Sonnettics

There is no bridge; reach out and take my hand,
my strength.  I promise I will always hold
as tightly to your life as life demands.
I know the doubts you know.  I know I told
you lies that I could never comprehend
were lies, the way a liar deals in shades
of contemplated wounds.  These wounds will mend.
I do not offer love in cheap charades.
Yes, love.  My hand is love and yours is trust.
This gap will disappear into our touch.
I’ll wait for you forever if I must;
forever is so little for so much.
There is no bridge to span this chasm’s length,
but there is trust which fortifies my strength.

Regressed beyond the gravity of pain
that draws me into nothing, nothing bright,
I hear the willing water call my name,
the name I had forgotten in the night.
Such clarity of essence guards my soul
that I can scarcely breathe, nor feel the need
to exercise restraint in part or whole;
immersed in liquid holiness, I’m freed.
To move is to acknowledge life and birth
as absolute beginnings every time
an impulse is released, and finds its worth
transcends the rippled surface of sublime.
Regressed into the essence gods divide,
I feel the touch of life from every side.

Don’t mourn the morning stillness when the night
before enraged the lake and bent the trees.
Roll softly toward your lover, on the right
and listen to the morning as she breathes
tranquility where passion tore the skies
like waves of scattered clothing on the floor.
Hold warmth the way you held her heated cries,
enraptured by a vision to adore.
Let sleep surround your adoration’s dreams
with calmness, like the surface of the lake.
Let time become illusion as it seems
the stillness of eternity awakes.
And when forever ends, return her bliss
in passion’s morning motions with a kiss.

A poet’s heart for all the world to read
reminds me why I wrote of slow decay.
And when she cuts me, why do I not bleed?
Because my blood, my life, has dripped away.
My heartbeat only pumps discouragement
through every vein, to every last extreme,
a heavy sludge that slows my will’s intent
and keeps me from possession of my dream.
She writes with hands that touched my hands, my face,
that felt my heartbeat warm and quick and light.
But every word composed in this new place
and shared while I am shuffled out of sight
reminds me why I wrote of slow decay
and how my life, my love, has dripped away.

[note: The following poem was my entry in a writing contest sponsored by Jason Evans at his site, Clarity of Night.]

I see the Blue reflected in the rise
of interwoven memories of steel,
which carries me to places I despise,
yet guards me from the gravity I feel.
I wear the simple wrinkles of the Blue
as simply as the shadows I ignore.
When darkness frays, the light comes shining through
and drags itself across the rising floor.
Anticipation glides in noiseless dreams,
like deus ex machina, oiled well.
Ascension into heaven fades and seems
to only rise above the Blue of hell.
There’s no one left below, no turning back
to where the Blue has faded now to black.

We see a man in reverie of words
who sits, transfixed by some poetic trance.
We see his life divided now in thirds:
his future, past and present circumstance.
His rhyme, anticipated, builds a line
which hides within the concept of a scheme.
He knows it’s wickedness to seek a sign,
and hides his wickedness within a dream
Behind him and below him beats his heart;
below him and behind him draws his breath.
His birth, now un-remembered, was their start,
nor does he bear the memory of his death.
He’s caught the Word, unspoken, undefined
that lingers in his soul and in his mind.

Goodbye, as hate propels the wasted glow.
No sleep contrives the grinding of my brain.
The words were fast but now the words are slow,
and burn my eyes to write or to refrain.
Goodbye, as love consumes my paper heart
with matchless wonder, warm and full of lies:
a stone to smash the monument apart,
and blood that runs like death attracting flies.
Goodbye, goodbye, the waters all recede.
Goodbye, goodbye, the stars are all obscured.
A common whore knows better than to breed,
but poets feel compelled by every word.
It makes no sense to breathe the fire’s smoke;
inhale, inhale, inhale, inhale—and choke.

Sing out with heaving breath and frantic heart
in transitory tones that pierce your brain
like footsteps crunching through the crystal art
of snow that wears a coat of frozen rain.
Run faster if you can while shards of ice
rise up in splintered pain against your shin.
Consider how mechanically precise
these temporary shivs incise your skin.
The hurt you leave behind in globules, red,
once carried heaving breath and frantic life
to memories of love within your head,
but now congeals on winter’s passing knife.
Your tracks are fresh and punctuated deep,
defiant as the warmth of dying sleep.

As time again becomes a thing to pass
in nights of seeking solace from the day,
becomes again the sands within the glass,
again the heap of autumn’s slow decay.
As time in cheapened metaphors is sold
to anyone who pays the poet’s price
of baser substance fooled to think it’s gold
to fools who think the metaphors are nice.
It seems eternal love is just a joke.
“Forever,” just three syllables to place
within a volta turned to be invoked
for nothing more than nothing can’t replace.
Eternity will heal the wounds of time
as surely as a final couplet fails.

She curls her knees against her broken heart
as streaks of black deception stain her shirt.
Her tears distill her sadness to an art
of fresh, un-laundered pain and brightened hurt.
She knows the words by heart of one sweet song
which fills her aspirations.  The refrain
is muffled by her shirt.  It all went wrong
when Candace tried to sing that song again.
Her little boy sits quietly beside
his broken mommy, gently strokes her hair.
With tenderness he manages to slide
his hand into her hand.  She is aware
of comfort in a voice that sounds like his:
“I want to be your happiness,” he says.