Sonnettics

Iwo Jima Memorial

The red is for the hearts, both brave and true
That beat like drums from sea to shining sea
At times they cross the seas for me and you
To bring to others, ringing liberty.

The white is pure like freedom’s pure intent
Unmarked by any blemish, burn, or stain
It signals how it’s days are freely spent
In righteous winds no tyrant can restrain!

The blue is like the sky from which it waves
As waves of human hearts salute its strength
The strength in every human heart it saves
It waves a broad horizon without length.

From freedom’s heart it waves for me and you
It sanctifies us all: red, white, and blue.

One final word before the break of dawn
Sing if you want, the melody of time
Sing words that make the song you sing go on
Find simple couplets that conclude in rhyme.

One final word becomes your voice, your will
Song is the way you let your voice be heard
Music is just the sound that breaks the still
Stillness is broken by one simple word.

Light as the sun, your word becomes a song
Light as a song that rises like the sun
Words know exactly where their sounds belong
Like morning knows the sunrise has begun.

Sunrise is more than just a word that’s bright
Sunrise gives harmony to morning’s light.

To be the Word, I must admit I Am
I Am the Word, Iamb, and Thou Art God
Peccavimus! Pentameter’s a sham
This little song of fourteen lines is odd

Sonnettically, my metaphors are blind
My similes are like a cloud of smoke
Iambic darkness must have been designed
By someone who was not afraid to choke

But faith: the world will turn, the sun will rise
All voltas call the dawn, that we might see
The volta’s dawn illuminates our skies
And by such light “I Am” becomes “to be”

I Am the Word, Iamb, the Word is God
Within the Word my couplets will be shod.

I’m not the song I think I thought I heard
The tune is not my life; I will not sing
Each verse concludes with some pathetic word
That takes its meaning from intents I bring
I choose the words you choose to hear me use
Poetic dust with which I try to build
A monument that seeks eternal views
As if its paltry bricks could not be killed
But when it all comes crashing to the ground
I watch the dust return to desert lands
They’re only words that wait until they’re found
Come dig until they fill your hollow hands.
Enough of me and words, let’s talk of you
Oh right, we talk with words. No words are true.

There’s time for one more glass and then one more
as time begins to fade into the taste
of complicated sweetness which we pour
in timelessness, devoid of bitter haste.
Aromas gather slowly in the dim
quintessence of the presence of the thought
of lips that linger lightly on the brim
of sweetness and the essences now caught:
the musk of sunlight captured in the skin
of fruit from fertile vineyards far away,
the tang of inspiration from within
a bottled soul, consumed like night by day.
The soft and subtle glow of nurtured bliss
compels her to release a Riesling kiss.

With music.

He turned the fourteenth glass and said, “Begin.”
and I had fourteen minutes left to live;
and I had fourteen unrepented sins,
and fourteen people whom I would forgive,

and fourteen unread books upon my shelf,
and fourteen loves I knew I’d loved in vain,
and fourteen dreams I’d kept within myself
(the fourteen I’d most wanted to explain.)

But fourteen minutes quickly passed away.
I filled my pen with fourteen drops of ink-
the fourteenth glass had offered one delay;
and fourteen final grains retained the brink.

This sonnet flowed like fourteen final breaths-
the fourteenth line, the fourteenth grain, then death.

I am my song, my pulse, my turn, my scheme
If that constricts your mind then you should leave
I’m more than just a vision or a dream
In which some simple acolytes believe
And yet, I’m not a temple on a hill
I’ve seen too many temples come and go
To make pretenses which I can’t fulfill
Pretend I sound like somebody you know
I wear a modest dress, but I’m a whore
Reach just beneath the fabric and you’ll find
I’m rutting hot and eager for some more
You know I’m only fucking with your mind
And in the end I only give a damn
Because I am the sonnet that I am

Analysis:
“The Sonnet That I Am” is a bold, self-reflective poem that dramatizes the tension between the sonnet as a fixed literary form and the sonnet as a living, evolving voice. From the opening line, the poem asserts its identity: “I am my song, my pulse, my turn, my scheme.” The speaker here is both the sonnet itself and, by extension, the poet, declaring that the poem is not an inert structure but a heartbeat, a shifting rhythm of thought and emotion.

The sonnet challenges traditional expectations by pushing back against attempts to confine it—“If that constricts your mind then you should leave.” The voice rejects the idea of being merely a “vision or a dream” or a sacred monument, reminding the reader that too many such “temples” have risen and fallen. In place of reverence, the sonnet offers a performance of provocation and disruption.

Lines 9–12 are especially striking, as the sonnet adopts a startling metaphor: “I wear a modest dress, but I’m a whore.” Here the form insists on its duplicity—it appears restrained, dignified, and conventional, yet underneath it pulses with raw desire and irreverence. The metaphor turns the sonnet into a trickster figure, simultaneously seductive and mocking, capable of destabilizing the reader’s expectations about poetry’s supposed purity.

The closing couplet, “And in the end I only give a damn / Because I am the sonnet that I am,” brings the poem full circle, echoing the self-declaration of the opening line. The sonnet embraces its contradictions—formal yet unruly, modest yet carnal, traditional yet self-defining. Rather than conforming to an external standard, it reclaims its authority by asserting its own unapologetic identity.

Ultimately, “The Sonnet That I Am” is less about what a sonnet should be than about what it chooses to be. By personifying the sonnet as rebellious, sensual, and self-aware, the poet reimagines the centuries-old form as a living entity that resists domestication, embodying the power of art to surprise, challenge, and reinvent itself.

My legs are not my legs, they are my wings
The power of my horizontal flights
Although it’s true that birds are graceful things
They watch me run from simple jealous heights

My legs are not my legs, they are my wings
They split the rushing chaos of the wind
I love the sound it makes when chaos sings
A sound not even order can rescind

It’s true my feet are cadenced on the ground
It rises like a challenge to my pace
But quicker than they fall, my feet rebound
And like a wingtip, barely leave a trace

For gravity and I have drawn a truce,
And though it holds, I feel it breaking loose.

Rewrite of the following sonnet

My legs are not my legs, they are my wings,
The power of my horizontal flights
Above the pavement clouds. Such graceful things
As birds look down from simple jealous heights.
My legs are not my legs, they are my wings,
They split the rushing chaos of the wind
And push it side to side. Such striding flings
The eddied air awash and far behind.
It’s true my feet are cadenced on the ground
Which rises like a challenge to the pace.
But quicker than they fall, my feet rebound,
And like a wingtip, barely leave a trace.
For gravity and I have drawn a truce,
And though it holds, I feel it breaking loose.

I wake and find my sense of time’s surreal
I must have been asleep for fifty years
I guess a brain that’s broken never heals
I guess I should succumb to righteous fears

But righteousness is not a sense I own
My chronoceptors tick each time I turn
Perceptions I once planted all have grown
And now the fields of stubble simply burn

Though weary, I traverse an ashen field
In hopes of finding flowers; none are seen
It seems that nothing grows and I must yield
To aspirations striving to stay green

And though my steps resound like couplets rhyme
My journey bears the weariness of time.

My mistress is a city in the sun
She used to shine on miners, seeking gold
But gold was just the way that she’d begun
To Renovate her land to young from old

The old is just her history, gone past
It’s made her who she is, still bright today
She seeks for Renovations that will last
Not all her gold will change; not all will stay

The young who know my mistress know she cares
She cares for youth who Renovate her soul
She’s strong enough to sort her wheat from tares
But strength of youth is not her only goal

The biggest little city in the world
She welcomes all, with old and new unfurled.