Sonnet CCCLXV

I am - too happy on this modest day.
The oxygen owns no unearthly charm;
but as the sun embalms the lucid way,
my wonder greets the breeze upon my arm.

Bouquets of unrequited smiles prance;
their pirouettes spin aimless on the grass.
Eternities resound their empty dance
as pliant leaves sift through the hourglass.

I cannot forecast all the grievances
that each covert Tomorrow seems to know.
I cannot cause the Heavens to descend
or pause Fortuna's wheel forever, though:

As I recall the morsels of this hour,
no mournful day shall ever wield its power.

Sonnet CCCLXII

A picnic we could have on ruby Mars,
upon a single orb of crimsonness –
surrounded by the solvent swaddling us,
delighted by the swarms of smiling stars?


If universes sang in students’ jars –
perhaps, perhaps! If dreams and fables lived
in every Erlenmeyer flask and dish,
how many poets would be turned to Bards?


Some silver snow bewitches ether skies
in Lotus Lands designed for gleaming eyes!
A foreign galaxy must beckon tales,
beyond the formulae and recipes –
it must transcend the ordinary Jail!


But is it only hapless chemistry?

Sonnet CCCXLII

The moths flit through the sea, ephemeral;

each emerald wave progresses quicker past.

The sky is blushing like a love-struck girl

and dreams, her troubled forehead overcast.

The youth of day, her liveliness fade fast;

great mountains frame the twilight of her face.

Her blazing iris tumbles shut at last:

the birds come flying for one last embrace,

imparting to that cheek an everlasting grace.

When laid to rest, surrounded by the earth,

unseeing eyes shall still observe this place.

The clouds forever sail this planet’s girth -

No death could steal them from my feeble grasp;

and evermore the grass shall faintly rasp!

Sonnet CCCXXXIX

A thousand voices carolling,

Each shaded by the canopies of spring:

So often have I heard their charming song,

Not knowing where their tiny hearts belong!

I’ve sought the secret of the stony skies,

But never have I found that hidden prize.

Though dare I say they blush a brighter blue

Whenever their beloved trills a tune!

The grass has glowed with jealous emerald;

The sun has shone with gentler, warmer gold.

As if the world would bend toward their whims

At just one ringing note of songbird hymns!

There’s magic pouring from these feathered throats –

Have brighter seraphs ever sung such notes?

Sonnet CCCXXIV

This caterpillar never learns to crawl,

but quivers from a tree branch, scorned by all.

It hangs to ripen with the rain and sun,

until its skin is soft and hue is dun.

This brooch of precious pearls and ruby gems

is now the butterfly upon each stem.

It’s only till we taste them that we know

that they yet to darken and to grow.

The darkest ones, as black as charcoal ink

are unmistakable as night itself.

Their violet innards stain our fingertips,

collapsing at our touch into themselves.

Around the berry tree we dance around –

to pluck the jewels to pop into our mouths!

Sonnet CCCXXII

The human heart is full of treachery:
for some know wicked arts of flattery,
which – fused with coldness – prove unstoppable,
transforming wise men into simple fools.

The moths are hiding on the bark of trees;
the katydids blend in with all the leaves –
such sly deception’s even learned by them!
Beware – the world is full of wicked men!

But time and time again we’re aptly fooled:
an eyespot here, a clever colour there!
How hated is that smile, so amused,
concealing such betrayals of our care!

We’ll one day read the patterns of the moths,
or else we’ll still be fraught with rage and loss!

Sonnet CCCIX

The hand that lives upon my left is virtuously good,
an advocate of chastity and humble purity.
My right hand dwells in boastful hubris – symbol of his greed!
My left hand sheds humility, of which my right hand should.

A pearl’s obtuse ambition stems from beauty in his plum.
Imaginings of greatness cloud his sphere – and like the sea,
ambition turns to laziness, and then to servantry –
accentuating other beauties, complimenting them.

The right hand wishes excellence; his talents justify.
In awe, we read his sentences, all crafted by his pen;
we hear his soaring melodies, and wear the clothes he mends –
And yet, his over-zealous flair is nothing but a joke.
In truth the virtue of the left is heightened by his friend –
the right’s distraught flamboyance causes need for humbleness.

Sonnet CCCVII

The great economy of Spring is paralleled by none:
she’ll lease a birdsong lest we’re bored – but only to the trees;
she’s miserly with sunny warmth and sheds it grudgingly;
she only spares a tiny slip of ordinary sun.

