5 Handcrafted, Composted and Recycled Sonnets

Sonnets

I—Uh…So I Just Wanted to Say, Ya’know, We’ve Known Each Other…Uh…a Pretty Long Time… 

This evening the cuckoo and the corncrake.

But I never heard that.  Always, instead

It was our bower as children, a greenish, dank

As if the rain in bogland gathered head

On disregarded plate the maidens’ taste.

And therefore have I slept in your report.

So are you, to my thoughts, as food to waste,

Making dead wood more blest than living wart,

To eat the world’s due, by the grave and me.

They buried us without shroud or coffin,

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley

By the consummation of the swallow’s coughing.

            I find this frenzy insufficient. Reason

            Yet, what the best grist, take the worst season.

II--

Of neighbors sitting there where their mothers sat…

Then in the circuit calm, of one vast coil

This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps,

Shall Time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?

“Yesterday rocks sang when we tapped.

We found new tactics happening each day

Or state (it, self) confounded to decay.”

His knowledge of the world restricted to:

They are and suffer, that is all they do.

She had a horror he would die at night,

“For there is that about you in this light.”

“This door you might not open,” and you did.

“You are delayed…Here is no treasure hid.”

III

--Do thoughts grow like whethers, the dead end of life?

--Eh?  Why are we here, why is there even dust?

--Do halts grow like tethers, the dread rend of strife?

--Balls!  Where do they come from, those whom we so much trust?

--Whether or not you think it I am very serious.

--No doubt.  By the way, I have a new satellite radio.

--Well, by god, I hope it’s Sirius.

--Nothing that serious. It’s actually just XM radio.

--Letters from cranks, letters from wanks…

--Eh?  Do you think by asking the tough

Questions everyone will give you thanks?

I can bet you not. Take that to the bank.

--You, dear sir, certain no doubt would have the last word,

The final couplet though makes it sing like a bird.

--Ballocks to that you sound like a silly,

I’ll put a cap on you and make me my Milly.

  

IV

Up on my elbows, gazing, biding time,

The axe was nodding in the block, fresh-blown,

Good day, good day, good day, nodding at thyme.

--Dear, my forearms are sore and colored roan.

--Well, dear, you shouldn’t prop them up like so,

With your hand cupping your chin.  What do you

Think you are a Rodin? --I hoped I’d grow

Up to be a thinker, but what a view

I have here! I swear I’m just an eyeball.

--Jesus! Don’t fall, are you so starved you’ll lean

Over the precipice of Emerson!

--Dear, dear, that is not what I meant at all.

--Would you like a sourdough pretzel, t’would please?

--My dear, you never, ever have any cheese.

V—A Tragedy for Man was the Implementation of DNA Tests

Thou art too ugly to attend on me,

But come, let us go and inform the rector.

“We must laugh and we must sing!

We are blest by everything!”

O goddamn, please shut up, there is no we!

“The folly that man does

Or must suffer if he woos!”

I work all day and get half-drunk at night

And still I can only fuck you without the light.

“O come, you don’t mean it, you silly goose!

I’ve always let you hitch in my caboose!”

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what I know,

Have always known, know that I can’t escape,

Yet can’t accept. What more possibly give?!

“I charge thee wait upon me whilst I live.”