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 CCCXXIX

I cachinnate at all our three-chord songs,

at all attempts to fit in and belong.

Derision greets the slogans that I loathe,

the mindless humming of our T.V. shows.

But I discover what we all have known;

I dig, display emotions all have known;

subscribed to trends, like all have done before;

subjected life to patterns used before.

For we are humans, similar and all;

restrictions bind us to a common thread.

We tread for freedom, hear its blatant call,

but realize there’s only us ahead.

And we’re so all alike, recycling,

as if there is no news but our dis-ease.

Sonnet CCCXXVI

Exalted in the happiness of pain,

The world is crowning me with strange disdain!

How proud I’ll be within its reverie:

My wreath’s an honour, undeserved of me.

My rough exterior’s inscribed by hate,

a fitting way to demonstrate my fate.

(Or else, I seem too arrogant, too proud,

rejoicing silently of hateful crowds.)

But like most monarchs I shall take to bed,

a-weary of the honours I’ve received.

And soon, as words begin to crowd my head,

I realize I have many woes to grieve.

And hate accumulates as pride grows dim…

the world is mine, and yet I serve its whims.

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 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 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 CCLIX

Si tout le monde me fuit, je vendrai tout mes pleurs.
Et si personne n’achète mes pleurs, je les boirai.
Ainsi, les pleurs que j’aurai bu mettent à pleurer,
et dans cette belle façon, je flotte, je noie, je meurs.
Comme ça je pense, je meurs. Ce n’est pas franc de l’or,
mais tout le monde ne voient pas plus ma tristesse laide.
Peut-être inondés comme moucherons de mai,
ils semblent comme les grands aveugles, sans ses cœurs.

Ainsi, j’ondule à tout mes océans qui passe,
et même dans le décès je les regarde en masse.

Les océans me semblent comme les vrais amis:
ils recueillissent mes larmes comme souvenirs;
ils ne protègent de mal, monstrueux, nuisible, pire,
avec sa forte puissance qui mange mon corps et ri.

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.

Sonnet CCXLVII

I wish I could just mail this snapshot to your mind;
enclose it in a postcard’s monumental square:
for how these words dilute the how and when and where -
but now they’re all I have. I save the scraps I find
and knit them. Knit them. Knit them, hoping something’s right.
And no, it’s never perfect – never is. Despair.
My strange despair. I edit, groping, grasping air –
and all these lowly, meagre words are all I find.

Oh, just as well, I guess. Indite, indict my soul:
extract experience and hang it here in gold.

Or silver’s passable. Or maybe bronze or black.
Or blue, all splattered in explosions all in rage;
on napkins from the pizzeria; Yellow’s page;
a rotting test; or salvaged splinters – wooden track.

Sonnet CCXLV

Let’s hide away in dark, concealed from all the world;
and so alone we shall not be, but lone together here.
The outside world is noisy, loud, and full of cheer
as brooding, broth of us succumb to silence, pure.

Oh join us, friend, oh gladly join our dismal hurt.
Has Fate rejected you? Has Pleasure shed a tear?
Oh what a joy to hide, and such a wondrous year:
a year of dismal joy, a life of hidden hurt.

In darkness dancing, only voices transfer words,
and if our ears do die, our fingers fly like birds.

And if they die in darkness, what a happy death!
They’d die together here, so smothered in our grief.
And if the world is cold, it didn’t steal our breath.
We shunned its happy face and carved it in relief.

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 CCXXXV

If Nature is the Model, what is Purpose then?
To Mirror it as children do, much like the sea?
To Worship it, exalting all the lofty trees?
To Dwell in it, and spread its surface with our men?

If Nature is the Model, find it here again:
Suspended in a faucet, rivers run for me.
Suspended in a window, lights are suns let free.
Suspended in a box, the air is trapped within.

So shall the Purpose be to copy all its grace?
Or mutiny, rebelling from its youthful face?

Perhaps the Purpose shall be both, or else we lie.
Reflection finds its way into our lives with ease,
but variation finds its way to be appeased,
and so we run around, spin mad, or else comply.

Sonnet CCXXV

If ill-appearing discords issue forth from me,
speak not of them. But rather, hide them with your flaws
of human blasphemy. Outstretch your lying claws
with kind deception, masked with lovely flattery.
Ignore ignoble Conscience, screaming honesty;
it lies, despite what seems to be a wholesome cause.
How else do feelings stay intact, as thin as gauze?
We live on lies, existing on our treachery.

But lying here, how do you know I tell the truth?
Thus, therein lies the paradox of lies and truth.

You cannot know what’s hidden from your hungry eyes.
Lugubrious, I may be happy hidden here;
ecstatic, deep repose is clandestine – but near.
And what lies here shall be returned with other lies.

Sonnet CCXXIII

I have a lot of friends who love the opera too.
They come from France, Great Britain, Spain, and Germany.
A few are from the States and one’s from Italy.
I’ve others too, but I digress. Away we move.
Kind Beth of Texas is a mother and a muse,
and Phoenix is a nearby piano friend like me,
but she’s thirteen, won Nationals, and loves to teach.
I could go on: musicians, writers, artists too…

The world’s afloat with wondrous people, smart and kind.
The ones I’ve met so far are just like that, I find.

And yet, there are so many stalkers on the Net;
they terrorize and bully, like a bunch of fools.
However, all these contacts, friends, and such I’ve met
I found through websites, blogs, and other cyber-tools.

Sonnet CCXVII

So like I said before: I’d love to write for pay.
But like I said before, I won’t get much to keep.
I’d be so poor, unable to buy food to eat.
I’d starve as artists do, but write the livelong day.
And would I stay more happy, living in this way?
Some say you’re better off when following your dreams.
But if you’re poor, unloved, with little food to eat,
and still rejected, what are to do or say?

Just nothing, probably. Write manga for your bread.
Or else your masterpiece will stay unread.

So drift away, my lovely dreams of easy fame,
relaxing hobbies, happiness. It’s fun to write,
it’s fun to read, but real ambitions keep us wise,
and bring stability, what true happiness should make.