Each gesture’s full of luxury, but counted in her sum,
and in the end we’re left with scraps, all small and crude and cheap:
a sliver of a heated ray, a menacing zephyr –
and even time is spent with care; it slowly sticks as gum.

It’s not until a month or two she spends some more and more;
her time is thrown away – like that! – and soon she starts to give –
her gold, the sun; the grass, an emerald – now shared as gifts.

As if she’s realized she’ll die; decides to spend it all –
and yet we know that’s not the case, in fact, the opposite –
that Spring – warmed by a guilty coal – has just begun to live.

Sonnet CCCV

I tumbled in a world of poetry, unknowing then
it planted many unborn seeds within my growing head.
When life became more cruel and difficult and more bereft,
I wrote. Those early seeds exploded, eating up the sad.
It turned to times I lost what little that I used to have –
and namely things like dignity and peace and happiness.
and even cherished poetry was causing buoyant debt;
the rhymes turned darker, weaker, pushing me toward the mad.

And how has poetry transfigured me? I’ve learnt to live,
and to express, of course. I steal the world a second time
to take in all its details differently and make them mine.

Now everything’s a poem and everything has sharpened since.
I can’t say phrases properly – they always tend to rhyme!
How much my life has changed – now poetry’s my way of life!

Sonnet CCCI

I think – at times – I cannot live without my poetry.
I’d die without a haunting verse - some mirror of the world;
some puzzle clarifying life where other methods err –
and yet, I’ve lived a week with naught a poem by my seat.

But have lived? And have I truly breathed? And have I seen?
There’s never breath without a poem’s chilling murmur under,
and never sight without a poem’s complex face to ponder.
Is life a life without my strange, beloved poetry?

It’s better never understanding odd, poetic hints;
to never know a poem’s cunning power more than ink;
to never read a line until the mind begins to shrink –

than knowing how elliptical it is, and radiant:
how scarce and well-placed crystals shear the heart like swords of steel,
disrupting dull routine with contemplation’s seal.

Sonnet CCXCIX

Her crimson nails were blazing on the windowpane,
competing with the burning bushes down below.
The autumn wind was blowing children to their homes,
the afternoon already finished up again.
She put her duster down and watched them pass and play,
like dandelion puffs now drifting past her toes.
Their hair was jet against their shirts like granite crows,
their shirts now wrinkled like the leaves – some mother’s pain.

A horrid wistfulness welled up inside of her
as laughs rang through the window’s crack to pester her.

She closed the window, shutting out the bitter chill.
She has her money, home, a husband – all so nice –
but not a boy or girl. And then, before her eyes,
the school-kids passed beyond her placid windowsill.

Sonnet CCXCVI

There’s daily proof the sun adores the glowing moon:
he clears the stars come morning, spreading out his arms,
and dusts the sky until he sweeps away the dark.
What sweet devotion, lasting past the heated noon!

But like a housewife, cooking, setting out the spoons –
his work’s in vain, and ruined by a single star.
Her children ruin beds, then tear the house apart;
his lover smears the spotless sky with starry shoes.

And yet, it’s loving effort keeping “house at hame”,
and sheer compassion keeping wicked anger tame.

So, still he waits, his ardour flaming like his light.
He waits eternally until the ceiling cools;
his hot anticipation’s mighty as a fool’s –
and steadily he loves, that husband of the night!

Sonnet CCXCV

No King deserves such precious gems of finest quartz!
Look how they shine – like diamonds on the frozen earth,
so crafted carefully in perfect, rounded pearls,
a lacework crystal painted on our earthly floor.

No Queen deserves these diadems, just past my door!
Observe these clear tiaras, lacing trees in mirth,
their arborescent vanity a tool of hurt,
disdaining icy sceptres, shining from the porch.

No royal house can purchase such bijouterie,
which serves to decorate that Mother Nature’s greed.

Her winter vesture’s free for us to violate:
her gown of finest snow is dotted with our prints;
her polished nails upon the windows, ruined by our heated fist;
her valuables, with hungry eyes, we steal and desecrate.

Sonnet CCXCII

I closed the door, then opened it for just a peek.
The light invaded, charging from the corridor.
I gasped, and gladly shut the ashen door once more.
And heading to my silent bed, I feel antique,
my limbs as wooden as a dresser, calmly meek.
The night is welcome, taking me toward its core,
as lying down, I close my eyes and hope to snore,
so weary of the world and all the things I seek.

