Tag: Sonnets

You Didn’t Ask

You gave because you give. You didn’t ask.
For byzantine as hearts must often be,
For you, there’s rhythm, and there’s melody,
And morning-after sun in which to bask,
And rudiments of lessons that we teach,
When we find learning there, within our reach.

But who am I, that you should favor me?
I sometimes think you chose in too much haste,
But then, the outline of your form is traced
By fingers touching skin-rich piquancy,
And light itself backs off from pride of place
Belonging to the wonder on your face.

  You didn’t ask, because superfluous
  Are words beyond which, there is here, and us.

A Bayou Sonnet

“Love me, and tell whatever truth you know;
If those two things conflict, then you must say.”
A time to stay and fight, a time to go;
A time to hold, a time to drift away —
For now, the moments build, and tensions grow.
“The curtain falls: is it for us or day?”

The bayou watches peacefully, and still
Upon the edge of wondrous trembling night
For golden honey, or the bitter pill,
For an embrace, or for a sudden flight.
The phantom, love, who lights on whom she will
Is never seen by those as null, or trite —

She whispers soft, a sky within a sky:
“I have no words, so this must satisfy —“

The Son Remembers

The day has come and gone, and so has he.

The light now slanting in is old and gray:
It chides the night in gentle mockery,
And bids the youngish man awhile to stay.

The boy who roamed these halls those years ago:
He lengthened, broadened, moved out of his shell;
He didn’t need direction from a man
Who treated family grim, and no one well.

But once this place was busy with success –
And with eyes closed he hears the sounds again:
How pride was once a fortress of excess,
And blackened hearts admired among men.

His father’s life: a pyrrhic victory:
That day has come and gone,
now so
has he

he reaches for the edge

he wants to build, but often he just wastes
the hours and the minutes of his day;
to give full range to ideas and to tastes,
and, striving for expression, find a way

to bring to life and light another piece
that helps the fevered mind to make some sense
of all the purchases we really lease,
and all the pride we take in diffidence.

but see: the sun is setting in its course,
the rippled songs of waves are on repeat;
we try to break away, but share a source
that shifts our victories into defeat.

he reaches for the edge of this lost day,
but like the clouds, it all just moves away

the afternoon

the curtains barely closed, or maybe clothed –
but either way, too much could be seen through –
within me, all those feelings that i loathed
of giving in, or lastly, giving to.
don’t know why women do the things they do,
or why our passions lead to so much loss:
but boys embrace the girls they should eschew.
i then went over as she came across:
her fingers traced a pattern to emboss
upon the growing need of who we were;
we drank the storm of motion, sweat and gloss,
the screamer of the dream, the whisperer,
the afternoon she had, and hadn’t, planned
that i could never really understand

 

[“the afternoon” – 11-10-1999]

Middle-Aged Man

He woke to find his nose and throat were bleeding;
Another day from day in blur succeeding,
Of waistline grown, and hairline fast receding,
Amid the whirl of strange called “middle age”.

His vanity loomed larger in its weakness:
An ego not prepared to go in meekness —
A story old and stale in non-uniqueness,
A fate too common to be met with rage.

We all believe, though many voice their doubting,
That we’re immortal: sanctity soon outing
This deathly, earthly life that leaves us shouting –
That death is freedom, and all life, a cage —

His wordless plea, a wasted, vain convection:
An empty soul, trapped in his own reflection

 

(“Middle-Aged Man” – 3-15-2017)

On The Lonely Paths

It was a time that many thought they owned:
The cities filled with hubris mid the hosts,
And countryside piled up with Facebook posts.
There, souls, self-righteous, saw themselves enthroned:
A breathless rush that could not be postponed
Of pointed gibes, and vain and idle boasts
That rang through interwebs, and past the coasts
To many reading lips whose minds intoned.

But out there, on the lonely paths, was seen
A girl whose mind was full and otherwise;
Whose heart was used, whose senses, soft and keen
Could see the danger lurking in the skies:
That how we live’s not what we say, or mean,
And whole-sprung truth, we rarely verbalize

 

(“On The Lonely Paths” – 3-13-2017)