Transfer Records

Torres fifty million
Thirty-five for Carroll
Torres leaves vermilion
(Now Andy's apparel)
For a bluer color
And the Champions League;
Newcastle is duller
But has cash. Fatigue
Was Fernando's reason
Why he didn't play
Now for half a season
Things won't be that way.
Next year who can tell?
Chelsea, why not sell?

Snowed

It doesn't look as though it's going to snow
But then, it rarely does until it does.
Why telegraph that you'll be letting go?
It's far more fun when no one thought it was
Coming, or believed the warning signs
Than when it's been prepared for. A surprise
Is always better when it tingles spines
And raises goosebumps. Looking to the skies
To see a cloudy danger written there
Would be anticlimactic; now, however,
It looks as though it really wouldn't dare
To snow - and so we dare to think it never
Will. But think how sweet it is to lie:
Expect the snow out of a clear blue sky.

Snowbird

When the white comes over
Nothing can explore it
Falcon, raven, plover,
All of them deplore it
For the white refuses
To allow them flight time
Daytime it abuses
(Also ruins nighttime)
Therefore they take cover
Like all other creatures
None can even hover
Over blanked-out features
So the birds are huddling
While the snow is puddling.

Muse

My muse is my depression, which extrudes
Itself through poetry. I do not feel
The harsh swings of emotion and dark moods
My words seem to imply, but they are real.
They simply slide out of my nether brain
Into the verse without my feeling them;
That's why I write the poems: to contain
The darkness in my soul, which I condemn
And push aside, keeping my lighter thoughts
So I can always smile. When I cry
The tears arrange themselves into bon mots:
An epigram, a couplet, or in my
Usual mode, a sonnet. So they form
Poems and I write them to stay warm.

Bust

Someone has scratched away the windowpane
Until you cannot see - but if you squint
It's all still there. You simply have to train
Your eye to see despite the grayish tint
And half-obscuring lines. Peer past the cut,
Look outward and beyond into the sky,
And there you'll see - well, I don't know quite what,
For I can't look beyond what blocks my eye,
So I can only see a scratch or two,
A whirligig of frozen motion, stuck
Within the window, denying the view,
Which I assume would be of slush and muck.
But look yourself. Perhaps you will see more.
I used to think that's what windows were for.

Rom Com

Romance is not a comedy, I fear
Although quite entertaining at its best.
Of course, when it is full of life and zest
It does approach - indeed, it comes quite near -
Comedic resolutions, but the sheer
Importance of it wards off laughter, lest
Embarassment should follow. What a pest
That laughter is. Because of it we steer
Away from comedy and towards the deep
Dull ocean of a drama. If we said
That comedy meant marriage, not guffaws,
Perhaps we would find more of it. Instead
Romance is close to drama, and must keep
Itself enclosed by those sad, weighty laws.

To Arms

There is no reason for this expedition;
It only left because of boredom's call.
It will not lead to any great sedition
Or make a new dictator quake - or fall.
There is no greater consequence herein
Than that we will, perhaps, feel less ennui.
And so the best adventures oft begin,
After-effects of inactivity.
Where will we go? What will we do? Who knows?
The hours would tick off if we stayed home,
But doing this is something, and it shows
Perhaps a willingness in us to roam.
So let the time go by, and let's do this;
It's not like there is anything we'll miss.

Awareness

How honestly can I describe myself?
I am not blind to all my faults and flaws,
And yet there's something in me hems and haws
When asked about them. On some inner shelf
There is a folder, marked For No One's Eyes,
Which holds the errors I'm aware I've made,
And should its contents ever be displayed
I fear the consequences. My mind lies
Secure in the awareness, or the hope,
That this will never be, and I will stay
Safe in my secrets for another day.
For surely there is past sufficient rope
Within that file, which even I don't read,
To hang me for the thought, if not the deed.

Ease

Every time I look at you, I see
The warmth, the kindness, and the happiness
That makes me love you. When you smile at me
It empties every possible distress.
The joy you hold, and seem to always give
Freely and openly, is what I treasure;
Seeing your face allows me to relive
My happy moments in their fullest measure.
Even when stressed, or somehow ill at ease,
Your presence fills me with serenity
And watching you be happy seems to freeze
Whatever inconveniences might be
Otherwise around. Stay by my side
And let us let our silly troubles slide.

