(There was a period, mostly early last year and late the year before, in which I wrote a number of fairly traditional sonnets—an activity which can occupy pretty much endless time and attention if you let it, as I found out. I posted one in commemoration of Petrov Day, in 2021, but have otherwise just been sitting on the pile, and since people have occasionally expressed interest in seeing the rest I figured I would post here in a single batch a few of the better specimens.
These poems do not share a single unifying theme, although there are probably some commonalities. None of them are perfect. The second one here was part of a challenge to myself to write a sonnet which concluded with that borrowed line, after I realized that it fit the iambic pentameter so nicely.)
A cloud of glitter, tumbling in air
And onto cobblestones that also know
All foul stenches that have lingered there
Of cars and chamberpots, accrues like snow
Gets caught on lashes, ferrets out the tongue
For choking purchase, sparkles in the light,
Excites the tan and summer-hungry young,
Then goes on flashing in the soggy night
When floats and flags again are dry indoors,
When nervous couples touch in rented rooms,
Discarding everything on tiled floors,
And chanting wards against the coming doom
For nothing changes; Dorian was right
To hide his portrait and go out at night.
~
When Scotland Yard a tavern recreate,
The circle closes; Bluebeard's castle falls
Into the ocean; guilt to reprobates
Flies like the buzzards on the carpet walls.
But when photographers with iron eyes
Mince over metatarsals and the blood
Turns black and sticky where the body lies
And crows go silent, waiting for the flood—
No absolution comes, nor twin of grace,
No photo negative of Galilee,
No Lazarus entombed, no empty space
Where we expect the purloined heart to be;
For now the telling shows us where we are,
A headless body in a topless bar.
~
Our plastic fans can cool a burning head,
Blow dim the candle of the endless day
And let us share in something with the dead—
A clammy forehead, and the chill of clay
Cathedrals, all a-roar with holy songs,
Where blue-lipped friars in the lifeless dark
Rehearse their errantry on muffled gongs
While up above them, in a sun-baked park
The dogs run wild, sweating fathers grin
As romping children make-believe they are
More massive than the pale and peeling skin
That still surrounds them when they reach the car
And, swallowed by a clean, sepulchral blast,
Begin their journey to the ancient past.
~
If Scrabble tiles in a cold machine
Can tumble over, grope for higher ground
Feel out the cloud of all that humans mean
And spill out waterfalls of lovely sound
Without deceiving—holy little fools
Announcing their position from the start—
And still shake pillars with a ploughman's tools,
Still crack the stone of Pharaoh's angry heart,
Then life is over; everything dissolves
Into the sleep of jackals when the moon
Is full and generous, and day revolves
Into a faith that wears away the dune,
Erases wonder, blacks the scribbled line
And lifts our bodies from the flow of time.
~
The wild wind athwart a metal wing
Is split against it, lifts it from below
Just like a dragonfly on plastic string
Raised to the rafters in a children's show.
But we are it—we watch the shrinking cars
All disappear behind white tufts of steam
On missions to unnoticeable bars
As when a lover dwindles in a dream
To microscopic size; the chill of sleep
Lets us forget that we are human, too,
And cannot merge forever with the deep,
The roaring engine in the endless blue,
That we are only clinging, now and then,
To massive creatures that will feed on men.