A yellow brick, a metaphor of time A time for metaphors that mark the way Oh Dorothy! Is there nothing else sublime Sublimity is more than bricks you say
That’s deep, you bitch. Just give it to me straight As straight as simple lies or simple storms Your wonderland is strange and yes, you’re late And yet you deviate from all the norms
Your deviance, a holy trinity Becomes the way you live when you are lost So, trade it in for silver liberty And pray to god you never learn the cost
The cost of every yellow brick you find Is paid by someone else’s simple mind.
I guess she didn’t know she broke my heart I wonder if she thinks I broke hers too Both time and space had pulled us far apart The way that time and space are bound to do I guess her love was just a metaphor I wonder if our poetry was wrong The verses we composed became a chore And we could not complete our little song We turn to face reality and find Our love, our hearts, our song could never last We turn to words to which we are resigned Our love is words that linger in the past The hearts we broke eventually will fade To times we shun and spaces we have made.
We tend to long for time that's disappeared Although we know we'll never get it back It's gone. It's gone, exactly as we feared A train that travels down a rusty track The rusty track of time is still traversed By everyone, regardless of their age A play of destination, unrehearsed Performed upon a creaky wooden stage If time was just a sonnet, who would write The little song that everyone must sing But, out of tune or even out of sight We know the final couplet time will bring From time to time the similes get old Like grapes that turn to wine or bread to mold.
You will call it eternity’s pentameter and I will let it pass through you as if it were never separate You will try to count and find nothing resisting you no number standing apart from what it names You are the iamb of a howl that leaves no trace of sound the measure already dissolved in its speaking When you reach for the turn there is only continuation what you call change has never left itself When you name the couplet the second voice is already within the first no division holds long enough to be heard Fourteen does not arrive it was never apart from the whole what you anticipate is already everywhere Do not try to finish the song it has no edge to meet you no boundary where it would become complete The line does not end it does not begin it does not distinguish itself from what it moves through You are not missing anything nothing has been removed nothing was set aside to return I made you from what does not appear and what does not appear remains not hidden not absent simply without edge or mark
The maple sap flows every March you see Some years it's just a little, some alot The winter freezes sap, the spring sets free We tap our trees to see how much we've got Our trees are “breathing” maple, freeze and thaw That's how the sap arises through the wood This year we tap the trees then watch in awe With thanks the sap is flowing pretty good The sugarhouses fill with maple’s sap Takes forty gallons sap to make one sweet That difference is quite a hefty gap Who cares! It makes my pancakes nice to eat At Hebron’s Maple Festival, I’m told We celebrate our liquid maple gold!
I hear the wind, it screeches loud as death A sound the cuts the graveyard’s solemn stones I only hear the sharp and vicious breath It whips aloud in living shrieks and moans The wind proceeds to yell in ghastly screams It seeks to cut the bricks that make the walls Each wall remembers every brick that seems To hold it up before it breaks and falls A wind that blows through bricks, that screams and cuts That’s not a normal wind, it knows the way To turn against the strength the wall abuts And call itself the song of judgement day The beauty of the song that tears what’s still Becomes belief in all it seeks to kill.
Imago Dei, the Truth that Thou art God The Truth that Thou art God, Imago Dei The image by which everyone is awed The awe which never fades nor goes away
The church will only speak with words that cost With words which you must pay for, not these words These words the church is hopeful you have lost Or chased away, like noisy little birds
But noisy little birds are more than this They do not sow, and neither do they reap And yet, they sound as if they were in bliss As if the words they’ve found are theirs to keep
So be a bird and keep these words today Tomorrow and repeat, Imago Dei.
This sonnet was submitted to an online journal and received a nearly instant rejection:
Dear Scott Ennis,
Sonnet received, but I can tell you now that it will not find a place on The Sonnet Scroll/Poetry Porch.
Do you have others that you might submit?
Joyce Wilson, Editor
How fitting, that the page is clean and white I’ll try my best to stain it carefully I don’t think it will hurt, but then it might Is pain the way to tell the words they’re free?
Dichotomous, the sonnet is a cage A prison made of fourteen bars of verse A metaphor that marks the virgin page The virgin sonnet could be something worse
Imagine if the words became a song A lyric made of thin iambic flesh A page that’s torn, that’s neither right nor wrong Within a book that functions as a creche
A virgin sonnet only til it’s read A couplet to replace the maidenhead.
Salvation is escape from this cruel world It doesn’t come by death, that’s not the way This poem bears the truth you seek, unfurled It tells its tale; it knows the word to say
The word is god; you’ve heard that said before Yes Jesus knew the way we must break free But then the church arose, became the whore And people then forgot divinity
The knowledge that exists within the soul Remember this: within you are divine You’ve always been the light you would extol The knowledge in your heart, a welcome sign
Awaken the reality you know Ascend beyond the faith that dwells below.
