Category: Sonnet

ㅁ
The slug proceeded down the forest path.
It was a leisurely, one-footed stroll.
The sky attempted rain. But nature's math
miscalculated, missed that hoped-for goal.
Instead the damp air licked at leaves, and clouds
just hovered low and ominous, like ghouls.
In trees the birds made plots in secret crowds,
and droplets hung, undried, from leaves like jewels.
I took a walk, then, clearing out my mind.
The patterns shifted. "That's quite strange," I mused.
The randomness of things seemed all designed.
These apophenic turns kept me confused.
And meditating thus, a hole I'd dug
appeared. And so I fell. "Well! Hi there, slug."

– a sonnet in iambic pentameter.

ㅁ
Most potholes could not be compared to you:
the greatest obstacle I had yet seen.
So stealthily did you lie there, it's true,
awaiting my car's tires - you were quite mean.
The way to deal with creatures of your sort
involves a dodging kind of driving skill.
In fact it can resemble healthy sport,
but doubts and worries lurk beyond each hill.
Perhaps I sped along a bit too fast.
It seems I could have slowed down just a bit.
The luck I'd had in swerving could not last.
My god, that thing looked like a giant pit!
But in the end I simply hit the brake.
Behold, a pothole like unto a lake.

– a sonnet in iambic pentameter.

ㅁ
The rain had washed the world all clean:
  from the trees' branches hung blinded eyes,
    but mud-scrubbed stones held the road.
A bird sang suggestions, remained unseen:
  a purple fog had captured the skies,
    but a sun peered through a mist that flowed.
I walked up the gravel road a ways:
  feeling as if reduced in size
    by the looming trees with their secret code.
That rain had fallen for many days:
              time's old load.

– a curtal sonnet. I’m not sure how well I did. I tried to imitate the form invented by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, with a four-foot “sprung rhythm” and 10 1/2 lines.

A parrot made a noise, there, leaping -
I tilted head and looked across -
it flashed some green and red, in keeping
with brightish rainbow moods; the moss,

affixed to stones below and gazing
up greenly at the raucous praising
that spilled out happy birdish squawks,
undisciplined, unlike the rocks,

whose gentle, calm enunciations
could only offer echoes, cold.
The bird was hopping upward, bold,
and tracing out complex relations

that flowers sketched against the sky,
that raindrops tapped as clouds went by.

– some kind of sonnet

So I attempt to move ahead,
to set aside the brooding things,
but moods assert and dwell like dead -
like ghosts adrift on empty wings.

The spider webbing fills my head
with self recriminations, rings
of cloudy doubts and dreams, all led
across landscapes controlled by kings

who rule the shifting realms unsaid
and quite unsayable, till springs
snap shut and render into dread.

Perhaps in moving forward, then
I'll figure out solutions. When?

– some kind of sonnet, but it’s missing a line. Badly wrought.

(Poem #417 on new numbering scheme)

An unrequited love is best of all
because there are no compromises urged
because no complications will befall
because right from the start all hopes are purged.
Imagined generosities prevent
the flowering of jealousies unreal,
and finally the heart's desires are spent
in crafting verse the voice must not reveal.
Yet all along, new meanings can be made:
from castles, pure and abstract, words are flung
and later when those ramparts start to fade,
an apophenic anthem can be sung.
It's easy, then, to pine for that that's not;
and simple, too, to leave it: just a thought.

– a sonnet in iambic pentameter.

(Poem #369 on new numbering scheme)

ㅁ
I fall alone. I have blacked out.
A darkness now envelopes me,
reification both of doubt
and also of uncertainty.
A dream begins to coalesce
amid the bursting stars of aught:
A bone, a wing, dark paths, endless
images uncontrolled, unsought.
A meaning seeps out from between
the tiny cracks that draw or trace
their jagged, concrete lines, unseen
upon knowledge's edifice.
I spin in space. I harbor fears.
The moon is white. I taste my tears.

– a sonnet in iambic tetrameter.

(Poem #347 on new numbering scheme)

There's going down. There's going up. Which way
you choose to go depends on your desire.
Desire can lead, but those descents can stray:
long corridors with many doors require
decisions once again. It's better, then,
to walk the upward path. The clouds can serve
as steppingstones, and rainbows tell you when
to turn, and when to jump, and even swerve.
Well, all of this might seem fantastic news,
but there's a problem still. You don't yet know
where you might need to stop, and catch the views -
that mountain for example, with glaring snow:
it needs attention from the angels who
you hope might tell you plainly what is true.

– structurally, it’s a sonnet (of some kind – Elizabethan?), but I don’t think it’s very sonnet-like, thematically, and there’s too much enjambment.