Sonnettics

Withheld from comfort, comfortless I hold
the space between the spaces of the void
that forms below my heart.  My heart is cold,
as cold as if all warmth had been destroyed.
Such entropy of love and life exists
in echoes of the muse who has withdrawn.
And now a single memory persists
which slips into the void: she’s gone; she’s gone.
If comfort could be summoned, I would sigh
the words to draw her back into my space.
If comfort could be found before I die,
I’d die within her comfortable embrace.
The threshold of my universe is crossed
where nothing finds its place and love is lost.

There are no words.  The air, as thin as lines
composed of quintessential distant dreams,
is probably the path, devoid of signs,
which flows beside the quintessential streams.
There are no words.  The path, the streams converge.
A prophecy of silence draws me in.
Surrender is the quintessential urge
that marks the end where thus I can begin.
The words that form are beautiful and bright,
like pearls and diamonds strung on silver thread.
They sparkle in the quintessential night,
that quintessential darkness overhead.
And in the quiet birth of every word
a hint of quintessential faith is heard.

When blue is stripped away there’s only white
as pure as paper free from petty words.
The morning’s dark and suddenly it’s trite
to think of golden beams and singing birds.
When blue is stripped away its edges burn
along the faults of flesh some lover traced.
And when it’s gone, the blue will not return;
and when it’s stripped it cannot be replaced.
It’s hard to watch it go and not to cry
at how it renders passion obsolete.
It takes a will to live to watch it die
a death so pure, so violent, so complete.
There’s not a lot that’s left to do or say
when poetry has stripped the blue away.

She cuts my chest and slips her hands inside
to warm herself around my fading heart.
It hurts to feel her fingers gently slide
and push my heavy, heaving lungs apart.
She presses close against my dying skin
and softly lays her lips upon my cheek.
I feel her move, embracing me within;
without, I hear the silence as she speaks.
The words are not inspired, they are squeezed
through flesh that feels the murder of their sound.
Each line proceeds, an effluence diseased,
until the proper purgatory’s found.
We stay this way, forever intertwined;
Alone, she whispers to my broken mind.

Immured inside my silence I compose
my silent compositions, sigh and trace
each empty supposition I suppose
would find a voice in any other place.
As gray as shadows sliding from the breath
of aspirations slipping to the floor,
my words exhale, anticipating death,
within a tomb of walls without a door.
Without the tomb my suppositions fly
on winds that cut the blue between the clouds,
in dreams and visions painted on the sky
above the upturned faces of the crowds
of people who decry the silent word
that none have ever spoken, ever heard.

My appetite is gone, but still I eat.
My dreams have disappeared, but still I sleep.
The only path that’s clear is in retreat.
The only sound I hear is when I weep.
My poems have no meaning, still I write.
My legs are broken, still I have to run.
The pain is like a dagger in the night
that finds its mark and brings oblivion.
The songs still play their same familiar tunes,
as poignant as the day they broke my heart.
The days still have their nights, the months their moons.
The weeks still have their ends; we’re still apart.
I still believe I’ve something more to give.
And still I die, my love, and still I live.

What joy could she have known would come to light
as on this day she held her baby girl?
What joy did she foresee with mother’s sight
while bent with joy around her little pearl?
The birth itself a miracle and gift
to her, to every life her life would touch.
In reverie she felt her spirit lift
and rise to future happiness with such
a swell of grace, the angels must have wept
to feel the love they’d lost, the love they’d found.
Such grace, such beauty never could be kept
within the realm of one eternal round.
And so the gods released her to this earth
on this, the day to celebrate her birth.

Her laughter rises faster than the sun;
it blinds my soul and melts my frozen heart,
reveals a day of joy that’s just begun,
and marks the end of darkness and the start
of grass beneath her children’s running feet,
of seeds beneath her garden’s warming earth,
of friendships once renewed, and twice as sweet,
of all the signs portending life and birth.
Then with her brilliant laughter shining on,
I lift my head and linger for a kiss.
The ice which once surrounded me is gone,
and I am bathed in pure and healing bliss.
The cold and dark my peaceful soul forgets;
her laughter is the sun that never sets.

This curve of flesh conceals a hidden lake
where water bends the earth to seek its rest,
a liquid soul the body won’t forsake,
although the body flows at its request.
With gentleness the water laps the shore;
the shore responds to each progressive wave,
as if another soul knows what’s in store,
conforming to the life the soul will save.
And when the liquid soul has split apart,
the half that ebbs and flows will find its mate.
Its flesh will rise in tides from heart to heart,
and life divine will be what it creates.
The flesh within the soul of love will swell;
and in its curve the miracle will dwell.

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I may not overcome; I may not eat
of hidden manna.  Why must it be hid?
The god of sacred secrets is replete
with obfuscated wisdom in a bid
to give the priests an ever-shifting shroud,
the power to proclaim un-changing god,
to catch the lamb who’s straying from the crowd,
and bend the word they call an iron rod.
The preacher’s been removed, the signs abased;
the garment’s white which once was scarlet red.
What more will be revealed, what more replaced
before the living learn they too are dead?
I have no stone of white, no name that’s new,
but I can still discern what’s right and true.