Spring

The curfew lingers but the city burns.
The streets are empty of policemen, but
Full of the people, crying, chanting, singing.
The calls for change insistently are ringing
Through streets that should by order have been shut.
Is this how the pre-dawn shadow learns
The sun is rising? Or is it the glow
Only of fire, falsely from the east
Pretending to be day? How can we know?
Until the possibilities have ceased
To change, we cannot from afar foretell
Whether this is freedom marching in
Or simply just another form of hell
Enveloped in destruction, fire, and din.

#jan 25

How does a city rise? Not on its own,
Not easily, not quickly, and not on
A passing whim. When frustration has grown
In long and empty years, and time has gone
On past the people, when the days are dark
Have been for generations, but the sky
For once might promise dawn, when the spark
That might be fire is taken for day
And forced to be a sunrise, when the cry
Becomes too loud to be ignored or muted,
When people look out in the street and say
Today I will go out, what was saluted
Is suddenly rejected, and no fist
Can tell the city it cannot resist.

Free

Let me know what I should do and I
Won't do it. Yeah, that's not really my thing.
And no, I will not even answer why
Nor answer why I am not answering.
I'll do what I want to, and only that;
It's up to me, and that's how it should be.
I have no interest in a messy spat,
I simply mean that I will choose for me.
I'll take your input, sure, but be prepared
To see me just ignore it, if I choose.
My will will have its way, and, unimpaired,
I'll do my liking. So, if that's bad news,
Just deal with it. I know my wants, my taste,
And violating them would be a waste.

Sinworn

I was a better man before all this
I must confess. I fully blame myself
That could not taste a mere potential bliss
And not desire more. That little elf
That whispers in my ear "this could be yours"
Was busier than normal, and I heard
Only what I wanted to. Wherefores
Are useless; I was simply overcome
By my own foolishness. Had I preferred
The wiser counsel I received from some,
I would be better off, but I ignored
All other urgings but my worse desire.
And so I waste the goodness I had stored
And pour my virtue out into the fire.

Crash Into Me

Death came out of the moonlight, and he wheeled
Hawklike above the empty, shining plain,
Dove into plummet, and in that revealed
The object that he sought. But sudden rain,
In sheets descending from a clear dark sky
Hid it from sight; from even his blank eyes
Which look eternally and can descry
The tissues of a life. In his surprise
He fell out of his stoop and struck the sand
Which drank up rain and death in one great swallow
And then closed up. Upon the sodden land
There were no tracks or markings one could follow
To find the grave of death. And there he lies
Waiting with patience 'til the desert dries.

Lament

When will it stop, O Lord, when will it stop?
When will I find release from pain and sorrow?
Each day it seems my grief has reached its top,
And somehow every single damn tomorrow
Finds more to cram into my wasting life.
A cough turns to a cold, turns to a flu,
Which manages to cut me like a knife
Where nothing can assuage it. If I knew
When it might stop, when I might find relief,
When all the pains (not merely physical)
Might end, and give at least a stable grief
Rather than its permanent increase,
I might be able then to be grateful
For life and breath - but now, I need release.

There Will Be Time

If I had spoken, then maybe I could -
No, that's a fantasy, and undeserved.
I've always been a little bit reserved,
And so I could - it's simply that I would
Not. And I have often found it good
To be the man I am, so had I swerved
And changed myself, would that really have served
My own best interest? Or would it have stood
Out as a sore thumb, marking me a fool
Who changed his principles to get what he
Perhaps could not have gotten anyway,
And doing so broke every inner rule
Of proper conduct and propriety?
Best not to speak when nothing's right to say.

Do

What would you have me do? If I were free
Perhaps - I do not say for certain - I
Might offer you some hospitality
And with that maybe more. But don't ask why
I do not now; you ought to know. Don't lie,
The situation's just as clear to you
As it has been to me. I cannot try
(And do not promise, though you'd like me to
That I would if I could). What can I do
To make you satisfied, within those bounds?
If nothing, then you see my point of view:
It's just as irritating as it sounds.
Stop pestering me; live your life and let
Me live my own. That's all that you will get.

