Sonnettics

I’m positive my neighbors do not know–
How ignorant vicinity can be
When whispered voices keep the secret low,
Suppressed by fear-compelled complacency.

I found my neighbor lying in a ditch,
Half dead, a little girl of nine or ten,
Passed by three times, a travesty by which
I saw the ‘righteousness’ of ‘righteous’ men.

You knew that she was dying here alone!
You knew you had the means to save her life!
My god, this little sister is your own!
Your mother, and your daughter, and your wife!

And all she needs to raise her from the dead
Is for the world to all start seeing red.

I smelled Fort Bragg in 1984
this morning in my silver Jeep while dressed
in my un-camouflaged blue suit. I swore
I’d never be a businessman. My best
guess was I’d wear the green beret for life.
And yet, as I drove through the slow school zone,
not half a click from where the only knife
I use sits on my desk, beside my phone,
to keep my fingers free of paper cuts
from envelopes, I swear I caught a whiff
of diesel mingled with that canvas must
that used to make me homesick. It’s as if
some static line is still attached to me
and I can’t make the jump to tear it free.

My chlorine days lay heavy on my skin
As I lay down in sheets that might have been
Engulfed in variations of your sweat
Instead of washed and dried in “just forget.”
Tonight they’ll twist in fits of restless thought
Of creases on the day that they were bought,
In plastic wrap, smooth, flat upon a shelf,
A perfect presentation of their self.
But now we lay on this imperfect bed
Entwined like roots entangled with the dead
As cleanliness begins to make me itch
And wish for all the comforts of the rich
Who sleep like kings and queens in satin sheets
While wide awake the dream I dreamed retreats.

Pretentious bitch, you whisper in my ear,
as “bitch-so-named” stands up to scattered claps.
She looks the whore. I’ll bet she fucks for beer,
you snort, as “two-bit-whore” adjusts her straps.
I heard she got her tits just for tonight–
and “plastic-jugs” ascends the podium.
She’s still the poster child for cellulite,
I’m told, to your invective’s steady hum.
Can you believe she’s getting this award?
It goes to show the judges have no taste.
Look, look–her boyfriend’s even getting bored.
It’s such a waste. It’s such a fucking waste!
I sit in silence, listen, nod my head,
and wish that you had won the prize instead.

I felt like god from eighteen stories high
above St. Paul the winter that I died.
I didn’t jump; to jump would be to fly.
But pieces of me fell each night I cried.
And on the nights when I was smooth as glass,
while framed in darkness, focused on one light,
I felt the time, the time that wouldn’t pass,
and watched the sinners from my godly height.
Below me in the park they bought and sold
their chemicals to ease their bodies pain.
Their cloudy breath proclaimed the living cold.
Some nights it snowed, some nights just freezing rain.
Epiphany was all the help I sought;
but death and god was all the help I got.

I still recall the roar of Hercules,
whose engines drowned the sound of sergeant’s voice.
I still recall the weakness of my knees,
to face the open door and make a choice.
But I had really made my choice before.
When sergeant yelled “stand up” I chose to stand,
unsteady on the aircraft’s pitching floor,
though ready for the rest of his commands.
As Sergeant Airborne took my static line,
and as I placed my hands outside the bird,
I knew the silver wings would soon be mine,
as soon as sergeant yelled one final word.
The light turned green; the drop zone was below,
and all I heard was sergeant holler: “Go!”

My legs are not my legs, they are my wings,
The power of my horizontal flights
Above the pavement clouds. Such graceful things
As birds look down from simple jealous heights.
My legs are not my legs, they are my wings,
They split the rushing chaos of the wind
And push it side to side. Such striding flings
The eddied air awash and far behind.
It’s true my feet are cadenced on the ground
Which rises like a challenge to the pace.
But quicker than they fall, my feet rebound,
And like a wingtip, barely leave a trace.
For gravity and I have drawn a truce,
And though it holds, I feel it breaking loose.

This sonnet is available in my book, “26.2 Sonnets for Runners.”

If how to write a sonnet is your aim,
Or what a sonnet is you wish to know,
Read on, this sonnet seeks to do the same
In just ten lines remaining down below.

A sonnet is a song of fourteen lines.
“Sonneto” is the word for “little song.”
Italians wrote them first, but different kinds
Of sonnets through the years have come along.

To write a sonnet just remember this:
Each line should sound just like these lines you’ve read.
Ten syllables whose rise and fall persists
Right through the end, which lies two lines ahead.

And if I had a little bit more time
I’d tell you how a sonnet’s lines should rhyme

The things I feel remain still unexpressed
As if expression never found a way
To guide me through the strangeness of that day
On which I found her searching, sharply dressed,
For where I kept the passports. I confessed
That I had locked them recently away
Because . . . I stopped, unsure of what to say,
And felt a sudden sinking in my chest.

Don’t frighten her, just play along. Now go
Put on your pinstriped suit. Now go and get
The passports from the safe. Be calm because
She’s standing at the edge. Don’t cry. You know
That sudden shifts of mind will just upset
Her slant reality. Don’t stop. Just pause . . .

We didn’t try to kill the president
We only sought to rough him up a bit
Like Moses, who we know by accident
Killed someone who was giving someone shit
We held him down, removed his kevlar vest
We stuffed the Constitution in his mouth
We tattooed five commandments on his chest
At number six the whole affair went south
Apparently his clothes were soaked in crude
When someone lit a match to smoke a cig
It’s odd how our intent was misconstrued
And how he smelled just like a roasting pig
In retrospect, we should have put him out
But then, that’s what elections are about