Sonnet CCCLXIV

Alone, amongst the waves, beneath the sun -
I fear I'll drown; I've waded out too far.
The seabirds cackle in a frenzied bunch,
detecting noontime spoils from afar.
So far from land, so far from everyone,
I cannot say why I feel merrier:
my cheeks exude a strange vermillion,
my eyes ablaze with some unearthly star.

Perhaps I do not need an audience:
if I should whisper some aquatic rhyme,
the simple joy of it is bountiful -
if one should pause to note its loveliness,
then it is Art; if one should call it crime,
then I am mad as any starving gull.

Sonnet CCCLXIII

Unwary laughter stirs the languid air:
The weary robins interlace their yawns
Unbidden breezes charm our tickled arms,
meandering toward the heaven's stair.

The shadows of the trees are barely there;
the limpid flowers rest their lurid shawls -
In viscous resignation, stilled and calm,
Warm oxygen absorbs our every care.

As Artemis is dying all the clouds,
Apollo closes up his pearly gate.
The final sun-kissed photons scintillate
as conversation takes its final bow:
these summer hours sedately dissipate,
and Mother Nature packs away her day.

Sonnet CC

I used to live in Texas long ago.
The weather always shined so languorously.
In fall, there was a fleeting little breeze
and winter was a joke – there was no snow.
Our small apartment was beside a road
with palm trees bordering, so slim and high.
The flat was small and filled with moths and flies,
and cockroaches had pestered the abode.
Longfellow Elementary School was near,
and dusty baseball parks were near as well.
I came home daily, watching Spanish shows
and missed my mom, who wasn’t very near.
She studied in Purdue, said she was well,
and kissed her letters, sending lipstick home.

Sonnet CXCIX

A student is a chunk of tofu, pure,
so soft, and ready to be crafted by
a teacher’s words, which live and never die
and always have a studious allure.

And teachers cut and dice and chop, for sure.
Their cuts are permanent and never die,
imprinting messages into the minds
of tofu-children, sliced beyond a cure.

And cooking them in batches in a wok,
the teachers throw their sauces at the kids
and tofu-children easily absorb
the flavours of their teacher’s boring talk.
And one day, thrown in darkness and amidst
a teacher’s test, they’re chewed up, evermore.

Sonnet CXCVIII

The weeks or two when Halloween had passed
was time to find the box of candy treats.
I searched and searched for all those yummy eats
and soon I found the treasured box at last.
Alas, I found it wasn’t, very fast.
It was in fact the year-old, mouldy treats
I didn’t like. I searched behind the seats,
the cupboards, tables – everywhere I passed.

I couldn’t find it. Angry, frenzied now,
a chocolate demon thrashed within me still,
awaiting candy bars to satisfy
its candy craving. Tearing all the house
apart, I found the box and ate my fill,
then hid it in my room to keep it mine.

Sonnet CXCVII

We have some time each day to read our books.
We call it SURF. For twenty minutes, mute,
we read without a qualm or class dispute;
we read of villains, heroes, brutes, and crooks.

Alas, I glance around with furtive looks:
instead I treat this “SURF” time as my loot
and write instead, which fits me like a suit.
Thus nervous apprehension hotly cooks…
for violating what the time is for,
I felt quite anxious writing sonnets there,
for teachers can be lenient or strict
and both exist today and evermore -
so play on whims and tiptoe everywhere
or agitate and freedom shall constrict.

Sonnet CXCVI

When six years old, my hands were quickly taught
to write in printing first. My b’s were d’s
(I mixed them up), but still I persevered.
The more I wrote, the neater letters got.
Amanuensis to my teacher’s scrawl,
when eight years old, my eyes saw cursive b’s
and copied them, enslaved to lettering.
And quickly, cursive writing stole my paws,
and everything I wrote was cursive script.
I kept on writing cursively in school,
for teachers never said which one to pick,
until one day my penmanship was whipped
by criticism. Mr. Scott said, cruel,
that cursive was too messy.
                                        Back I switched.

Sonnet CXCV

The hidden message of my spectacles
reveal themselves when suddenly they break:
when fragile arms are snapped when lightly pulled,
when during cleaning, lenses fly and break,
when nose pads slip, escaping to the lull
of irretrievability, to stay.

And subsequently, breaking them unfolds
a glasses’ strange enigma, like a cat
awakening from slumber large and fat,
to show us just how frail he is – and old.

Thus parts appeared before my eyes like gold:
the nose pads, arms, a lens, and parts like that.
They screamed their frantic memo when I sat
on pairs of them – “Please fix me now!” was told.

Sonnet CXCIV

I waited for my blue retainer when
my braces fled. Two days had passed before
they put my piano sticker in the core
- a nice allusion to my hobby - then
they gave the jewel to me on Thursday, hence
I wore it like a prize – a painful ore
or gem – from months of suffering and gore
retrieved. This trinket was the treasured end!