Investigation

Truth will out. It will not always come
How you imagined it, or how you'd wish;
It will not always beat the loudest drum,
Or be too obvious. If you go fish
For truth, it may not come up in your nets,
Or if it does, you may not recognize
What you have caught. If you place bets
I would not give you odds that you can size
Up truth when it appears. But it will out.
No matter what the trouble, or how slow,
It will come out, and so I have no doubt
That there a truth that someday I will know
That now I would, with vehemence, deny;
But when I learn them, I will wonder why.

Writer's Block

Blank, blank, and nothing there but endless white,
Intimidatingly unfillable
Stretching forever out into the light
An aching record of the possible,
Convertible into whatever form
An all-aspiring mind might yet conceive;
Prepared, inviting, waiting for the storm
Of pure creation, and eager to cleave
To any mote of inspiration that
Might float down from on high, open to take
Any impression; visually flat
But ready to be reared. What could I make
To justify my use of such a space?
I might create, but then I would erase.

Tell Me What's That For?

If I will toss and turn an hour or so
Before I can drift off, why, who's to blame?
Is it my neighbor, who, I'll have you know,
This night, like every other evening, came
Back to her rooms at one a.m., or two
(I'm not sure which), and turned her music on?
Is it the friend who called me (as you do)
Around that time say his girlfriend's gone,
And ask me for advice? Is it the girl
I wish would give me even that attention?
Is it my job, which keeps me in a whirl
All day long? Or is it just convention?
No, it is none of these; it's only me
Who never can find sleep efficiently.

Meal

I stir the sugar into my oatmeal
And watch it brown, even as I stir,
An action which forever seems to seal
The fate of this small bowl, for if I were
To turn about, and stir it once again,
The brown would only mix more thoroughly;
There is no way to stir it back to when
The two were placed into it separately.
And so the bowl will hurry towards its grave,
With entropy increasing all the while,
For there is no way now that I can save
The white oatmeal, or grainy sugar pile:
They are forever mixed, and will be so
Even when eaten, as I will soon know.

Fair Side

See her expression in the windowpane
Ghosted among the tracery of frost,
And wonder at it. Sometimes she is plain,
Or, if not that, not overly embossed
With what the unaffected mind might call
The deep inlays of beauty. But when she
Looks in herself, and all unguardedly
Allows it to shine out of her, I fall.
For when I see unmoderated her
I cannot look away. It is so rare;
Move and the veil falls down. I do not stir,
But simply watch, and wish that I were there
And she still so herself. But if I came
She might remain, but would not be the same.

Got Your Tongue

Imagine if the cat could talk. I know,
It almost seems as if he did already,
But think of it. Real words! Then he could show
A grateful world the fascinating, heady,
Exciting feline universe, and tell
Astounding stories of his sense of smell.
Who am I kidding? You and I know him;
He would not speak a word unless enticed,
Or struck by some suprising, random whim.
Maybe he'd ask our help in some great heist,
But otherwise, we safely may assume
A talking cat would be no different
Than what we have: curled up in a warm room,
Lazy, but with insidious intent.

Success

Although I should not boast, I can be proud
To say my sonnets have had some effect;
Not that all who read them have been wowed,
Nor that their satisfaction is unchecked.
Rather, when reread they seem to do
Roughly what, artistically, I want,
Though some are fatted with a verbal stew
And others too reduced, too lean, too gaunt.
Yet in the main they seem to tread the mean
Between an under- and an overdone;
And those reactions I have chanced to glean
Are what I wanted when they were begun,
Or close, at least. And so, in happiness,
I may declare I have had some success.

Echo

Now, if my poems translate from the past,
Can you deny their feelings from that cause?
A sentiment that aged is known to last,
And can be compensated for its flaws.
Is it too musty? Then it can be set
Within a fragrant and refreshing line.
Is it a commonplace by now? Then let
It be presented in a new design.
But do not disregard that ancient words
Speak to emotion's universal reach;
Collective recollection undergirds
The lessons that the ancient poems teach.
So though the thoughts I think may not be new,
Concede that age does not make them untrue.

