deviated norm

Perhaps I met her when she had intent
And now she simply drifts from place to place
I don’t recall how many nights I spent
Just crying while wrapped up in her embrace

I told Helene how much she would be missed
I still remember all the times we kissed.

07-Bernice

Bernice believes it’s easy to be good
And yet she knows she isn’t in her mind
She leaves it on the table in her shack
I’ve seen the good she often left behind

She also says it’s easy to be bad
I’d disagree; I know how much it hurt
When we became the times we wished we had
And everything we said was mean or curt

But even in the worst of times we sang
A song of love, a song of fervent hope
She said she loved the music that I brang
She said it cleared her mind and helped her cope

When sweet Bernice finds goodness, all is well
It seems to be the good she wants to tell.

08-Danielle

Danielle enjoys the nights that fit her mood
And yet she isn’t moody in the least
She needn’t be invited to intrude
Intrusion is the dance before the feast

And oh that girl can dance the night away
It’s like she is the singer and the song
She takes you there and makes you want to stay
She seems to know just where her feet belong

The world is just a dancefloor in her eyes
And you can take her anywhere to dance
She’ll spin around and take you by surprise
But inly if she thinks she has a chance

A chance to bring you happiness as well
That’s just the way it goes with sweet Danielle.

09-Lucille

Lucille was once the answer to a prayer
She doesn’t think she was, but that’s okay
What isn’t broken doesn’t need repair
She isn’t broken; that’s all I will say

Her thoughts are often reveries of joy
And joy to her is more than just an art
Its life that all the living must employ
To prove that one is whole and has a heart

Her heart is where she treasures joy and love
I let her help me learn the joy she taught
She showed me how my joy could be above
Then said that I should leave it free, un-caught

An answer to a joyful prayer, Lucille
Too late I found the joy she would reveal.

10-Inez

Inez allows perceptions to evolve
Whatever you perceive is fine by her
I think that she’s a puzzle I can’t solve
She makes me wonder what perceptions were

Before I found her dancing in the street
Before she told me lies that were the truth
The lies she shares with me are quite discrete
They make me recollect the lies of youth

But when she turns, her volta finds its verse
The way chiasmus finishes, complete
Before my couplets go from bad to worse
She brings me dark perceptions when we meet

I often find Inez in lonely time
And find that her perceptions are sublime.


11-Joleen

Joleen is there to help me find the way
On paths that lead through places I must go
She seems to speak the words I cannot say
Although they’re words I like to think I know

I hear the sound of beauty in her voice
I see the form of beauty in her stride
I always know with her I have a choice
I know with her that beauty cannot hide

And yet, to know her now is not the same
As when I knew her presence in the past
She seems to know that life is not a gane
I wonder if she knows that life can last

It seems to last forever and a day
And thoughts of Joleen always seem to stay.

12-Lizette

Lizette prefers Elizabeth at times
But this is not the time for formal names
I love it when she speaks to me in rhymes
I love it when she plays her little games

Like begging me to keep her safe and warm
Or telling me to come back when she’s cold
I’ve seen her take a pure majestic form
She tells me things I wish could be untold

Like when she says her heart is just a cage
That keeps her love locked up from fools like me
Or how to read what seems an empty page
Within her book of joy or misery

Lizette defies most metaphors, and yet
Poetically I long for sweet Lizette.

13-Pauline

Pauline is more than meets the casual eye
She walks above the shadows no one sees
She nods but never stops a passerby 
Polite, but not obsessive, if you please 

She told me once that poetry was fine
She said that what I write is not half bad
But she prefers a full carafe of wine
“It's better than most poetry I've had”

I love to hear her happy little sighs
While walking where she thinks she can't be heard
I sometimes hear her practicing white lies
To share with all the other little birds

At times she speaks as if she was the Queen
Of course you are, your highness, dear Pauline.

14-Cherise

Cherise is not the same as yesterday
When I remember how she sold remorse
It scared more than I could ever say
Go ask her now. Of course she’ll say “of course”

With no remorse to sell, she turns to go
To find a way to keep what might be lost
She seems to bear a secret all men know
She knows the price sweet sophistry will cost

And so she’ll sell you nothing but a kiss
Then walk away and laugh until she cries
I never thought that she would come to this
The change you see is in her lovely eyes

Cherise has eyes that beckon sadness near
I wonder if she’ll have them still next year.

Coronavirus reared its ugly head
In 2020, all around the world
To fight it we’ve been told to stay in bed
I wonder who’s in bed all snugly curled

The Donald? No. He thinks that he’s immune
Immune from common sense and nothing more
I wonder if this bug will change his tune
Or if the Donald’s just a stupid bore

My social distance grows and grows and grows
At every news report of quarantine
It’s news of death-by-snot from someone’s nose
While toilet paper’s nowhere to be seen!

