Sonnettics

The volta of ambition sings a song
A little song that dances in my mind
It can’t be right; it therefore must be wrong
So wrong, it simply must be left behind

And yet I can’t decide which note should end
Which foot that falls before its verse declines
Decline my verse and never be a friend
To anyone like me, whom verse defines

Then back to the beginning we must dance
Before the volta turns, its song to sing
Then back into the place we took our chance
Where neither one expected anything

Return my life; return my sullied cross
Return to what your spirit might emboss.

It rose above the Paris street below
A mockery of planetary pride
It watched the gay Parisians come and go
And felt what they would find beneath, inside

A crescent held in place by wood and steel
Aesthetically, it watched the world go round
While knowing everything our world would feel
Before they brought it humbly to the ground

They brought it down? For what? Indignance shrugged
Nobody knows; perhaps nobody cares
Like little people, brightly mocked or drugged
Observed the moonlit mill of one who dares

To watch the vastness of the simple sky
And simple people, sadly passing by.

I think you better go out with the boys
You stay inside too much, she tells her son
She knows she can’t express maternal joys
To George, although he is the only one

The only one she thinks of, in despair
Despair at what died deep inside her heart
Maternal joy she wishes she could share
With George her son; it tears her soul apart

She listens at his door and hopes he’ll find
The secret thing that died in her, not him
She kneels like one in prayer, a fragile mind
Rejecting thoughts that others might think grim

She wants him to be brisk and smart, alive
Outside where no dull silence will deprive.

It’s late, and yet she goes out for a walk
It’s late, and yet she walks out in the cold
The town’s asleep; there’s no one out to talk
About the way she walks; her mood is bold

She thinks about the students in her school
And then about the boy, become a man
She wants his mind to be a sharpened tool
It will be one, according to her plan

She plans to hone the talent she can see
To teach him of the life he needs to live
Her passion finds desire and needs to be
Within his arms to take the kiss he’ll give

Too late, the kisser leaves the lonely, kissed
The words of some great lesson had been missed.

A bitch, I say, will always be a bitch
She dresses like a slut, and slips around
I ask her why she’s playing out of school
She tries to slap me, but I hold her back
Then Dilsey tries to help that little slut
She calls her “damn old nigger” in return
I drive the slut to school, then go to work
The only Compson worth a damn at all
I try to speculate on cotton fields
But Jews up in New York have fixed the game
The money in my box is mine to count
Regardless of the niggers that I feed
No nigger, Jew, or bitch will keep me down
I’ll play enough to win the game life sets.

They hit the balls so I could look for them
I looked for balls and quarters by the fence
I looked at Luster, hunting in the grass
I saw him throw the flag; he said I moaned
I opened up the gate and caught the girl
She screamed and then I climbed a hill to cry
I tried to keep from falling off the hill
I fell into the bright and whirling shapes
She smelled like trees, she didn’t smell like trees
She put her arms around; I went away
When Caddy comes it’s Christmas, Santy Claus
When Caddy hushes Maury, Mother’s sick
When Dilsey tells us all to go to sleep
The dark begins to go in smooth, bright shapes.

Her easel bore the colors of her mind
As Lily Briscoe painted strokes of thought
And yet, she seemed confused by what she brought
To canvas, and the things she left behind
She wondered with each stroke what she might find
And whether she could capture what she sought
Her art would not be sold, would not be bought
She was an artist of another kind

In time she let her art consume her life
She thought a life consumed by art was best
And though she might have been the Bankes man’s wife
I’m sure it is a life that she’d detest!
With colored strokes and form her thoughts were rife
Until her perfect vision was expressed.

To James, the lighthouse meant a grand escape
A place to leave behind familiar land
Where water washed away familial sand
Like father’s words when spoken, which would scrape
And threaten all the joy the boy could shape
Like lighthouse trips, young James had often planned
“The weather won’t be fine,” was just a strand
Of scraping, sandy words on father’s cape

“It may be fine,” his mother’s words were calm
James felt his joy return beneath her hands
Her touch was like a reassuring balm
It took him to the joy of lighted lands
He faced the storms of life with her aplomb
And left behind his father’s scraping sands.

Desire the truth of some forgotten rhyme
Where majesty of sound begins to reign
Forgotten sound exposes subtle time
As what was once complex becomes mundane

Desire becomes a simple poet’s sin
A coin which tells the future from both sides
And yet we still can lose; we still can win
A secret sound in which the Voice confides

Is what I seek a simple sound, a word?
A word that gives the Voice a time to sing
The song that some forgot contained the rhyme
That took the Voice from what it sought to bring

Desire attends to Trinitys with grace
And simply gives them words they can’t replace.

Come drink with Mephistopheles and me
I never knew a drink he couldn’t mix
We’ll get him drunk, then throw him in the sea
And let him wonder how to get a fix

Let’s fix him fast on some repentant heart
Who thinks the song of sin should not be sung
Then while his eyes are fixed on subtle art
We’ll drag him through a field of fresh turned dung

He’ll beg for mercy, but we’ll give him none
Except for our respect of time and tide
A mercy built on justice just for fun
Where hidden justice has no place to hide

The art of every devil I have known
Reveals itself where demons should have flown.