New Glasses; Or, This One's Obvious

Ah sweet ability to see
(Not that I could not before)
How strange you make me look to me
(A simple fact I can't ignore).
I used to have an image made
(Of course, only inside my head)
Of how my features all were laid
(And how that laying should be read)
And now I find you have quite changed
(Though that itself may not be ill)
What I conceived, and rearranged
(Impressive feat against my will)
The face that made me known as mine
(A miracle of strange design).

POV

I love a light sarcastic face
And I adore feigned innocence
When it betrays a mild trace
Of deep internal confidence.
The upturned quirk that's not a smile,
The hidden twinkle in the eyes,
Are symptoms that I always file
Away to help me realize
That I have found a kindred soul
Who sees the world the way I do;
On whom life will not take its toll
While she retains this point of view.
Give me that attitude and I
Will ask no more to satisfy.

Broken Ribs

In which confused conception of the world
Is it appropriate to laugh at me
For problems indiscriminately hurled
Hard at my head by unkind destiny?
Is it my fault my fortunes seem to be
Set on a downward track which, though I try,
I cannot swerve? Is it gentility
To add to that a shallow mocking cry
Or heap up on me as I wander by
Alone and luckless, insults which recall
The very fate against whose pain I sigh
And how I was before my latest fall?
Do not kick out at those around you who
Have fallen, lest someday that should be you.

Jokers to the Right

I cannot end well. Nor can I begin.
I'm good at middles though, or so I'm told.
Until, of course, they sudden turn cold
And start becoming ends. I cannot win,
For middles are not wholes, and I must gin
Up starts and finishes, or else they fold
Into themselves. And so I should be bold
And start and end: but there's more ways to skin
That cat, and I am always searching for
A prebuilt and prefurnishing beginning
Or nicely tidy ending to tack on
(Although sometimes I fear that that is sinning)
So that my middles will not anymore
Hang open at both ends and madly yawn.

Under Wordsworth

Scorn not the sonnet
Nor despise its wit
Write not upon it
Simply let it fit
Into its measure
Anything you write
Either for pleasure
Or even for spite.
Any single reason
(And some doubles too)
I can find a season
To ensonnet you.
Thus it is not treason
To write a sonnet true.

Clocks

What slips away while listening to clocks
Is not the time, and not the life that's left,
But peace of mind. The ticking minute mocks
The hours that it builds, as is some jest
Unknown to us were always being told
Just as the hand ticks over, and the chime
Were just a jut of laughter. It is cold,
That laughter, and it takes up precious time
Spent listening for jokes we may have missed,
And wondering what second hands might know
That we do not. Such secrets must exist,
Or else why would a minute always stow
Those sixty seconds in itself? The tick
Of seconds passing seems a dirty trick.

Uncommon Sights

I almost start to wonder if my eyes
Are going; floaters, flashes in the mist:
Is this the moment when I realize
I don't see things that actually exist
But rather shapes that body from my mind
And in the minor fiction of their being
By falsehood and insanity defined
Mock me for my so far imperfect seeing
Which conjures their existence, and beguiles
My other senses into joining in,
Imagining a forest of meanwhiles
Where nothing but a void has ever been...
Or is this just the start of a snowfall
Whose flakes are barely visible at all?

Alexander at Gordium

O, it will take a better man than I
To undo all those tangles carefully,
For though I should work at it 'til I die
(I doubt I have the patience) it would be
A task for those of greater intellect,
More built for logic than for daring deeds.
And though in some those skills may intersect,
I am not one. In me the courage feeds
On other food than logic and slow sense:
On intuition and on inspiration.
And so though some may later call me dense
I must refuse this task, for my vocation
Is to, I think, far other labors. But
If you insist on my advice, just cut.

KJR

I hear an old song on the radio
That seemed to speak to me. I can't recall
What station, or what song, but even so
I felt it called to me. Life seemed to stall,
Even at full speed out on the highway
And I just listened, while, terribly slow,
It said to me all that it had to say
(And that was nothing that I didn't know)
And waited for the crash, which ought to show
How much I felt, but doesn't - and the end,
I, still alive, restarted driving, though
The song stay with me past the highway's bend.
And yet I don't know why. Why should that stay
When other memories have blown away?

