Sonnettics

I wake and find my sense of time’s surreal
I must have been asleep for fifty years
I guess a brain that’s broken never heals
I guess I should succumb to righteous fears

But righteousness is not a sense I own
My chronoceptors tick each time I turn
Perceptions I once planted all have grown
And now the fields of stubble simply burn

Though weary, I traverse an ashen field
In hopes of finding flowers; none are seen
It seems that nothing grows and I must yield
To aspirations striving to stay green

And though my steps resound like couplets rhyme
My journey bears the weariness of time.

My mistress is a city in the sun
She used to shine on miners, seeking gold
But gold was just the way that she’d begun
To Renovate her land to young from old

The old is just her history, gone past
It’s made her who she is, still bright today
She seeks for Renovations that will last
Not all her gold will change; not all will stay

The young who know my mistress know she cares
She cares for youth who Renovate her soul
She’s strong enough to sort her wheat from tares
But strength of youth is not her only goal

The biggest little city in the world
She welcomes all, with old and new unfurled.

I’ll sing about a King who had a Dream
When Justice lost her way, he gave her light
A light on which her two-edged sword could gleam
He helped her stand again for what was right

A King protects his people when it’s dark
He gives them hope and hopes it will increase
A King can raise a flame from just a spark
This King is MLK, a King of Peace

He told us not to wallow in despair
He quoted, “men are . . . equal,” as was said
In something which our Fathers did Declare
Like them, his heart was pure; his blood was red

Though others might believe his dream is past
His dream lives on, and he is free, at last!

*First posted on January 15, 2012

I wonder if we could have been our dreams
Or found, at least, a place of waking joy
But night is more than darkness, so it seems
And darkness seems to cover and destroy
I still remember waking in your bed
I still remember sleeping in your arms
Although the past is past, it isn’t dead
Nor are my memories of all your charms
I wonder if our dreams were simply wrong
Can dreams be wrong? Can any dreams be right?
I wonder if you’ll hear my little song
Or if you’ll sleep through life, a dreamless night
We might have wanted all our dreams to stay
But fate awakes us to a dreamless day.

When songs repeat the words you sang to me
I hear the words like pleasant little sounds
They all remind me how we used to be
And how it feels when memory rebounds
It feels like beating silver sticks on drums
Like blood that beats a rhythm in my heart
Such metronomic memory succumbs
To simple sounding words while we’re apart
The volta turns the words to little darts
That pierce the drum where rhythmic sounds belong
Like sticks or stones that break unguarded hearts
I left my heart unguarded to your song
The ebb and flow of words are songs you sing
And waves are just the memories they bring.

The art of Fall succumbs to Winter’s paint
Like sand succumbs to gravity and time
It falls within the glass, without complaint
Like snowflakes or a couplet’s perfect rhyme
Time knows it’s just a wheel that turns around
It knows that Winter only lasts ’til Spring
And so it sprinkles snowflakes on the ground
Then turns and knows the moisture they will bring
When Helios returns with warming rays
To melt the snow and hydrate Mother Earth
Her seeds will wait through snowy Winter days
Until time turns to Spring, the time of birth
It seems like Spring was not so long ago
When time turns cold and coats the world with snow.

Absurd psychosis lets the id employ
Illusions and delusions in the night
And though they may be visions we enjoy
They may not harm our psyche, but they might
When metaphors become reality
Like poor Ophelia’s flowers by the brook
They blossom into life’s finality
In sleep we’ll see the their symbols if we’ll look
And when we wake, the albas we’ve enjoyed
Or nightmares which we fear have disappeared
The darkness, by the sun will be destroyed
Bright normalcy will dawn to be revered
Psychosis may not be our poem’s scheme
It might just lead to life, perchance to dream.

To ask a question, one must seek the truth
To answer, one must have the truth to share
Not like some rash and troubled, moody youth
Who wonders, “sagely,” who would fardles bear?

If death is just the end of troubled life
Who wouldn’t choose to end his life, to die
And if we burn in Hell to end our strife
Then joy in life must be a godly lie

Soliloquys are just some play-ful lines
Like bible words that say the Word is God
When Hamlet speaks, he mutters and opines
His blasphemy, and yet, we all applaud

If words are truth, and truth will set us free
We all should ask: to be, or not to be?

It’s true that I survived that awful day
But why I lived, I’ll never really know
Come say whatever words you want to say
They’re only words, and life’s a simple show
It’s simple in complexity like mine
Complexity is simple when we die
Like water that’s converted into wine
Or Death, who nods and simply passes by
The pain of life persists through time, unmatched
When numbness chimes like bells in towered nerves
My shattered bones have all been mended, patched
My poetry finds words my tale deserves
No day is worse than any other day
And life is just a word we find clichè.

It could have been the second paragraph
When something formed synaptically within
her heart. It could have been the second half
of this: “compelled to watch, itself a sin.”

She knew it was a story, thus, a lie
and yet, she let the story touch her soul
like god, who never gave her prayers reply
surrendering her will to his control.

The words were all familiar to her mind
Each syllable performed its rhythmic dance
the same as when the letters first combined
though different than her present circumstance

It could have been the second, or the first
that brought her to this literary thirst.