I don't usually write poems within a formal style, so I thought I would give this a shot as an experiment. Here's a bunch of sonnets I wrote (and am writing) in September 2020. Maybe when I'm done I'll edit them down, find the best ones, and make a cute little zine?
The sunlight bursts in unshakeable beams
The white waves seep through the rocks on the shore
Could this place really be as holy as it seems?
The stained rocks below gong an echoing roar
The tree roots sink in the dirt past my feet
The bark smells wet through the sniff of my spine
The birds drown the honks from the distant street
And my soul inhales pleasure through a hushed whine
Consecrated ground feels light on my toes
As I move through the winding path
My eyes follow close where the chipmunk goes
As he blushes away from his dirt bath
I blink through the green of the leaves to see
The chipmunk and I learn to be carefree
My thin eyelids feel pressed and weighty
Three faces wait with a smirk and glance
I feel the tug of the one-eyed lady
Who invites me to a game of chance
The cards fall soft on the blue smokescreen
As the chimes ring faintly in the dark
The lights crash into the evergreen
The field appears with the singing lark
The folds in my brain find patterns forming
But the images yield no rhyme or rest
The field burns quick and the clouds are storming
And I'm heaving awake with a beating chest
I look to my side and see my heart
And smile to sleep with a better start
Of course I never knew you, though I know your words like verse
The ink you spilled on debt and love will never leave my brain
You left this world so early, and it feels quite like a curse
A blotch on this shitty year that will surely leave a stain
It says you died in Venice - a city of love and light
You died in a place that exemplifies what you gave to earth
I only hope we can carry on through your legacy and sight
And fill the world with happiness, anarchy, and mirth.
I hope you died knowing all the brilliance that you left
And knowing that someday we'll live in world quite like you craved
But God, taking you at 59 feels like some kind of unfair theft
And at times like this I often wonder if we can be saved.
But you never doubted, did you? You wrote and dreamt and fought.
So that's what we'll do, won't we? We'll give it all we've got!
The rumbling engines scrape the pavement
As the screeching mics punch the air
The winds carry sounds of depravement
As the skaters grind without a care
The noise can be a bit too much
For the slumbering townie in the lurch
But the static wakens up a touch
A smoky, raspy, carnal church
We've lived here long, the walls can say
The shelves are coming down
We'll tell the stories ourselves one day
And laugh at this beleaguered town
But now I'd really like to sleep
I've got boring promises to keep
What omens do you bring to bear
Upon the viewer staggering up the hill
I dare not linger long or stare
I struggle to choke down the bitter pill
But perhaps you are kind in your red stone heights
And you only wish to change us right
You do not see the hindrances or blights
You've felt our sonorous dreams at night
I'll walk with courage towards the dawn
And let you be our sentinel
I'll be your knight, your castle, your pawn
Don't stuff down our hopes with fentanyl
We'll stay awake for the changing tides
And let the towers be our guides.
If threads of blue could hold the past
If the white speckled strands told time
I swear I've seen the future that you've cast
In every embracing nursery rhyme
We've made it, you and I, as far as we dreamed
We treked across the land in reverse of our kin
The journey was not quite as perilous as it seemed
And we've hopped across places they've never been
I'm happy your with me, on my bed, in my hands
I hope it's been a quest worth taking
I'll trace the contours in all of your strands
And know the future is mine for the making
But when it's night and I gaze up at the dark
I curl up inside you - my floating ark.
The flicker blinks awake the days
When things were closer together
My eyes glaze through the digital haze
And wait for better weather
The empty ceilings start to melt
When the distant weeks feel eternal
It's hard to describe just how it felt
When you painted that staggering mural
In normal times, I love you in passing
In pandemics I feel your hand squeeze
I feel this earthquake inside amassing
I laugh, I sigh, I smile, I tease
With you it isn't so hard to be stuck inside
The bore melts away with the love-struck tide
Walking down the empty path towards the wood
You smile at the wolf and greet its warm breath
I wonder what you thought as I ponder where you stood
I wonder how you stood so confidently against death
You never clenched your fist or stared with derision
You always saw the birds as your friends and lovers
I wonder how you found the courage to make the decision
You pray for us now as the forest and nest recovers
I touch your robe - sometimes - when I'm asleep.
I imagine its coarse humility under my fingers
The hill to your stride seems so unfathomably steep
But the desire to feel the love you felt lingers
I ask you to walk with me again tonight
And let me reset in your piercing light
You do it to yourself when you look
You know what you shouldn't see
It's angled lure, it's piercing hook
Unravels the barriers within me
Shaking goosebumps, screaming rattles
Shiver up and down my head
Unsettled conflicts, unceasing battles
Cornered in the mind cage of my bed
The sweat will cease, the jumping end
But the claw will still extend out
I'll try and lose it around the bend
And, ventriloquizing, throw my shout
I'll end the panic in myself
And set the trap upon my shelf
I know what you did, I think about it a lot
The way you hurt doesn't sit well with me
I've tangled myself in the elastic of your cot
I've cut the ties that bind the sand to the sea
Why do you insist on respecting yourself
When you've hurt so many people like pawns
Your house is crumbling like this poor shelf
That gathers cobwebs on the neighboring lawns
I'll get over you and your abuse some day
I've already come so far as a boat against the tide
And sometimes I think about what you would say
When you witness the end of my magnificent ride
But what you say isn't important - I'll dismbark myself
And dissappear into the colored lights like a forest elf
See it reach up to the deep blue sky
Feel it streach its wiry limbs through the grey
It'll stop 'the end of time is nigh'
And keep the fiery end at bay
The green is resolute; it stands its ground
The brown is continous; it knows its home
Our fate to the leaf is rigorously bound
Our future rests on the deep brown loam
But I have faith in every individual working
I can see the network through the soil's edge
Always growing, always growing, never shirking
The standing measure it took as its pledge
So I will hug you with all my arms out tight
And believe in the beautiful edges of sight