Well, now I take it out and look at it
instead of wearing it like I should do.
But then, remembering my given rules,
I stick it in and swallow quite a bit.
My words are foreign, odd and strangely new,
the work of my retainer, brightly blue.

Sonnet CXCIII

Machinery and scissors, large and great.
had chipped away and shined and flew about
my teeth, obedient like frightened clouds,
directed to those instruments with hate,
a-brooding gloomily below their weight.
And yellow sparks of bonding glue had found
their nasty way, with water, to my round,
astonished eyes, insulted by the spray.

But it was done, at last. I rinsed my mouth.
Yet put back to the chair once more and shocked,
they put a pinkish mixture in my mouth
to take impressions, gagging me with love.
When done, they let me rinse my battered mouth
once more. And thus the braces were removed.

Sonnet CXCII

That day was dim and filled with crude remorse.
“I don’t want braces!” one could hear me pout,
but nonetheless, they took the spacers out.
I lay sprawled out while tools had screamed and roared.

Then I remembered, early on, before,
my teeth grew fast and fast they fall right out
and Mom had said, without a swaying doubt,
that all my teeth were pearly white - and more.

But then I fell at Sea World, chipped a tooth.
The poor replacement squeezed the rest around.
But sitting, flipping through a book of hues,
the times with braces in my head were found
and almost sad, I chose the solemn blue
retainer. Then my braces came right out.

Sonnet CXCI

MY GOD.
                Barack Obama
                                       was your choice.
He was, or wasn’t he? He’s worth your vote!
He’s better anyhow than Mister Old
and Miss Alaska-Gal, all bright and coy.

MY GOD. I actually don’t care a bit
to study for my math test. For this day –
MY GOD…this night of voting – isn’t play.
It’s real. It’s now. It’s not some fad to hit.

With seconds, minutes left, go vote or think
at least, politically. Discard the rags
of commonplace and trivial pursuits.
Don’t let your government and life just sink!
Take action, make your nation firm, not sag!
Or if you won’t, just watch the goddamn news!

Sonnet CXC

I wish I could leap backward to the sky,
remain there, never to come back to Earth.
I’d leave the atmosphere and upwards fly
to lunar lands and planetary dirt.
I’d dance around the rings of Saturn’s side
and float in gases blue and cold and pure.
I’d float back then to burning suns and fry
in lovely warmth and searing hot allure.

But landed back on Earth, in dying warmth,
I wish for more exotic life and times.
But writing and escaping like a bird,
I fly beyond confining dirt and tar
and soar to bliss or tears - or more sublime -
to places never seen, through magic words.

Sonnet CLXXXIX

How long ago those pills had danced inside
my maddened head, the key to sleepy death.
It seems like yesterday the water’s breath
was comforting, a friend that would abide
and smother me in welcome suicide.
It seems the plans I made are new and fresh,
exciting, festive, joyful happiness
that since departed as all thoughts should die.

But thankfully all that is gone and now
replaced by hope – more truthful in its form,
more loyal in its character but proud.
No more shall sadness land beside my shores
or in my seas. Instead, within my ground
no fears abound nor cruelly wage their war.

Sonnet CLXXXVIII

A pity autumn colours fleet too soon:
I would have gathered them within the arms
of memory, but now I am alarmed
because their beauty is escaping far too soon
to far off worlds, of which there’s endless noon.
And there is where great happiness is farmed
and painted with my fleeting hues afar,
conditioned with the silver rays of moons.
But staying with me skeletons of trees
shall comfort me, as aging, turn to white.
Their emptiness apparent from their knees
and skinny arms, both starved by gloomy night.
Yet neither trees nor I shall cry or weep,
but reach toward the moons where losses die.

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 CLXXXVI

The morning, groggy grey and solemn still,
had hushed the breeze, which wheezed so peevishly.
The churning of the bus was blasphemy
to quiet dawn, reflected in the hills.
The world was blur beyond the window sill,
perched silently above my leather seat
inside that lurid bus. I saw the trees,
the houses far away, a mill,
and then the cemetery by the church,
a little patch of names on tombstone squares.
My memory, by all those names incurred,
remembered all those names from everywhere,
the names of streets named after those who were,
an everlasting farmer’s tribute there.

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 CLXXXIII

The popcorn’s littered on the ground and rug
and in their hair. Like fireflies and moths
dismembered from the night and swiftly lost
(astray in happy warmth and friendly hugs).
Vermillion from movie marathons,
their beady eyes are flaming ochre suns,
persistent, gnawing movies; mouths a-froth;
the monsters all around the clock are up.

But fattened from the peanut butter’s taupe,
they’re hungry still and feed their growing greed
with movies, scary, wrapping them in fear.
But also wrapped in blankets, red and mauve,
they scream and yell and cackle, shout and screech;
but all in fun, for none shall shed a tear.