Sonnettics

Your hands are perfect, intertwined with mine.
Remember how it feels to turn and kiss
while walking hand-in-hand? You say, Sublime.
I smile and nod then start to reminisce
on how your perfect hands have touched my face
like love, directed by perfection’s heart.
You smile as I recite the time and place
of everywhere our hands were not apart.
I feel you lean against my arm tonight;
you find my hand like sunshine finds the dawn,
and softer than the touch of morning’s light
your hand caresses mine and lingers on.
It lingers in the warmth of skin-to-skin,
perfected as we turn and kiss again.

We slowly drove from happiness to guilt,
enjoyed the casual stops along the way
to see some monument that someone built,
or watch the purple sunset turn to gray.
The road was so much quieter at night;
the wheels were so much softer in the dark.
You tried to read the map without a light
and analyzed my every last remark.
The songs began to crackle and to fade
as farther from their signals we’d proceed.
Their tunes began to slowly be afraid
of interfering with some silent need.
And silence was the humming, static hiss
that never thought its songs would come to this.

The song, the little song I sing tonight
comes back to life as easily as touch.
It fills my mouth and as I try to write,
it tells me once again I try too much.
I laugh and drop my paper and my pen,
surrender to the rhythm of her hair,
control my urge to sing, but sing, and then
in joy, enjoy her echoes everywhere.
The rumpled sheets express chaotic notes
which smooth as they transcend our falling flesh.
Originating in our human throats,
our songs become angelic, inter-mesh
like bodies in a symphony of life,
like lovers once again as man and wife.

My private dancer, painted like a whore,
transforms herself (I think) for my delight;
in shades of red she’s polished, showing more
reflections of a drunken starry night.
She writhes herself into a sudden dream;
her skin is twisted tightly like a wire.
My touch releases laughter and a scream
that rises to a pitch of fevered fire.
She pulls me in so close I smell the paint,
still wet as dew and subtle as a mink.
She wears her rut as proudly as a saint
for my delight, transfigured with a wink.
My mind is dark and she becomes the light
that flickers in my private neon light.

I do not sing, but I will smile at you
as we pass by in solitary trance.
I’ve stolen something pretty, something blue.
You passed me by; you steal a second glance.
I feel you turn and wonder why my lips
are thin and dark, and why my face is drawn
so tightly.  There’s a little girls that skips
within my soul.  My soul is almost gone.
They’ll bury it some more with pills and spells
the way I push my prize beneath my dress.
But first they’ll cuff the bitch that always tells
on me.  I’m pretty; she’s a fucking mess!
You think my eyes are pretty, I can hear
the way you kiss them as I disappear.

(more…)

That man they call her husband presses down
on her side of the bed in absent haste.
Her body, half obscured beneath her gown,
grows heavy in its apathy.  Distaste
draws lines across her thin and wrinkled lips.
He’s grunting like a bear that’s made a kill
as she ignores the spreading of her hips
and lays beneath the fucker, stony still.
He’s gone again and Candace starts to tear
his filthy linens from her wasted bed.
She digs a hole to bury her despair
and tosses in her soiled gown instead.
The absence of the man fulfills one need,
as Candace waits the month and hopes to bleed.

You rise too late; the dream will dissipate
while you uncross and cross your waking legs.
Your heartbeat and your breath are both too late
to make the ghostly solid while she begs
in wisps of words, your soul’s own memory
of sex between the thinnest of your sheets.
Unspoken, still you hear her ghostly plea
and waking, hope tonight the dream repeats.
Although you know it isn’t just a dream
you wait. Too late, your life will dissipate
and living death will be the death it seems.
Your heartbeat dreams and breath will soon abate,
while you untangle all your waking dreams,
and there she’ll be, exactly as she seems.

Tonight I die; tonight I am reborn,
an ancient rite of power, lust and grace.
Tonight I die by ancient secrets sworn;
tonight I am reborn to seek her face.
The moon obscures my thoughts with thoughts of blood
that pulses through the beauty of her heart.
The moon pulls every ebbing tide to flood,
and lovers pulled too violently apart.
The curse of separation is the death
of beauty hidden in the light of day
which waits for night to draw its living breath
and watches as the veil is stripped away.
She bares her perfect breast, her neck, her soul,
surrenders death and life to my control.

-for the Full Moon, and the coming of Twilight

You’re soft today in shades of morning’s kiss,
as soft as lying next to morning’s skin.
Inside the dawn of morning’s love in this—
this radiance of silk you softly spin.
And warm, my god, I feel the warmth of you
upon my soul, like heaven in your touch.
My memories of warmth, completely new,
convinced that warmth has never warmed so much.
To look this close into your waking eyes,
is more than I could ever dream at night—
the wispy morning blues of morning skies
that brighten like the blue of day’s delight.
And somewhere in the reverie of dawn
there’s music in a voice that lingers on.

Two steps into the unforgiving lake
I find my breath is stripped like naked skin
which shivers for the soul of warmth, the sake
of cold November waters found within
the warmth of early autumn in the lee
of winter, just beyond the fading hills,
like fading memories of you and me;
the shock of frigid water only kills
naiveté exposed by ignorance.
The comfort of my writing chair is not
the comfort I expected from this chance
confusion of the cold. It’s warmth I sought.
Again, it seems I’m waiting for the spring
to take away this bitter autumn sting.