Marvels

Ah, look my love and see the clock
That, unresisted, ticks away;
Hear how its chimes our loving mock
And argue that we waste the day.
O, if the clock could cease to chime,
Then patience might a virtue be:
For we two would have all the time
We wished to be just you and me.
But yet the minutes tick themselves
Away in desperate insistence
And time into our loving delves
And finds there no resistance.
So quickly take enjoyment of
The fragile hours of our love.

Used To Be So Pretty

Pity me, the fool the who cannot speak
The words that well inside him - standing dumb
And capable only of keeping mum
Despite the harms such great silence may wreak.
O, pity me that, vacillating, weak,
Cannot express the omnipresent hum
That rises where my heartstrings seem to strum,
Nor find the solace that in speech I'd seek.
Yet though no words arise to show my love,
And every effort that I make may fail,
Though I am stuck in this extremity,
The model picture and exemplar of
Incapability, and though I quail
Before expression - do not pity me.

Remainder

And if she did not love me, ah, what then?
Would I be strong enough to still go on?
If all those evenings ending with the dawn
Wasted away, and I, alone again,
Were left to sit in silence in the den;
If summer picnics on the browning lawn
Holding each other, suddenly were gone,
And I no more to her than other men,
Could I still hold together? I think so.
For I am still myself despite such change,
And though the world I'd live in would be strange,
It would still be my world, and I would know
Myself, and who I am, and so would be
Secure, and strong, in still remaining me.

Sidelong

I see you look sidelong at me, stealing
A moment's observation as I catch
Your eye and turn away again, reeling
From recognizing how we came to snatch
A little bit of watching at the same
Time as each other - and I'm fairly sure
The gleam within your eye probably came,
Much like the one in mine, from a deep stir
Further inside you. For I look at you
Simply to drink the beauty of your face
And while you do not get an equal view,
I doubt I err when I detect a trace
Of love in you - it's certainly in me...
I note you seem to like that which you see.

Pass

I think you would not have me plumb my heart
In these bluff pages, open to the world;
I'm fairly sure you'd have my feelings furled
And neatly put away. But don't you start!
I'll write whatever I desire here,
And your advice, though valued, will not rule.
Do you imagine I am such a fool
To trap myself in words? No, no, I fear
The clean exposure of an open page
And place emotions in a gilded cage
Which catches them forever in a glass
Visible to all, and yet unknown
How old they are, or where they first were grown;
And so, I prithee, let my poems pass.

On Emotion in Poetry

So one obvious question that arises when I declare that I am interested in the process of crystallizing experience into poems is whether the poems that I write honestly reflect the emotions I experience; a related question is whether they are topical, that is to say tied to a single emotional moment. I have dealt with the former question to some degree previously. I will now endeavor to discuss the latter - with a touch of the former - in a bit more depth.

I certainly used to write completely topical poetry. I began writing sonnets because I was writing them to my then-girlfriend. They were about her. They were unabashedly about her (well, after my initial abashedness at writing them in general had faded, at any rate). They were clearly topical.

Since then, I will not claim to have completely abandoned topical poetry. It has its place; usually the poems I write in this way are exhortations of some kind, to help my friends or myself get through something. Sometimes they are observational, like about the weather or otherwise about nature. It is much more, I might say vanishingly, rare that they are about my personal emotions.

The reason for this is that I have come to what I think is a better place as regards writing the poetry of emotion. I used to, and to a certain extent I still do, believe that William Wordsworth's famous claim in the preface to Lyric Ballads that "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility" was false, or at least strongly overblown. However, I have come much closer than I ever would have expected to this position. I believe that poetry is best as a synthesis between remembered, felt, and imagined emotion.

