Sonnet Central Submissions
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- NEWER SONNETS -
"The man who climbs without a wistful trace"
The man who climbs without a wistful trace
At last another peak of lesser height,
Who, once ablaze in passion's fierce embrace
Can give a second justly what's her right
Is many times the man I'd seek to be:
For to renew the bloom of dearest love
Once more, beneath a different sun and tree,
As fantasy does hover high above.
My soul lies split below in pools of drear
Unfailingly recalling what has passed
And looking on what comes with doubt and fear:
Sanctified, our love is as my last.
The paltriest of moments that we shared
May not to coronations be compared.
Sonnet of Lust
You always serve a distant master well
and concealed my love long ago.
When I dreamed of golden cities bright
and harem brides with richest olive veils.
When love is first sight, you quickly arrive
bringing timely bodies most alluring.
I still used you to sin gracefully
and understand your softest voices now.
Like words whispered to my love that are gone,
you spent the gold coins we forged with our lives
and twisted the dreams of our drowning lives.
Lust's death is a shadow viewed through smoked glass
and only gives way to winter moonlight
as I serve my sins on the longest nights.
Ode to No one
A heart of loneliness is what I had
One filled with pure love, but no one to love.
The longing for thee is surely no fad.
The desire for thee I must now tell of.
Each night sleep escapes me so I lie there.
As I lie in bed there's one thing I wish,
One small, simple and desirable affair,
To feel thy hand and the touch of thy kiss.
Thy angelic face gives my life meaning
I only wish I could keep it for me.
It is e'er so hard to watch thy leaving.
But I must share it so the world knows thee.
Whenever ugliness invades my soul
Thy beauty will outweigh it a thousand fold.
The Start of the Season
Soft as a pillow, the clouds float on high
The Sun warming blankets so high in the sky
Gives way to a soft summer breeze below
Quickly melting the last fallen snow
When the flowers peek through at the onset of spring
You hear the choir of birds starting to sing
This is nature's way to the start of the season
Only God knows for what rhyme or what reason
Make every day of your life precious and right
Keep it honest and truthful, both day and night
Remember you are not the only soul on earth
So cherish each day for what it is worth
Make life's little tasks simple and fun
Rise up and take charge, like the rising sun
Uncle Gene
When I first met him I was full of joy
we used to play around all of the time
but when we met I was a little boy
and he was funny acting like a mime
I went over his house every year
mostly for Easter Break and Thanksgiving
and most of the time he brought me a cheer
and sometimes to see how he is living
Something happened to him that was real bad
ever since then I had asked myself why
I couldn't believe it but I was mad
he did not give me a chance to say bye
When my uncle had died I was thirteen
and I'll never forget my dear Uncle Gene
"To search one's heart is not an easy task"
To search one's heart is not an easy task.
I took a stand on what I still assert.
I must do this. I can't do what you ask,
Not even if you make yourself be hurt.
Yet each complaint still breaks me down again.
You catalogue each sacrifice you've done.
Your pleas show so much fondness through the pain.
Why do they all assume on my part none?
The more you call me stubborn when we fight,
The more you tell me your love I repel,
The harder it is for me not to write
As if it's true, when I would wish you well.
You tell me how you suffer,and you do.
Yet sometime you might see I suffer too.
Sonnet for Dylan Louisa - at 13
She rolls her big brown eyes; this woman child,
who once enamoured of my affection,
now dismisses my love. I am beguiled
of phone friends, of boyfriends. That collection
of sarcastic looks is so strange to me.
My Dylan whose nature was once so sweet;
whose cause once in life was only to be
mommy's little girl; we skipped up the street -
and I who once knew everything, she thought,
have become rather stupid, rather dumb.
I attempt wisdom, but she won't be taught:
"If you wear that I don't want you to come."
So much for my wardrobe; most all that I say;
My disapproving disciple, my peevish protégé.
Tell It Like It Is!
You poets and your highfalutin tone,
with all your Thees and Thous; God, what a joke!
You wear me down and bore me to the bone.
Why can't you talk like ordinary folk?
I heard one crooning just the other day:
"Whence wafts those fragrant fumes, my fair Clarice?"
Who cares? (I know from where, but I won't say.)
Forget your posturing and speak your piece!
Don't be afraid to twang a western drawl
in what you chirp, if that's your rightful voice.
And don't be so darn metaphorical;
not everybody drives a big Rolls-Royce.
I'd give my own left nut to hear a sonnet
that didn't have that Grey's Poupon smeared on it.
Day of Seasons
It's early morning now; fresh dew cascades on day
The sun newborn of wake and out of cloudless sky
Watch flowers unfold and bloom in eternal poem cliche;
Sidewalks coated with stardust, merry as I walk by.
The sun is higher now, summer's noon is real.
Sweat glistens from nature's every sticky, sunburned pore
People flock to the sands of time--summer evening teal
Children giggle as innocence and sunbaths sought still, ever more.
But even colors change as the sun begins to fall.
Schoolbuses and bookbags flaunt in apple spice breeze.
Shadows of summer heartache and loss start to call
To coveted strength, mortals' hauntingly true tease.