Coronavirus, what a lovely mess
And when it ends is anybody’s guess.

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 or maybe 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.
I haven't even got a fucking clue!

Oh shit, do you suppose He might have heard?
Or should I raise my fist and flip the bird?

Poor Jesus didn't mean to start a cult
Poor Christian folk believe the poor boy did
Be glad he doesn't see the poor result
Of how his life with "Christian" crap's been hid

Poor Mary was a simple girl, a teen
Who found that she was pregnant and unwed
Cast out, the "law" proclaimed she was "unclean"
Though true, it isn’t what the gospels said

Let’s steal the rustic solstice to ensure
Our celebration of poor Jesus stays
Alive, though he is dead, and let’s adjure
The simple, rustic people with our ways

We’ll call it “Christmas,” decorate with shit
No one will ever know the truth of it.

 In search of heaven, men have come to climb
In search of more than just some mound of stone
The heights of these transcend the heights of time
Atop a man feels more than just alone

He stands where inspiration may descend
Necessity became a place to seek
The heights of time he thought he would transcend
Becomes the words of thoughts he longs to speak

For not all men are able to ascend
Where truth begins its journey from on high 
The stream of conscious liquid will not end
But flows within our valleys bye and bye

Its traverse of the mountain is serene
The water of such truth is cool and clean.

 

A Sonnettics Sequence for Gerald Grove

Cockpit Psalm

Above the reef, the sky became a book
Each cloud a page that opened into flame
The engine’s roar, a hymn that none forsook
Sustained the fragile weight of breath and name
He flew by feel; the sky became a scroll
Unfurled beneath the fighter’s silver prayer
No verse could hold the trembling of his soul
But silence took dictation from the air
A young man, he was older than the stars
He knew the cost of poetry and speed
Each loop above the harbor left its scars
Like lines revising what the heart must bleed
The sky was not a heaven, but a draft
He wrote his life in spirals, low and fast.

A View from Midway

The sea below was mythic, still, and vast
Too broad to hold the anger of a war
He flew through sunbreaks echoing the past
Where vapor trails outlived the planes they bore
In moments when the compass lost its pull
He’d think of Blake, of vision, wrath, and fire
The burning wheels, the angels terrible
The need to forge the world back into lyre
For fire, he’d trained; for fire, he wept alone
His wings were steel, but something still could break
A single stanza haunted him, unknown
Some song no tongue but memory could make
He banked and climbed. The island slipped away.
He carried death like dawn into the day.


Return to Earth

The war came home in ways the world can’t say
In quiet cups of coffee, books unshelved
The habit stayed in scanning break of day
As if the sky itself could be compelled
He walked with calm. He welded on the side
Acetylene would hiss like distant shells
But when he taught, his eyes were opened wide
And flights of thought rang out like chapel bells
He read aloud, Romantics like a rite
His voice a climb through meter, breath, and blaze
And when he traced a metaphor in flight
We saw the pilot pierce the cloud of days
He found in Keats a brotherhood of flame
Both knew how brief the arc before the name

Shelley’s Lift

He said that Shelley never quite came back
He died mid-sentence, dashed against the sea
We watched him draw a vortex on the black
Chalkboard like smoke from some divine debris
The classroom sighed. He paced it like a deck
A flier’s gait, the gait of those who flew
By trusting sky with muscle, nerve, and neck
And yet he spoke of beauty, and of rue
Romanticism, he smiled, is a dare
To soar without a net, to write in flame
We never knew if he was still up there
Or walking through our world with borrowed name
He told us Shelley’s wreck was also birth
The fall, the fire, the song that scorched the earth


Annotating Byron

Imagine him, that lord of reckless fire
The rebel-verse of thunder, wrath, and pride
He lived like gunpowder inside a lyre
And left behind a musket he could ride
So spoke the man who’d once outpaced a bomb
Who dove through tracer rain in search of light
Yet here he stood, exacting, fierce, and calm
Explaining how a rhyme concealed a fight
Byron, he grinned, was every pilot’s ghost
Too brave to land, too vain to turn around
He soared until he burned out on the coast
But damn, what poetry before he drowned!
He said this like he knew the poet’s bones.
He said this like he heard Lord Byron’s moans.

For the Ghost Crew

He never boasted. War was not his song
But once, in spring, he shared a tale at dusk
Of men who flew yet didn’t come along
Their laughter gone like engines in the husk
He looked out toward the Wasatch as he spoke
His hands unclenched. The past passed through his frame
The air went still. A birch tree shed its cloak
His voice came low, no anger, and no blame
They read no Keats, nor Shelley that I knew
But some could quote their mother’s Sunday grace
And when they died, the heavens let them through
No epitaph, just sky to take their place
He closed the book. He sat. The room was bare
But every desk had wings. And every chair.


