Sonnet CLII

They dream their art is posted on the fridge:
collages made for class and other crafts,
the pictures of a castle, moat, and bridge,
the portraits made of Mom she thought were drafts,
a “book” or two of shocking sacrilege,
crude buildings made of cardboard roofs and shafts,
endearing picture frames with frilly fringe,
and scribbles covered over boring math.

We all imagined artists we would be:
but ah – there come those cruel realities!
Our parents see just junk - more wasted trees;
a hassle - just more trash to blandly see.
So out it goes. There go our foolish dreams.
And there goes youthfulness – how life proceeds.

Sonnet CLI

What is the wind? Is that which blows the clouds?
And moves them, carefully across in fleets?
Is that the wind? The leaves which dance about?
Or are they just controlled by passing breeze?

What is the wind? The beast that roars aloud?
The strength that sways the steadfastness of trees?
The whisk that slaps the rain upon the brow?
The fan that blows and comforts me in heat?

What is the wind? Is that what chills my heart
and moves me carefully, without a cause?
Is that what blows my life around like leaves
and scatters it and breaks it all apart?

Is that what chills me, freezing me in frost
while inside, sets me writhing in its heat?

Sonnet CL

She’s beastly thin and needs to eat more food.
Her living - paintings on the ground - a farce.
She’s dressed in clothes of bright and tacky hues.
She’s balding on the top; her hair’s so sparse.

She’s worn and tired, spent and often used.
Her skin is tight, from hardship worn so hard,
Her nails on outstreched fingers bright and lewd -
and always crying, crying from afar.

Remembering her summers, proud and free,
so green - environmental deity -
a beacon shining youthful energy -
and now all that is gone and cloacked it seems
in dimming darkness of the autumn breeze,
so brown, so dark and wooden, as a tree.

Sonnet CXLIX

I miss my childhood, its idleness,
The carefree pondering, the carefree thoughts.
I miss the crafts I made in happiness,
The innocence, absolved of any plots.

I miss the recess, naptime, all the mess
I left each day, not cleaning all the lot.
I miss the love, the care, the endlessness
of purity and joy and youthful awe.

And now it’s school. And lessons, notes, and such.
How did the time fly by? The years? All gone!
Replaced by busyness and rage and greed;
the push for deadlines, days like standard mush -
If only time were still an endless song,
A string of hours fit wtih coloured beads.

Sonnet CXLVIII

I spent my days on end by editing
the clips - a heap of them - into a whole.
The endless trimming, tweaking, tampering
with sound and visuals to make a goal
of perfect, symbiotic harmony
between the video and audio.
At last when it was done – my precious scene –
I saved it, waiting for a half an hour.

I went to all my websites – famed and not –
to thus distribute all my work anew.
I take my video and upload it
but find that after hours…staid it stops
and never finishes! But then resumes –
the lovely mystery of Internet!

Sonnet CXLVII

Their rhythms hypnotize and calm me down,
their repetition easing all my qualms.
The simple harmonies remove my frown,
replaced with artificial stupor’s awe.
Their strange effects are amplified with sounds
of luscious singers, singing with a drawl.

The state of modern music is a mess:
it’s been reduced to basic chords and such,
mixed in with skill-less “singers”, poor at best,
and mediocre lyrics, weak as mush,
repeating in their choruses, no less.
No substance, only hypnotizing mush.
It suits our lack of truthful happiness,
a fitting dullness in a life of such.

Sonnet CXLVI

my hatred boiled in a silver tray,
too haughty to be served to that android,
that vile villain, more than words can say,
arousing anger when I am annoyed,
my burning hate becomes more strong each day,
until the thought of crude revenge was joy –
fulfilling joy in every single way,
a satisfying prize that never cloys!

i’ll take your hair and rip it from your head
i’ll tear your precious limbs from your poor corpse
i’ll shred your entrails, throw them on the floor
i’ll burn your skin with acids ‘til it’s red
i’ll hope you’re still alive because of course
i’d rather you to suffer so much more!

Sonnet CXLV

You cannot see the road map of my life
within the features of my Asian face.
How can you see the tears and joy and strife
my life endures? The tale’s beyond my race.

You can’t see my Albertan birth and pride,
my life in Indiana and the heat
of Houston, Texas – ah, how warm and nice!
And then the cold return to Northern breeze.

And you don’t see my Oriental joy
in speaking Chinese fluently (at best),
my shining love of Asian, cultured bliss.

