Sonnettics

Importantly you turn to face the thing
The thing that mocks your pain with gilded rage
It knows the words to every song you sing
Regardless of the way you flaunt your age

As young as any seed before it sprouts
As old as any wisdom in that seed
It knows the grief of all its ins and outs
It feels the callous charms of every need

Wait, wait. Go back. Go back to quatrain one
Lets talk of gilded rage and songs once more
A volta doesn’t mean a sonnet’s done
It only means that after comes before

Before the end of poetry we sell
The words that find their way to some new hell.

We wait for words like forests wait for trees
And when we’ve waited long enough, we speak
As quietly as honey waits for bees
A metaphoric jar will crack and leak

Our sense of equilibrium is spilled
In sticky puddles on a shiny floor
In time the time we sense can yet be killed
If killing time is what your words are for

Be quick if you must wait for words to pass
Be more than less, unless you’re anymore
Be anyone you want; be polished glass
Regardless, you can shatter on my floor

If love becomes a word that you must hate
Your words will grow as forested I wait.

The sonnet's Fearful Symmetry is found
Within both forests of the night and day
Where similes and metaphors abound
Where fourteen rows of iambs kneel and pray

The prayers of Fearful Symmetry compose
Pentameter that keeps the form in check
And thus the prayers are forested as those
Who twist their hempen cords around their neck

Alas, a volta turns to find a Lamb
Sonnettics Tygers turn to face the stars
A cry is raised: "I am, my God! Iamb!"
The spears are tears that find they're yours; they're ours

Then back to Fearful Symmetry we're brought
To learn the things the trashy rhymes have taught.