i make you sonnets

now bury us inside a lover's grave
and let us clasp and kiss each other's bones.
beneath the overwhelming earthen wave
we'll measure out our love with littles stones.
our spoiling flesh will rot itself away,
staining nearby earth in underplaces,
where love-in-little-stones about us play
spilling through our skulls and out our faces.
sternum to sternum, our ribs entwining,
still, we dance through sunset color'd soil;
touch in places flesh was never finding.
and shuffle in each other's mortal coil.
for us a fading dawn will never break
the earthen lovely slumber that we make.

"blank-verse sonnet..."

questions, indirect

too often i will question lives gone past;
i must begin to think of future days,
like: where upon the map my foot might fall,
what words might sprout once there i plant my feet,
what paper i might ink my life upon,
how, bound into the spine of open roads,
a freedom steers me out to quiet fields,
to sleep between the rooves of car and sky.
somehow i keep forgetting how it works:
there is no mystery left to the past,
there is no question marking its events.
it crosses state lines, leaves statements behind.
as roads are paved by chasing unpaved roads,
leaps landed by faith, books by reading writ,
so life remains...a forward, leading question.
----------------------------------------------

because they give me a sense of accomplishment...

the separable soul

if i knew how to separate my soul
i'd draw it out like poison from a wound
give up the ghost and catch it in a bowl
to tranquil rest, commit it on the moon
and in that silver body, in a grail
far from the earth and its forsaken cries
my life would fester there and never fail
immune to those who kill and that which dies
if, from the body's moribund decrees
i could conceal the dying of my death
and so exchange the language of disease
to gain a tranquil, trance-entangled breath
i'd shed the contradiction of your charms
and shuffle off your mortal coiling arms.

Teach Me, Benvolio

(an english sonnet)

o teach me how i should forget to think
do more for me than liberate my eyes;
though roving, my eyes see her when they blink,
in blinking blooms the face of rosy lies.
give me something with which to replace her,
a potion with which i could cast her off;
ever if my eyes again do face her
my abled mind her image yet could doff.
show me something lovely in a new face,
in the dawn of some new mistress's eyes;
give me the sun, if moon cannot keep pace
or an enemy, if you think it wise.
so let us crush a cup of wine, and drink
and there perhaps i'll learn to forget to think.

Penelope, I wonder...

By day, with words, you string us all through your loom;
A tapestry of suitors, rapt, around you.
When night stretches out, you retreat and resume
Teasing threads out of the world we’ve woken to.
I am Nobody, no name yet to assume
Till I stretch it on a bow and string it through.
I, your lover/hater, plucking out our doom,
Last alive, home at last, 20 years to you.
I’ll remember what we’ve made a secret of
And ask if you’ve ever moved it from its place.
I have come back for you, through Hell and High Seas;
Will you still mean it if you call me your love?
If I read suitors, strings, that loom in your face
I’ll not forget my Calypsos and Circes