Specifically, that means that poetry draws on emotions that were felt in the past, and the recollection of not only how they felt then but how they developed (in retrospect) over time; on emotions being felt in the moment of creation and how they feel then, and how they are recognized to have grown in the immediate past; and on emotional intuition regarding how others feel, how the writer may or will feel in the future, and how one might feel about something that is counterfactual. All three of these streams and their subdivisions can and should be sluiced together. A poem that relies too strongly on any one of the three, or particularly any one subset of any of the three, risks weakness and especially risks feeling shallow, insubstantial, or restricted.

The goal of this combination is to produce a poem that speaks as generally as possible while retaining a link back to the initial generative thought - whether that thought was imaginative, immediate, or memorial. If one begins by recalling emotion, one should also search one's current state for links to that emotion, and begin to contemplate imaginatively what that emotion might do or mean; if one begins in the moment, one should recall past experience and also move through the imagination towards a broader understanding of the moment; and if one begins with the imagination, one should always attempt to ground the feeling in something remembered or currently felt. The combination of these processes will lead to a general poem on a specific event, whether, as above, that event is an actual occurrence (recalled or immediately lived) or an imaginative act. The important point is that the poem both connect to the triggering thought and to the wider world or wider range of experience in the world.

So it is for this reason that, although there is a reason for writing every poem, I would no longer say that my poems, especially my poems about emotion, are truly topical or occasional. They are related to some triggering event, yes, but they partake much more generally in my experience and my imagination. They are general poems, even as they have a topic.

Expense of Spirit

What does it truly cost to spend our shame?
Is there a reason why we hoard it close?
Is it related to our fear of blame,
Or do we think there is some fatal dose
Which, if unleashed, will kill all that we love?
Is there a purpose to a shamefastness
Which is itself the very picture of
Inaction? Does it lead to happiness?
If not, why waste the hours chasing it,
Why try to keep our honor unbesmirched,
If, once we have the courage to admit
We do not need it, and it is unchurched,
We can be free? It is a social good,
Not individual, and so we should.

Rivers

I might suppose that you were right for once
If that weren't so ridiculous. How can
What you pretend be accurate? You dunce,
You ought to have known better. Be a man,
You say; acknowledge that the world has changed.
But if it has, which I cannot confirm,
Does that imply that I should be estranged
From what I love, or that I, old, infirm,
Decrepit, should be thrown away by those
I thought, and think, are best to me, like clothes
After a whole develops in them? I
Am sure that cannot be, and so I will
Deny your premise, what it will imply
And everything you say. Shut up; be still.

When I

When I consider everything I write
Is thrown upon the wind to live or die
I see the pages blowing out of sight
And whisper them a fondly sad goodbye.
The minute's labor that I thus bid fly
Will never trouble anyone again
And as I think of that I wonder why
I chose to write at all. And yet my pen
Will not be still, although I know not when
Or if the words I write are ever read.
For if I did not write, I know that then
What I love best inside me would be dead.
And so though writing is but vanity
I toss the wind my words perpetually.

Surfaces

It's just so clean and beautiful. It lies
In fluffy sheets surrounding everything,
An instant and adorable excess,
Giving soft greeting to inquiring eyes
That love its clear apparent gentleness.
It moves the wordless heart to rise and sing,
With joy, as if an unforeseen surprise,
Though all around could see what time would bring,
And so anticipate that it would bless
All those who felt or saw it. It will cling,
But no more than desired, and it flies
To all who look on it with happiness.
But ere you step in it, beware its teeth:
It may look pretty, but there's ice beneath.

Folger's

There's a chance of freezing drizzle in the air
The temperature is rising, but still cold
While ice still lies, deceptive, everywhere
Winter has not yet unlocked his hold.
The sun shines out, yet seems to give no heat
No children laugh or play beside the street.
Yet when I think about going outside
I do not care about the dreariness,
Or how the daily drizzle is applied
Onto the already disgusting mess
Atop the sidewalk. No, I think of you
And so get up to face the newborn day
Because I'll have another chance to view
Your happiness, and share it on the way.

Sight

I sometimes fear that only I, alone,
Can see the future-no, not what it holds,
But that it's there-that only I have grown
Up, and see the life that still unfolds
Before me. I can see a world where I
Have real responsibility and cares,
A world where deep concerns and troubles lie,
But where I'm comfortable despite their snares,
A world in which I know what I desire
And do it, following my chosen way;
But no one else can see it. I aspire,
And in aspiring see a brighter day:
But as I do, I see the night surround
My friends and hope that they are safe and sound.