Decay of night, so brown, black and forlorn--empty--
Await the sun so desperately--stream through naked trees.
The Maiden's Sin
You told me we are Goddesses inside
And I rejoiced in Heaven's laws until
My altar form'd my deathbed from my pride
For Goddesses can't sin as mortals will.
For though that woman's face is not my own,
In Figure flaw'd lies yet my tarnish'd soul
And while one man's mistake is his alone
The Maiden's sin is bought with Woman's toll.
You tell me Jesus was a falt'ring man
While dying daily deaths for Mary's Sin
And with your first, your suicide began
For Worship is Contempt's more humble twin.
Eve ate the apple; you, though, drank the wine
God made her weak, but you made her Divine.
Siege Engine
Thus it was my heavy hand was stayed.
Their granite, sloping walls were breached, while mine
Lay shattered as was theirs. Her brown eyes fine
As many-prismed polished gems displayed
In settings far less fair. She so dismayed
Me with her honey-whispered prayer like wine:
"Spare my city, rather work your design
On me, where no man's hand has ever strayed."
I took her in my heady, molten lust,
Lust poisoned, linked in vaguest fear to her.
Her perfumed hair held just the slightest must,
An odor found in tombs and moldered dust.
Her claws and inch-long fangs were queer to her,
That city was, indeed, most dear to her.
Sonnet 1
When I think of her, the world disappears
I am lost in a realm of my own thoughts
I cannot be touched by even my fears
In this realm, the only truths are my wants.
The smell of her hair hits me with a bang
The look in her eyes makes my heartbeat stop
Each sense gives out a signal like a pang
The high I feel puts me over the top
As I come back down to earth from my dream
I wish that there were a way to break free
Some way to forget the way her skin gleams
For blindness to end and my eyes to see
Sight of her is the drug I keep taking
Having her is the peace I keep craving
Time's Transitions
For but a short while have I known your face
Our few final years of youth shared so fast.
Happy thought: that of feeling your embrace,
Aged at last, Passion will never be past.
Looking ahead, along life's long lever
I see us raising children to nurture.
Final thought: us together forever,
Youth found again, forward in the future.
Now nothing but distance comes near our dreams;
Short delay as we pursue the present.
A simple thought: surviving separate streams,
Growth requires getting caught in the current.
Past to present, tomorrow is today,
Through time lifelong, love will lead us always.
I Stare
His blond hair stood on end like grass,
Of what a brush is, he has not a clue.
His inky eyes like church glass,
Stained a bewildering blue.
His freckles cover his nose and cheeks,
Like little puddles of muddy water.
And his voice, the way he speaks,
Such confidence, ...a shudder.
At the table he sits, his friends all around.
he's funny and witty, not sincere.
He makes them laugh so loud,
About everyone can hear.
I liked him. Once again? I wouldn't dare.
Into his eyes, I can't help but stare.
Fragment: From a Lost Pair of Sonnets
So just to show that I am on it
I will write another sonnet
Inspired by the noble aim
Of having verse and metre just the same.
Some cynics may have stooped to say,
"A Sonnet? Yes, but only by a fluke" -
To them I offer this mild rebuke
And once more put my goods out on display.
If nothing else, this proves that I am funky,
And not just like that famous monkey
Who in a room, required to type away,
Did labour for an eon and a day
Producing nonsense, till at last he hit
Upon some random letters, which spelt out human wit.
The Power of Love
Ah, love, most strange with thy wondrous power,
Thy beauty to transform and gild things o'er,
'Till the gilding makes the gilded lower,
Replacing now what's greater than before.
And thy grace, a never-ending stronghold,
To draw upon, to fight life's battle through.
But, sadly now, when life must needs to fold,
The misery that the love should keep so true;
But life's the thing and through it love holds sway,
To bring the best of life to consciousness,
And smoothing strife and troubles day by day,
So making all life's hardness more the less.
Now courage to prepare when parting comes,
For better love, than none, through life it runs.
Tears
You make me cry and love you when you touch my
Cheek or hold my hand. And as you see
My tears you rush to stop the flow and try
To make them go with fingertips soft as the sea.
You say you won't be leaving, that you're still mine
Forever. You tell me to enjoy life though you're not around.
You stroke my hair and pour a glass of wine
And even through the silence love has sound.
But even as your footsteps fade from me
There's people stepping in to take your place
Cliché's like 'more fishes in the sea'
Don't hide the burning image of your face
So even as the gap between may grow
The love of you and I will always flow
This the Door I Did Not Dare to Open
This the door I did not dare to open
Of pain and fear, of general despair
Pervading my spirit, now to weaken
Asleep, yet not completely unaware
Of windows spread with sheets of tears for rain
Immobilized, forever I stand still
Weighed down and held by broad, consuming pain
It needs a room of nothingness to fill
What empty, cobwebbed room is this I find?
Is it a place reserved inside my heart?
It is; the narrow, hollow, lightless kind
Lest I become accustomed to the dark
I call to God Who lifts the heads of men
I sob and beg and fall and rise again