Sonnettics

Her mouth retreats behind a steaming cup;
our first impassioned kiss is washed away
by tea.  Her savor shows; she glances up,
our bliss now intermingled with Earl Grey.
Her lips escape the smooth ceramic touch
of that which holds a warm familiar taste.
She smiles at me.  I think she smiles too much
with just her mouth, with lips my lips have traced
too soon.  The waitress breaks my fading trance.
I order eggs; she orders eggs as well.
We smile like some obligatory dance,
but now her eyes have fixed the broken spell.
They flash with passion’s promises; they shine
in this cafe, forever hers and mine.

Say “love” again; pronounce it like a curse
that curls your poisoned passion in a ball
of naked flesh.  Your spell becomes perverse
the moment that you think the word at all.
Say “love” as if the power was the word
or, like the scars and wrinkles of your skin,
bears depth.  Such marks can only be obscured
by magical futility.  Within
your shallow beauty, stretched too pale to hide
the malice of a life of seething hate,
there beats a ghostly pulse; your heart has died.
The spell of love you utter is too late.
It trapped me once until my soul discerned
that love is nothing given nor returned.

Sing songs that burn your heart like matches scraped
across the rough contingencies of love,
that flare in revelations calmly raped
before the crime is taken notice of.
Sing songs that freeze your heart in static hell
where zero is the absolute of pain
which suffers no deception, tolls no bell
until they drive your fucking mind insane.
Sing songs that stay the course; your left your right
converge into a point. The point is death,
although prophetic voices out of sight
sing songs drawn from a deeper, living breath.
Sing life; sing death. Each melody is wrong,
devoid of passion’s purpose in the song.

I knew at once the wind was north by west;
it slid between the houses and the trees,
obliquely intercepted me then pressed
my fingers through my gloves and tried to freeze
my hands.  I flexed my fingers as I ran
to move my blood into constricted veins.
The chill attacked as soon as I began
to move, like water, challenging its reign.
The stream beside the road was choked with ice
and yet it flowed, regardless of the threat
the wind-chill made.  Defiance would suffice
for me as well.  I started to forget
how cold the air, how liquid I’d become;
and ran toward the welcome of the sun.

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

You’re dead because you haven’t learned to live,
to suck the marrow from the bones of life.
And if you resurrect enough to give
yourself a chance, like sharpening a knife.
Then life becomes the death of death, the time
between the birth of flesh and birth of dust.
And all the knives you sharpen seem to shine
or else they dull with oxidating rust.
Then breathe before your breath becomes a mist,
a cloud of trouble stitched to life and death.
And breathe the air as if it had been kissed
by something not less passioned than your breath.
And cut the ties you’ve tied to time with love;
and pray to god within and god above.

Her love’s a sonnet, lost in some obscure
facsimile of metaphor.  Her lies
are whispers of antithesis; he’s sure
her poetry’s a copyright disguise.
He listens still, in fascinated awe
to chaos that he once mistook for verse.
The rhymes are slant and only serve to draw
the metaphor of love from bad to worse.
Her tears are the enjambment of her soul
which break her broken days of boring hell
into a non-monotony.  Her goal
is futile, and she doesn’t do it well.
He listens still, the living to the dead.
The sonnet ends; he smiles and shakes his head.

I found your wrinkled letter in a stack
beneath the stairs, while cleaning up the mess
of last month’s rain. The box was mildewed black.
The envelope was ruined, but I guess
some higher cause preserved your final words,
the last of all your nebulous goodbyes.
Some places on the paper now are blurred
forever, even if the letter dries.
I still recall the night you dropped it by,
the casual way I turned and closed the door.
I hated you; for years I couldn’t cry.
For years I wished you’d say goodbye once more.
Goodbye my love, goodbye.  This rotted mess
of words can serve no further usefulness.

(more…)