Sonnet CCXXXIX

A circle all around: what sheer diversity!
Perhaps an eye shall dart, shall dart to me perchance!
To me, with glasses, here? To me, with eyes that prance?
To me, with stars of acne, on a sallow cheek,
made pallid with a touch of coughing malady?
Perhaps to me, by purpose or by hapless chance;
perhaps to someone else, another victim seen.

My lips embrace, with touch so rough, and wonder how
their minds are pondering, artistic, thinking now?

Are any forming brand new characters to use?
Or wondering what stories they could find in prose,
employing faces to describe and to abuse?
I know that I am stealing them and churning roles.

Sonnet CCXI

On rainy days, the ladders come to play with me.
They drop my player down a serpent’s cruel abyss
and make me wish that space was where I got to miss.
Alas I’m never petulant for long – for glee
is just a toss away. Surmounting ladders three,
I’m winning! But my brother’s close behind, amiss.
Then soon the tables turn and then my happiness
is fleeting as my fortune, dimming with each leap.

How quickly hours pass! What fun surmounts us here!
Perhaps I’ll play this game again, each day each year!

Alas, the rain subsides. The sun resumes its rounds.
The electricity comes back to all the lights.
But staying in our home, we watch the thudding pounds
of villains losing on T.V. in awesome fights.

Sonnet CCVIII

The fish I used to own was red - a betta fish –
the kind that fight and come from far-away Thailand.
But then it rotted, turning pink, then white like sand,
and then it died, afloat despite my fervent wish.
But then we bought another pair of lovely fish,
the one was chalico, the other lightish-bland.
One day, my brother (two) had dumped their food – like sand –
into their bowl. They soon became as mobile as a dish.

(They ate too much and subsequently had to halt.
They died of greed, although it wasn’t all their fault.)

And so we have no fish. We bought no more to keep.
We thought they’d bring food luck. We thought they’d be a charm.
Instead, we murdered them. And thus, they made us weep.
Instead of luck for us, we dished away some harm.

Sonnet CLXXXVII

I’ve missed the precious boat eternally
and never to return, it’s gone for good.
What shall I do but what I rightly should?
I’ll buy more tickets for more trips to sea
and board more boats before they slyly flee.
I’d catch the ones I missed – I really would –
but boats will leave me wishing that I could,
as all is lost, like sailors drowned at sea.

For life is turbulent and sometimes mess,
forever sloshing, passing by on waves,
destroying hopes, replacing them at best
with newer ones that give us dormant grace,
although we know we’re never put to rest,
but always sent to toil, mouth agape.

Sonnet CLXXXV

In Hamlets far away in Canada,
there was a holiday called Halloween
where children, kind, obedient, or mean –
regardless of their character – were glad,
as all had knocked on doors of wood and glass
and then received their fill of charming sweets.
But only after yelling “trick or treat!”
(of course), and making sure the giver wasn’t mad,
a pedophile or rapist (or they’d run).
Kids got a heap of varied candies from
the teens a-writing essays on Macbeth,
the mothers watching husbands with their sons
(or daughters), grandmas left alone with rum…
and thrice the cauldron charmed their dreaming breaths.

Sonnet CLXXXIV

Who are they? Bumblebees and witches, fruit.
From house to house and yard to yard they fly:
a fairy princess or an action guy;
perhaps a pumpkin, stout, rotund, and cute,
or lovely mermaids, lithe or more obtuse.
In any case, their flashlights light the night
with glowing beauty simple as their plight
of chasing candy down in scattered troupes.

And “trick or treat!” they call, but only “thanks”
are whittled out of them when parents chide,
apologise, and carry them away.
Though happy with their sweet and chocolate weight,
soon all our little demons flee inside,
exhausted, thirsty, itchy, pulling pranks.

Sonnet CLXVII

Across my bus stop, twenty steps away
there sat a store that seemed a restaurant,
which formed a happy, homely, rustic haunt
where passing motorists would spend the day.

However, doomed to die with lack of pay –
reward for starting in a small-town lawn –
it closed one day, its assets quickly pawned,
and then repainted blue to brownish-grey.

A month or two before the winter came
a brand new business sprang to life with ease,
a shining beacon, sullen grey and new.

But now I see ambition, growing fame,
a sign, a menu, posters on the trees -
and all for money, rude and quick and crude.

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 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 XXV

The snow’s still there, pristine despite the mud,
But when the next day comes, it snows some more.
It seems the battle's strangely wavering:
Today Spring lost; but won the day before.

A constant bid for power ‘gainst the two,
Sometimes the ground is covered with white snow.
It melts, then all is lost – it snows again.
Who’ll win, it’s hard to tell, no one will know.

And then, abruptly, sunshine warms our skin;
The animals begin their spring routines;
The grass and leaves on the trees turn emerald;
The winter seems a distant memory.

The winter, pallid by compare, seems plain.
As spring, a kindly comrade, comes again.