Labors of the Forge

On weekends, he would work with fire and steel
His shop smelled sharp, of oil, of iron, of heat
The helmet flashed as metal learned to feel
He shaped a blade and set it near his seat
The poet-warrior never said too much
But stories shimmered from his hands and scars
He’d offer coffee, never wine or such
And polish words like hinges off of stars
To weld, he said, was just another form
Of writing, heat and fusion, stress and spark
A sonnet’s arch, a plane’s deflection norm
Each found its shape by dancing with the dark
His mask went up. His wrinkled face was kind
With flame he forged whatever might remind.

A Question After Class

Did you ever feel afraid up there?
I asked. He paused. The room was going gray
He smiled as if my question hung in air
Like frost that never quite gets burned away.
Not fear, exactly. Focus. Then release.
The mind goes tight, the world turns thin and wide.
There’s nowhere left to hope for war or peace
Just one more loop to spiral, then to glide.
He stood, and pointed skyward, then withdrew.
I flew by faith, and later taught by doubt.
Romantics chase the infinite, and you
Perhaps, will learn what that pursuit’s about
He turned. I never asked again, nor tried
But oh, I heard the answer when he died.


On Reading Wordsworth in Late November

He kept a copy folded in his coat
A Wordsworth page, dog-eared and stained with sun
The world is too much with us, he would quote
And close his eyes as if the war’d begun
But no, it was November, and the trees
Were bare as fuselages long at rest
He taught us how to find the lines in leaves
The grief in dawn, the oaths beneath the chest
His voice was calm, like lakes before the freeze
He read as though the page could still forgive
Trauma and daffodils, he said, are keys
Both teach us how the broken learn to live
And when he sighed, we knew the loss was near.
But still he read. And still we strained to hear.

After the Department Meeting

The others talked of schedules, funds, and form
He simply smiled, and drank his quiet tea
The poems waited—not for them, but warm
Inside the satchel, waiting to break free
He left the room when quarrels found their pitch
Not weak, but wise, like veterans who will choose
To save their rage for truth, not petty itch
For Blake, not memos penned in chapel pews
That night, he stayed behind and marked a text
With purposed ink (regardless what’s been said)
We passed and saw his margin notes, perplexed
To die with fire, means first to have been read.
That ink, those words, they lived beyond the day.
They taught us how to vanish, not decay.


Grading Finals in the Snow

The snow was thick outside his office door
He lit a lamp, and hummed a little hymn
His pen moved slow, but always found the core
The grace, the spark, the promise in the dim
Some students passed. A few had dropped the class
But all of them were carried in his scroll
He saw beyond the grammar’s brittle glass
And marked, instead, the tremble of the soul
He whispered lines from Keats, much more than one
The wind knocked twice, then stopped. The poet smiled
His hands were old, but everything he’d done
Made time itself seem briefly reconciled
When snow began to cover up the quad
He wrote one final word: Perhaps. Then God

A Student Recalls

His name was Grove. He taught the sky and sea
I never knew a man more near to myth
He walked like flight, and spoke with clarity
Each word a dial the storm brought forth, forthwith
He taught me Shelley, yes, but also grace
The art of falling well, and writing clear
He met my words in calm, a noble place
He said: The bravest thing is staying near
I kept his notes. I kept his voice in dreams
And now, when dusk descends, I sometimes write
His eyes still read my words, or so it seems
As if my songs might pass into his light
He never flew again. But still I swear
I’ve seen his soul come banking through the air.


The Memorial

A flag. A poem. A polished helmet’s shell
The bell rang twice, and silence held its tune
A veteran spoke of fire and Keats as well
How bombs and odes once shared the same high noon
The podium bore petals and a quote
Beauty is truth, truth beauty...read in hush.
A former student read the lines he wrote
And no one dared to check their watch or blush
He died with grace, not fame. He left no stain
Just perfect papers, metalwork, and lore
A man who looped through grief, and back again
To teach what no one ever taught before
His story ends the way a sonnet should
With music folded in, and understood.

Clear for Climb

And now he flies beyond my metaphors
No dive, no blaze, no elegy can bind
His breath is wind. His feet have left the floors
Of war and class and age and wounded mind
But still he climbs, on ink, on arcs of thought
On every line he underlined for grace
And we who heard the poems that he taught
Still feel him press the air, still trace his trace
Romantic, combat veteran, welder-sage
He built his life in fuselage and form
The sonnet was his runway. And the page
Became the sky through each revising storm
Good night, Professor Grove. Your wings extend
The climb is clear. Your flight will never end.