Sonnettics

I danced with Mary Wollstonecraft last week
Then danced with Mary Shelley late last night
I asked them both if they would let me speak
I heard them laugh and tell me that they might

I only had to find bright words to say
To garner their permission to be heard
The Mary of my heart will always stay
If I present her with a fitting word

And so we dance with language as our tune
We dance as though we are ménage à trois
Our voltas always seem to come too soon
Or late. They always seem to bear some flaw

But Mary knows that words are only games
And that is why she uses both her names.

The Mary of Magdala came to know
That knowledge of the self is most divine
The paths of Galilee where she would go
Revealed such things to her by their design

Salvation is complete when one is whole
To know oneself, salvation may be found
The beauty of the spirit of the soul
Reveals itself as one eternal round

The Mary of Magdala lives within
The gnosis she discovered and now shares
To mark the paths where knowledge will begin
It shows how much this holy Mary cares

Her gnosis has a firm but subtle call
She learned this truth and teaches it to all.

She floats above the village streets at night
In search of some forgotten tale of old
Her ghostly form is beautiful and white
Her ghostly tale is one that's often told

Her life became the sorrow of remorse 
Her death became the sorrow all can feel
A ghostly essence runs its ghostly course
A hidden tale the teller can reveal

The teller of her tale this time is me
I saw her in the village where I live
She seemed to know the tale she sought to be
In me she found a teller she could give

Her tale of unrequited love and more
Of life and death, a dark unopened door.

I think the world needs sonnets to survive
Survival is the perfect lyric art
The sonnet form, a heartbeat still alive
The perfect sonnet dwells within the heart

The heart of every poet beats in time
With nature, like a song of subtle love
The love of every sonnet is sublime
Like rains that quench the world from clouds above

The sonnet turns its theme to fit the sound
Of everything the human heart might hear
It finds its voice where every voice is found
It sings to every person, far and near

Survival of the sonnet, on the whole
A metaphor of our collective soul.

The cost of doing nothing is too steep
I guess that means it’s time to “roll up sleeves”
We’ve landed in some shit that’s more than deep
It doesn’t matter what the Trump believes

The “shit” is his election. What the fuck?
How many millions wasted precious votes?
I guess too many like to press their luck
Obtuse to what their orange choice denotes

So, time to scrape up pig shit one more time
A job nobody ever wants to do
But pigs will shit like criminals will crime
And cleaning up will fall to me and you

Democracy requires work that’s tough
Sometimes it stinks, but we are strong enough.

This sonnet is an allusion to the re-election of Donald Trump. It also contains an allusion to a summer job I had as a teenager, shoveling shit out of a pig barn. I still remember the farmer telling me that I was the first kid he’d hired who wasn’t afraid to get in there and scrape the pig shit off the floor. I use the metaphor of “shoveling pig shit” as a reference to anything that may be distasteful, but still needs to be done. I think it works perfectly in this case. For the next four years we need to roll up our sleeves, plug our noses, and wade boot-deep through the shit as we do all we can to clean it up.

I call to Coventina in my need
To bring to me her blessed healing rain
She calls to me with words I feel and heed
She sings with showered notes a soft refrain

When Coventina hears the parched who thirst
She sings the dulcet songs of living wells
When water came to be, she was the first
The first to learn the stories water tells

The stories and the songs she shares with all
Are filled with brilliant life and brilliant love
She loves the life of every waterfall
She sings of rain that falls from clouds above

The goddess Coventina comes to heal
With water simple words cannot reveal.

The Word of God is everything you write
I write The Word of God in structured verse
It’s not The Truth, The Truth is not The Light
The Word is God like everything perverse

Perversity is such a clever Word
It turns away from normalcy with cheek
It’s also God; at least that’s what I heard
Perversity is when you hear God speak

The Word of God is found in every book
And every song whose lyrics are defined
By words the poet finds where they might look
Whenever God might linger in their mind

So speak or write and know that Thou Art God
And know that Words are words and might be flawed.