But even though my culture’s different voice
may sing a different song from all the rest,
we all have ears, two eyes, and lips to kiss.

Sonnet CXLIV

In spring, the birds are chirping nervously
because the winter’s bite is icy still.

In summer, birds enchant the warmth with glee
with songs of celebration, runs and trills.

In autumn, many birds prepare to flee
and those remaining feel the mounting chill.

In winter, hidden all around their trees,
the birds are silent – frozen at their bills.

And even when their songs are shrill and short
because a touch of coldness gnaws their wings,
they cheer me, hanging from the high-up wire.
The blending of the many different sorts
of sound they blissfully and daily sing
relay a pure intent with bright desire.

Sonnet CXLIII

I think I must have moody SAD:
I’m happier in summer, less in spring,
depressed in autumn, looking at the trees
as quietly they die and cold they bring,
and almost suicidal when the freeze
of winter comes. When cold and wetness ring
my doorbell, then I know that grief, for me
has melancholy melodies to sing.

What shall I do but wait for warmth to come?
I’ll turn to music, art, and poetry
and other human joys and human bliss!
I’ll circle all the rounds of happy rum,
intoxicated with life’s saccharine.

And then again, what is true happiness?

Sonnet CXLII

Was I as dumb and blind as those Grade 5’s
who sit in buses every day in front?
The media and biases in life
affected them so deeply it affronts
the wholesomeness to which the youth did strive
in times since passed. It makes our lives seem blunt
by sad compare. How wickedly they pry!
How foolishly dependent and defunct!

They flaunt their musical devices like
a book, so good and wise and valuable.
They speak of news without the truthful lies,
but with the bias printed in their souls.

They lost their innocence in their short lives,
and now, corrupt, are grossly so morose.

Sonnet CXLI

The leaves are ripening to rosy reds,
vermilion and orange, gold and brown.
Like fruit, their colour deepens in their heads,
unlike them, feed our ears with crinkly sounds.

When fallen, ripened leaves fill lovely beds
and feed the grass as well, its life endowed.
For from the trees those ripened fruits are dead,
but bring new life from where they strangely drowned.

But glabrous leaves feed more than worms and such,
they feed the eyes with multicoloured hues.
Thus autumn cheers the soul, the eyes, the mind
with its enticing, rainbow-coloured touch,
which by a happy home above imbued
with vibrant hues and usefulness combined.

Sonnet CXL

As roadkill lying on a barren road,
my flesh is eaten, chewed beyond despair;
my eyeballs plucked and fed to hungry toads,
my fingers torn and shredded with my hair.

The trucks run by my humble death’s abode
and trample me again till everywhere
it hurts, and then I wonder in my dole
if death should hurt much more than I can bear.

This is my life, this is my lovely death:
so filled with agony and cruel despair.
In life rejected and in death denied
the anaesthetic ceasing painful breath
and pain. The anaesthetic stealing air
and feeding sweet and lovely dreams.

Sonnet CXXXIX

Persistent as a squirrel’s winter game,
the dogged winter sea, the rainy skies,
I struggle on. Determined, driven flame
which burns within me, always to abide.
And hurricanes may beat me all the same,
but still I struggle on and keep alive.
And hail may stone me, lions less than tame,
but still I live, and shall but never die.

Persistent as the bloody flies that bite,
the cranky dogs, the salesmen at the door;
Persistent as the monstrous, chilling night,
the nagging termites gnawing at the floor,
I’ll still persist with all my hopeless might
and still be here to haunt you, evermore.

Sonnet CXXXVIII

What use have I for polynomials?
Will I go to a grocery store one day
and simplify a polynomial?
Or maybe rational expressions? Say,
“I’ll simplify and state restrictions!” - lull
the poor cashiers to sleep; make others pray
I’d never put those things inside my skull?
Oh, how may functions help me everyday?

Of course they do - in ways I fail to see -
but now, I drudge through math as it were mud.
It isn’t even art, so bare and free -
but even art has purpose, one might add:
to entertain with skill aesthetically;
to bring us bliss when functions make us mad.

Sonnet CXXXVII

The swatter, blue and plastic genocide,
is resting in my bathroom cupboard’s bed.
So many flies from it did quickly hide,
but in the end they lost their priceless heads.

A mark remains upon my window’s side
where once before the swatter swiftly tread.
A deadly weapon filled with deadly pride,
a testament and warning from the dead.

