Sonnet CLXXIX

Too quick the insolence had left my mouth
and groping, watched it lay its wicked tracks,
imprinting anger, red and rude, then black
into my teacher’s face, which wished me south.

The other day my friend had screamed aloud,
frustration burning in their flaming back,
in tow a flaming dagger, set to kill,
their nails, so long and wicked, death avowed.

As tactfulness evades me like the Plague,
the anger mounts the steeple of a shrine
to vengeance, pointed as a poison dart,
an arrow waiting, wicked as a hag,
directed at my mouth, so sadly mine,
which cannot learn diplomacy, an art.