Sonnettics

We see a man in reverie of words
who sits, transfixed by some poetic trance.
We see his life divided now in thirds:
his future, past and present circumstance.
His rhyme, anticipated, builds a line
which hides within the concept of a scheme.
He knows it’s wickedness to seek a sign,
and hides his wickedness within a dream
Behind him and below him beats his heart;
below him and behind him draws his breath.
His birth, now un-remembered, was their start,
nor does he bear the memory of his death.
He’s caught the Word, unspoken, undefined
that lingers in his soul and in his mind.

Goodbye, as hate propels the wasted glow.
No sleep contrives the grinding of my brain.
The words were fast but now the words are slow,
and burn my eyes to write or to refrain.
Goodbye, as love consumes my paper heart
with matchless wonder, warm and full of lies:
a stone to smash the monument apart,
and blood that runs like death attracting flies.
Goodbye, goodbye, the waters all recede.
Goodbye, goodbye, the stars are all obscured.
A common whore knows better than to breed,
but poets feel compelled by every word.
It makes no sense to breathe the fire’s smoke;
inhale, inhale, inhale, inhale—and choke.

Sing out with heaving breath and frantic heart
in transitory tones that pierce your brain
like footsteps crunching through the crystal art
of snow that wears a coat of frozen rain.
Run faster if you can while shards of ice
rise up in splintered pain against your shin.
Consider how mechanically precise
these temporary shivs incise your skin.
The hurt you leave behind in globules, red,
once carried heaving breath and frantic life
to memories of love within your head,
but now congeals on winter’s passing knife.
Your tracks are fresh and punctuated deep,
defiant as the warmth of dying sleep.

As time again becomes a thing to pass
in nights of seeking solace from the day,
becomes again the sands within the glass,
again the heap of autumn’s slow decay.
As time in cheapened metaphors is sold
to anyone who pays the poet’s price
of baser substance fooled to think it’s gold
to fools who think the metaphors are nice.
It seems eternal love is just a joke.
“Forever,” just three syllables to place
within a volta turned to be invoked
for nothing more than nothing can’t replace.
Eternity will heal the wounds of time
as surely as a final couplet fails.

She curls her knees against her broken heart
as streaks of black deception stain her shirt.
Her tears distill her sadness to an art
of fresh, un-laundered pain and brightened hurt.
She knows the words by heart of one sweet song
which fills her aspirations.  The refrain
is muffled by her shirt.  It all went wrong
when Candace tried to sing that song again.
Her little boy sits quietly beside
his broken mommy, gently strokes her hair.
With tenderness he manages to slide
his hand into her hand.  She is aware
of comfort in a voice that sounds like his:
“I want to be your happiness,” he says.

It starts the way it started, suddenly;
her words appeared and she became my muse,
before I sensed the coming harmony,
I heard her voice and I could not refuse.
My heart reached out and gave itself away.
My mind rebelled, my stupid fucking mind.
My soul rejoiced and knew that it would stay.
My words prepared with her to intertwine.
It starts again when fate has grabbed my throat
and squeezed the breath from my constricted chest.
It starts when I have nothing to denote
the words I want to say, the worst and best.
In hope that from fate’s grasp I may be freed,
I gasp, and simple poetry concede.