So crude and cruel. But swatters kill the flies
that kill me with their loathsome, buzzing noise.
Thank goodness for my cunning, wicked means!
Without it, flies would come to eat my eyes,
my nose, my skin in death…their graceful poise
abandons them, and in revenge, they feast.

Sonnet CXXXVI

The burning heat had charred my weakened eyes
and on the ground I saw a horse’s tail.
I stopped. It was a frog’s poor legs and flies.
I saw the head as well, the tongue so pale.
And stretched along the body like a tree’s,
its twisted limbs, all gruesome green as dales.
The skin a flattened brown, ripped open, free,
the blood the colour of a rusted nail.

The flies – a million –all lucent black,
all crawling, fighting, filthy in their greed,
spread over their delicious feast of flesh.
At their delicious meat they crudely hacked,
the spoiling skin a more enticing treat,
all chewy, more than if it were more fresh.

Sonnet CXXXV

The seasons change so very rapidly.
At times they snow; at times they laugh and shine.
So young and fickle, always freshly free.
A friend the same, reliable, on time.
They never bore, but dance so gingerly.
They swirl around my calendar in lines,
and mark my life in intervals of ease.

The seasons entertain me so all day:
they organize my life and toy with it,
they run outside and with me gladly play,
they bite or tease or slap or prance or hit.
The seasons batter me in playful games,
until I laugh, admitting they are “it”.

Sonnet CXXXIV

The taps upon the roof remind me hence
to look outside the window happily
and greet my lovely guests, who holler whence.
It makes me very glad to see them screech.
They looked so sullen on the wooden fence;
it does them good to be so filled with glee.
And yelling in their dialect no sense
upon my roof, they stamp with heavy feet.

I love my crows (or ravens, I don’t know).
They bring me joy with antics strangely done
and I, of course, indulge them with my laugh
and mimic them. We loudly, brashly crow.
We have a lot of gibberish and fun.
Then leaving to our duty, end our chaff.

Sonnet CXXXIII

A sonnet is that yogurt with the fruit
concealed upon the bottom of the cup.
You may see that the topic’s from one view.
You disagree; your anger thus erupts.
Or puzzled, read some more to find clue.
Perhaps (quite rarely) you agree – what luck!
But then the bottom is revealed anew…

and all begins to change – the truth is out.
The treasure of the sonnet is its twist,
first one thing, then another takes its place.
It’s like the sky is covered by the clouds
and then the sun protrudes from the abyss,
the sky reveals, the clouds hence quickly chased.

Sonnet CXXXII

Escaping human wickedness, a fly
decided foolishly one fateful night
inside a shining lamp to there abide.

And eaten by the light bulb, he did fry,
the putrid smell of burning flesh a fright;
the humans flew and quickly fled to hide.

Thus craftiness earned no reward for him
and won’t for you, my crafty little friend.
The death of this poor fly was but a hymn
to honesty, a parable to mend
the wicked hearts where goodness starts to dim.
For as a little fly had perished then,
so too shall you. You’ll meet a fate as grim,
an equal wickedness to shape your end.

Sonnet CXXXI

My pills are batteries, so black and new.
They live inside my musical device –
their lovely case – and cure my pains anew.
They pleasurably thus anaesthetize,
their potency well-harnessed. Without rue,
so easily, accessibly, comprise
the power driving all those soothing tunes,
which hypnotize and petrify my life.

Sedated happily each night and day,
I’m neither sad nor glad – just in between.
Around me, lovely, aural visions laugh and play,
still keeping rhythms, volumes at a mean.
And carefree, drugged with sound in youthful grey,
I’m lonely, happy, lost, and strangely free.

Sonnet CXXX

I heard a kid say to his friends today:
“I’d rather kill myself through suicide
than die of heart disease or weak old age.”

On hearing this, I felt as though a knife
had stabbed me, each and every painful way.
Is life so filled with twisted, wicked strife?

Perhaps it’s come to this. The world’s just waste:
the GM foods and artificial fare,
the speed of life reducing it to haste,
the perfect little fruits, synthetic wares,
the global warming caused by sad distaste,
the cancer lurking mutely everywhere,
the crises of economies still chaste.

Perhaps our happiness has turned too rare?

Sonnet CXXIX

As silver moons change always in their shape,
so too my thoughts are changing constantly.

As tides shift all about and dance all day,
so too my thoughts lack steadfast constancy.