How easily we fly into that final sleep,
at last prepared for nightly graveyard where we’ll keep.

The weary day, come dusk, succumbs to restful night
and yet, there shall be times the night proves permanent.
Although it’s hard to die unto our cerement,
into that final sleep – how easily we fly!

Sonnet CCXC

A worthy novel grips me for a week or two.
Upon its end I find myself dissatisfied.
The themes are dull, the scenes are plain, the prose is dry.
Sparse millions of phrases drift unto the new.

A poem’s brief. Just forty words suffice for you.
And yet, those cautious forty words stick more in mind
than fifty thousand, spread within a novel’s bind.
Poetic words are crafted so they make us brood -
until – they’re solved – those riddles needing different keys,
depending on the eye unlocking what they keep.

Unlike a novel – poems stay with us, for life.
No tree nor sky nor robin looks the same again.
We wonder how our poets craft such skilful rhymes
that so succinctly captive the lives we tend.

Sonnet CLXXXVI

My life is Palette, Brush is pen, and thoughts are Paint;
my Canvas, you, unpainted by my vibrant hues.
Each strange occurrence makes a colour, if I choose,
and finds its stumbling way to tarnish your terrain.
Your whitish square’s confining, sometimes such a pain;
the guidelines of your edges trap as if a glue.
Alighting from your surface angers you -
I scrap the masterpiece and paint your mind again.

I paint again, again, although the paint is scarce,
and Palette dries my Brush’s bristly little hairs.

The hues you’ve seen before; you’ve sniffed their toxic fumes.
And yet I paint, my similes this cautious red,
my metaphors a runny green. But find the room,
and see my art, display the Paint, expose my head.

Sonnet CCLXX

My mind is partly put at fault for arson’s crime,
although the world provides the fuel and grime.

Sequestered in a quiet room, the world’s alight:
surrounding winds destroy the silence with their games
and thoughts ignite my barren walls with tarnished flames.
My windows bring the sun in, seat him at my right,
his bars of light as gracious as a gentle dame’s.
My pencil flying, unaware, preparing, aims,
then picks the marks and sends me soaring, off to write.

Sprayed on the page, one never sees the criminal;
the Inspiration’s hidden; so’s Identity.
Perhaps the only thing you’ll see is memory,
collected here, a souvenir of short ago.

Sonnet CCLXIV

I cannot write in prose; I’ve lost the simple art.
Its sentences are hopeless chains I cannot move,
its massive paragraphs, the bricks I mustn’t use.
I love my dainty forms, succinct and sharply tart,
creative, flexible, compliant to my heart –
but structured if I wish. There’s logic in its shoe,
which taps a metre one may recollect anew -
but prose is sensible and sombre; rigid, smart.
I rhyme, creatively insert a spicy word;
but prose requires plans and links and sense to work –
the things I gladly flee. I lack the sanity;
I hate reality; I’d rather hide in scenes,
subjective to the viewer’s eye, and comforting –
than sketch my life objectively, and vividly.

Sonnet CCLVII

A word is water, ever-changing, fickle, cold.
I pour you some, returning you to liquid thoughts,
which cannot live unless one drops the wordy drops.
We cannot tell if words have stayed in mind till old,
for forethought cannot permeate a water drop,
though colours do, and flavour can imbue with awe,
though plain remains, perhaps as dull and just as bold.

But like the water too, when words are spent and soiled,
they’re irretrievable and left at sea to cloy.

Then happenchance shall seal it with a kiss
of icy permanence. And shall it stay so proud?
Or melt away in vapour, gaseous like a cloud,
evaporating, sharing life, or else, abyss?

Sonnet CCLIII

I read her voice; I feel her sound; I hear her voice:
such is the spell that Emily still casts on me.
It’s only then – united through perception’s tree –
entwined between experience – we interlace.

The print is tactile, racing on my palms and face:
envelop me and let me ponder in your seas;
ignite my heart and send it spinning to the breeze;
exalt my sorrow – join it to your victim-tray.

And hang my heavy head to this – your clientele –
and cast a charm with ink, and dance your wicked spell.

Bewitch me; pour a poisoned potion; drown me now:
instruct me to behold myself in sorrow’s nest;
to fly away as birds, unto the rising West,
a voyage to a distant tree, a distant bough.