Precipice

Things fall apart, and people do it too.
I crystallize my thoughts in poetry.
I try to leave them there and start anew,
But such a consummation will not be.
I lack the strength to make myself that free,
Nor can I push the thoughts I write aside:
They look up from the page and laugh at me,
And since I've written them, I cannot hide.
I see my soul in them, spotted and pied,
And quail from what I am, and how I think;
My inner self cannot help but deride
Its own obsessions, and I near the brink.
But every time I do, I realize
That taking that last step would be...unwise.

Cold Drip

There's something that's been percolating down
Into my consciousness: a realization
That has been brewing there for quite a while,
And every drip of it will leave a brown
Stain on my mind. It's this: no combination
Of fortunate events that I can see
Will bring me you, or make you want to be
With me. The taste of this provokes no bile
Bitter though it is. It only leaves
Me jittery, and makes it hard to sleep.
Yet I refuse to sweeten it. I'll drink
This knowledge to the dregs, although it cleaves
My tongue inside my mouth. No need to steep:
I can already sniff the its bitter stink.

Foul Is

My dearest wishes, if I uttered them,
Would make me too embarrassed to go on.
It's not that I would utterly condemn
Them to eternal silence, but their spawn
Might make them worthy to be so put off.
Of course, I'm never certainly I could doff
Those deep desires, but it's worth a try,
Or worth at least pretending they aren't there.
I'm not a very forward kind of guy,
So that, at least, is easy. I can spare
An hour or two each day to contemplate
Them in my solitude, but need not share
Their presence with the world. If that's my fate,
It's not the worst that it could be. That's fair.

Vampire Slaying 101

If Xander loves somebody, then beware
(Unless it's Buffy; that's a false alarm).
If you can't see a demon anywhere
Then count on it, they're somewhere doing harm.
Don't let someone behind you if they're not
A regular on camera, even if
They are a friend, 'cause they've probably got
A second face, more jagged and more stiff
Hiding behind the first. And bring a stake
On any stake-out - think about the name.
If you forget, just find a broken rake
Or any piece of wood; it's all the same.
And if you're looking through some musty files
You're better off if you just look for Giles.

Separation Anxiety

An hour's separation seems an age,
A day, eternity. How will it feel
A week from now? The world is tinged with beige
And I begin to doubt I am quite real,
Or if I am, then it is not. If you
Remain away for longer than you've been,
I fear that I may go around the bend
So far that I will disappear from view,
Or else sink down into a glass of gin.
This is unfair of me; how can I spend
The hours that you leave me for my own
Moaning at you for being so unfair?
I know that we both need our time alone
So I'll resist incipient despair.

Sonnet Analysis: John Masefield

I just ran across this sonnet that I think deserves some attention. So I'm going to give it that attention. John Masefield's "Life" was published in 1916 in The Atlantic.

What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt
Held in cohesion by unresting cells
Which work they know not why, which never halt;
Myself unwitting where their Master dwells.
I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin
A world which uses me as I use them.
Nor do I know which end or which begin,
Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn.
So like a marvel in a marvel set,
I answer to the vast, as wave by wave
The sea of air goes over, dry or wet,
Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave
Or the great sun comes north; this myriad I
Tingle, not knowing how, yet wondering why.

Triumphs:
This is a poem about the uncertainty of what it is to live and to be alive, and the wonder that attends on that uncertainty. That effect is powerfully heightened by the words Masefield uses: his diction is heightened, and the Latinate words flow into and through the poem, increasing the sense of awe. The pseudo-Petrarchan organization of the poem (divided into octave and sestet, though the octave rhymes abbacddc rather than abbaabba) and the powerful move out from the individual's self-conception to the individual in the world at the turn also works extremely well to cultivate and express the sense of awe the narrator feels. The syntax of the sestet is also effective in creating that wonder: the sentences feel open-ended, and substantives like "the vast" and "this myriad" leave open the definition of the antecedents, opening the poem up to the enormous variety of the world. Finally, the sound-patterning is simply gorgeous in the mouth.

