Sonnettics

“The auger is a fairly common shell
that’s found from Carolina to the coast
of South America,” Professor Dell
explained, though I was sure that I could boast
of something no one else had ever found.
“A blue terebridae?” he said. “There’s no
such thing.” And then he started to expound
his knowledge of the species. “I can show
it to you,” I replied to cut him short,
at which Professor Dell became perturbed.
“I’m fairly busy,” was his last retort,
by which he meant he mustn’t be disturbed
by anyone without a PhD
who’d found a blue terebridae, like me.

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.

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 don’t know where I should 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.

I built the boat and waited for the rain;
I loaded all the animals with haste.
The state declared me legally insane,
surrounded by the heaps of fecal waste.
They locked me up and let the beasts go free.
My wife divorced me, took the kids and cash.
This isn’t how it was supposed to be
and now my mind is leaning toward a crash.
I’m staring through a window lined with bars;
some drool escapes my gaping mouth and lips.
I wonder what’s become of all the stars
and drum like thunder with my fingertips.
I’ve been in here for forty days and nights.
Will somebody turn off the god-damned lights!

I still believe in beauty.  That’s the lie
of all my lies I like the very best.
Such innocent semantics; I could cry
at how it pulses warmth into my chest.
This chemical reaction makes me blind
to memories of memories of you,
and in the lie of beauty I can find
the truth of every lie I ever knew.
I’m blind because my eyes are filled with tears
which bear their witness to the lies I love.
Their warmth, exquisite pain, their beauty sears
my cheeks.  The lie is all I’m thinking of
in disbelief which beauty-lies negate
and truth becomes the object of my hate.

She sweeps the heavy sand away with grave
concern for where my body, like a shell,
has washed ashore.  Her cadence is the wave
which breaks the breakers’ crashing, rhythmic spell.
There’s time, she says, as plenty as the sand.
She stretches out beside me to embrace
perspective.  This was not what I had planned
in stepping from the cliffs of quiet grace.
I fell forever, more alone than wood
which drifts from empty cove to barren beach.
The tide received my soul; it understood
that time had ebbed beyond my farthest reach.
Yet time, it seems, can flood from time to time,
and flotsam may be held, by some, sublime.

To fly, my soul, like wind returning home—
what home will welcome me, my soul, in peace?
To wander like the clouds, one cloud, alone,
I fly in lonely dreams of sweet release.
To breathe the wind, myself, return to light,
the lightness of existence; I am free.
These dreams and visions circumscribe my sight
with winds of life, my soul; I am to be.
Stripped down beyond the bones of thought, despair,
my soul relieves lucidity of pain,
immerses into currents of pure air
where such immersion suffers me again.
Again I feel subsumed by gentle sighs;
again my soul of aspiration flies.

See gold in stripes and braids, how smooth it drapes
across the edge of everything you do?
That edge, the demarcation of escapes
is mockery; you never follow through.
You only sit beneath the warmth of gold
and bite the flesh behind your stoic lips.
You never bleed; your teeth are getting old.
The pulse is fading from your fingertips.
It’s just a bed, get up — or go to sleep.
You claim your dreams are just as warm as blood.
Periphery is nothing you can keep
behind the dams of night; it marks the flood.
One slip, the edge becomes a dark abyss
of which your mind will be oblivious.