As trees, moved by the wind, so swiftly sway,
so too my thoughts return and quickly flee.

Each day brings joy and lovely happiness,
perhaps another rains eternally.
Still others bring revengeful, angry bliss
while many more are peaceful, calm, serene.

And though my thoughts are fickle and at best
return to thus revisit me,
poor Time and Math and Science must confess
they lack the freedom of a drifting dream.

Sonnet CXXVIII

Ophelia is lying in her death,
reanimated for a dismal fate.
She lies in sewage, wasting dying breath.
While hunting for her substinence, she waits.

What happened to her lucent skin, so fresh?
Her high-exalted status and her mate?
What of her family and happiness?
Her pride and joy and carefree, happy ways?

Ophelia’s a frog, the shameful beast.
She loves no more and feels no happiness.
She hunts for flies. She’s selfish, crude, and brusque.
Destroyed by everyone, she’s awfully beat,
cares not if all the world has gone amiss.

What fitting joy for such a joyful mess!

Sonnet CXXVII

Oh Sadness, put your work to other things;
don’t pester me again; life has been good.
Without your sullen face my joy can sing,
not jailed, imprisoned like some plank of wood.

Oh Sadness, how unfair you are to me.
A year or so without you – as you loomed
in darkness, then attacking suddenly.
No warning, only swift and sudden gloom.

How dismal, seeing all the greys again,
the thunder, rain, and lightening of your youth,
despair and death, prophetic wickedness,
the dreaded, painful curse of cruel disdain,
the world becoming more and more uncouth...
Oh Sadness, why? Where is my happiness?

Sonnet CXXVI

My trusty steed, now lying in the dark,
the red now faded to a rusty brown.
To sidewalks, parks, and houses we embarked,
to nearby planets, foreign neighbours found.

Now lying in a large garage so stark,
obscured by toys and junk in hapless mounds.
No longer darting like a flying lark,
no longer whirring in a blaze of sound.

I miss you so, and times you shared with me.
In childhood and older you remained.
But now in teenage years you’ve faded out
to nothingness and languished memory.
I think of you sometimes, my bicycle, so red,
and wish that time with you was still allowed.

Sonnet CXXV

The moving pictures sometimes startle me,
their vividness is so believable.
The feelings felt so very vast and free,
the stories told so very palpable.

And yet the misinterpretations seen -
the segregation, so inevitable,
the liberty some take with history -
these things imprint themselves into our skulls.

And labelling becomes more prominent,
and scanty links with truth become less rare
and entertainment turns to ignorance.

Our joy should not be thought-imprisonment;
our movies shouldn’t bring those hopeless stares;
but wise enlightenment, not ignorance.

Sonnet CXXIV

My aching throat, you pain me so today.
Why don’t you just surrender graciously?
You cannot win; you might as well go play
with hic-cups, screams, and vocal trickery.

I miss the days we sang the livelong day,
recited poems, speeches - writ by me -
the times we shrieked and acted in those plays -
What lovely times we had, how happily!

Today is different; you’re a pain today.
You torture me and cruelly punish me.

You’ve hounded me with wheezing coughs all day,
with pains and aches and itchy phlegm I sneeze...

What happened to the joyous times we shared?
The merry songs, our lovely treasury?

Sonnet CXXIII

My floor is like a record of my life:
upon it lies the hair I tore right out,
in anger, deadly sadness, foul strife.
Within it, all the tears I cried aloud,
the rain, now buried, from my window’s eye,
and pencil shavings, littered there in crowds,
a lovely souvenir of prose I write,
or sonnets, all of which I’m very proud.

Along the vacuum comes, that wicked beast,
erasing all my filthy memories.
My lovely dirt and scum and mildew – cured!
I almost miss those mites and fleas,
the crude emotions shed about by me.
Or maybe it’s a plea to shirk the work…

Sonnet CXXII

A true friend shall not use you for their aims
or curse you if you fail to serve them well.
A true friend isn’t jealous of your fame
or bitter, hearing new successes swell.
A true friend does you favours. And the game
the others play of selfish playback quells.
A true friend loves you through your flaws and frays
and comforts you in sickness and in Hell.

Does such a friend exist? I must say no.
It’s nice to think one has a friend like that.
But all of us have plans and goals and dreams;
we can’t serve others faithfully and know
the friendship’s symbiotic. Some are that,
but most reciprocate the very least.