Sonnettics

My appetite is gone, but still I eat.
My dreams have disappeared, but still I sleep.
The only path that’s clear is in retreat.
The only sound I hear is when I weep.
My poems have no meaning, still I write.
My legs are broken, still I have to run.
The pain is like a dagger in the night
that finds its mark and brings oblivion.
The songs still play their same familiar tunes,
as poignant as the day they broke my heart.
The days still have their nights, the months their moons.
The weeks still have their ends; we’re still apart.
I still believe I’ve something more to give.
And still I die, my love, and still I live.

What joy could she have known would come to light
as on this day she held her baby girl?
What joy did she foresee with mother’s sight
while bent with joy around her little pearl?
The birth itself a miracle and gift
to her, to every life her life would touch.
In reverie she felt her spirit lift
and rise to future happiness with such
a swell of grace, the angels must have wept
to feel the love they’d lost, the love they’d found.
Such grace, such beauty never could be kept
within the realm of one eternal round.
And so the gods released her to this earth
on this, the day to celebrate her birth.

Her laughter rises faster than the sun;
it blinds my soul and melts my frozen heart,
reveals a day of joy that’s just begun,
and marks the end of darkness and the start
of grass beneath her children’s running feet,
of seeds beneath her garden’s warming earth,
of friendships once renewed, and twice as sweet,
of all the signs portending life and birth.
Then with her brilliant laughter shining on,
I lift my head and linger for a kiss.
The ice which once surrounded me is gone,
and I am bathed in pure and healing bliss.
The cold and dark my peaceful soul forgets;
her laughter is the sun that never sets.

This curve of flesh conceals a hidden lake
where water bends the earth to seek its rest,
a liquid soul the body won’t forsake,
although the body flows at its request.
With gentleness the water laps the shore;
the shore responds to each progressive wave,
as if another soul knows what’s in store,
conforming to the life the soul will save.
And when the liquid soul has split apart,
the half that ebbs and flows will find its mate.
Its flesh will rise in tides from heart to heart,
and life divine will be what it creates.
The flesh within the soul of love will swell;
and in its curve the miracle will dwell.

(more…)

I may not overcome; I may not eat
of hidden manna.  Why must it be hid?
The god of sacred secrets is replete
with obfuscated wisdom in a bid
to give the priests an ever-shifting shroud,
the power to proclaim un-changing god,
to catch the lamb who’s straying from the crowd,
and bend the word they call an iron rod.
The preacher’s been removed, the signs abased;
the garment’s white which once was scarlet red.
What more will be revealed, what more replaced
before the living learn they too are dead?
I have no stone of white, no name that’s new,
but I can still discern what’s right and true.

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.