Sonnettics

Her dress conforms like water to the curves
of pending birth, of belly, breasts, and hips.
Then I must be the pilot who observes
the wish that barely flows across her lips.
She knows that I have waited for this sign
to which my heart attaches a command.
My will to move, to act, becomes divine
as I reach out to take her holy hand.
Our steps are short, respectful of the gift
of life she bears.  The path is not too long.
And as we crest the rise our spirits lift
together, like the harmony of song.
She sighs at all the beauty in her view.
I watch her there and find I’m sighing too.

The leaves fell wet and gold,
stuck matted to the grass,
decayed and sprang as mushrooms
in the dank indian summer.
I smelled the rot of fall
when the rain stopped beating
darkly on the roof and
the wind stopped blowing cowardly.
Too sick to risk the mud
this year I open the curtain
barely, breathe on the window
and call this life,
behind the sterile glass,
beneath the hand of god.

It’s not my place to interfere with faith.
God knows why people do the things they do.
He seemed a decent guy.  He kept his place
the way a neighbor likes his neighbor to.
His boy seemed happy—played out in the yard.
His wife, a little gray, but still looked good.
I’m sure this thing has hit her pretty hard.
It’s really such a quiet neighborhood.
So when he screamed of course it woke my wife.
And then she woke me. Made me call the cops.
I still can see the shaking, bloody knife.
I see it in slow motion as it drops.
His eyes are wide; he screams, completely wild,
“My god, my god has let me kill my child!”

My bones are rods of pain that prop my heart,
my legs, my lungs, and pieces of my brain.
I run.  The rest of me is wasted parts,
dead weight that dares my cadence to sustain
a pace marked by the time it takes each foot
to rise and fall like some iambic curse
that screams a perfect rhythm when its put
in place in paved, pedantic, measured verse.
The road becomes a sonnet which I write,
compelled to breathe each rhyme that sears my throat.
The road is black; my lines are thin and white,
compared to that which those before me wrote.
I stride to hide my tears within my sweat
and face the finish-line without regret.

My son, believe in love as I believe
and know that you may hold it soft and near
and sing to love of love you will receive
by letting go of doubt and every fear.
My son, believe the gift of life is joy,
the warmth that rises with the light of day.
And when a father holds his baby boy
the dark and lonely night is swept away.
My son, my love for you is not denied
by circumstance; it needs to be expressed.
My joy and love for you live side by side,
and by them both my life through you is blessed.
Believe in love and joy will fill your heart
and guide you well while we are far apart.

The blades of neurons spinning in my head
have all run down their crystals in despair
Emotionless, each dangles from a thread,
each damoclean thought must now beware
If numb they might be wakened; they are not
Coagulated tendrils dry and crack
This dead organic soul begins to rot
My mind begins to fade to fade to black
Perhaps the field is green to mark the way
Perhaps the sky is blue to take me in
“Perhaps” the girl in pink begins to say
then laughs and in a dance begins to spin
And as she laughs and twirls I hear the sound
of wind that softly sweeps the world around

By all the blood its clear she must have loved
him more than he deserved.  You see those marks
gouged out behind the door he used to come
and go?  There’s five of them, the fingertips
adorned with manicures she used to strip
the flesh from her own arms.  You see how deep
the blood has soaked into the wood beneath
the chips of layered paint that marks the years
of every time she tried to start again?
That pool that’s dried and matted by the chair
attests to how she’d wait while drip by drip
her love, both kind and patient, ebbed away.
And now coagulated, putrified
it only waits to be scraped up, removed.

forever means forever, not a year
if i should break and crumble far away
you’ll fix my heart and silence every fear
or simply wait and watch and hope and pray
until i fix myself, i always do
or if i go away i will return
especially when everything is new
and i have so much more of you to learn
forever means forever to my soul
beyond the comprehension of my mind
and though the body bears a heavy toll
the heart remained forever intertwined
forever is the only thing that’s real
but time’s the only place we have to heal

I’m lost again in hollow thoughts and dreams
It’s odd, I almost thought that I’d been found
I’m back to being twelve, or so it seems
When no one cared if I was not around
No friends with whom to wander field and road
No home where family welcomed my return
Alone and unaware I’d been bestowed
With that which thirty years would help me learn
That loneliness, a heavy hollow pain
Was all the gift of fate I would receive
In sunshine or in grand torrential rain
Regardless of the things I might believe
And now this darkened glass through which I stare
Reflects my tears, but no one else is there