Imperfections:
That very openness can seem indecisive or highfalutin: "I answer to the vast" is a very difficult line to carry off without sounding pretentious, and, much as I like this poem, I am far from certain that Masefield does so. "The full moon comes swimming from her cave" is susceptible to the same problem, and also seems to dip the poem out of the modern scientific wonder that the rest of the poem invokes back to a more ancient sort of wonder, the mythological belief that the moon spends the day in a cave, and while that wonder is legitimate too, it seems retrograde within the context of the rest of the poem. And the same is true of the "great sun coming north." They're a little overdone, but the rest of the poem is beautiful enough to bring them along with it.

Waiting to be Born

It's too damn quiet. I don't want the sounds
Of people - just of nature, and the world.
But even that is silent. What abounds
Is empty air, unstirred. The day is curled
Inside itself, and huddles there to warm
Its frigid minutes and frostbitten hours.
Even the silent cloud that took the form
While everything was blue, of coming showers,
A grey imagined demon in the sky
Floats on unwhispering. The total hush
Is deafening. I know that by and by
Something will come along, and boldly crush
The silence, but for now the quiet lingers
Tightening its grip with empty fingers.

Productivity

Today I was supposed to be a clerk
And finish all the tasks that piled high.
Instead I didn't do a lick of work;
Just prowled around and howled at the sky.
I crooned a love song to the distant moon
And scratched the fleas that crowded round my head;
I sang again, this time a different tune,
Then chased my tail until my feet were dead
Tired. And I did all this because
It still seemed better than the work I had.
And, as I think, I realize it was
And that itself I might consider bad
If I did not - as I believe I do -
Think what I did instead has value too.

Lighting Design

A corrosively tyrannical regime
Symbolized by darkness and blue light
Will always, by the credits, fade from sight
As though oppression were a fever dream.
Republican replacements come and gleam
With marble (different marble) and a white
Something symbolic, signifying right
And justice - sometimes something more like cream
When white seems clinical. It's all to show
That ultimately, good will triumph, and
The instincts to obey and to command,
No matter what the horror, will let go
And liberty will reign. But you should know
Such victories slip quickly from the hand.

Will Reverse

Self-consciousness will never disappear
At least not mine. Oh yeah, it's here to stay.
It's built into me, in my inmost tier,
Nestled in my mind. It's very clear
To me at least (and it is no surprise
I've thought about it) that I would not be
The person that I am if I could rise
Above my self-examination. See,
I can't imagine it. It's me, and mine,
And I'd be someone else if it were gone,
Although that someone might not realize.
So in a way it's useless to define
That part of me; it's me, so in it lies
My self-identity. I can't move on.

Halve

One of us will have to walk away
And I can tell you it will not be me.
I have sufficient perspicacity
To see that it must happen, but today
I'm just not strong enough; there is no way
That I can do it. It will have to be
You who leaves. I'm begging you to flee
And if you don't, I don't know what to say.
I am too weak to tell you anymore;
You know the reason, somewhere in your heart.
And knowing it, should realize, therefore
The urgency with which we two must part.
So since I cannot go, you have to start
Please tell me what you're still standing here for.

A Moment

I build things up too slowly, that's my fault;
I can't hit punchlines evenly - or well.
I never quite line up with the gestalt
Or tell the joke the way I ought to tell.
When I plant seeds, I cannot water them
Unless the rain is falling from the sky:
Then I will fill the planter to the stem
And wonder why the soil isn't dry.
The flowers that I plant so rarely grow
And yes, I know that that's because of me.
I simply cannot fix myself, although
I have some inkling of what I should be.
My lack of timing is ingrained by now;
If there's a cure, please, won't you tell me how?

Decisions and Revisions

You know that you intoxicate me, right?
You ought to know, I've made it pretty clear.
If not, then I'm admitting it right here:
I feel a need for you to know tonight
And don't see any way that isn't trite
To tell you. So I've said it. Now I fear
That saying it, somehow, is going to queer
Our old relationship, and, well, it might.
But I have to imagine it's worth that
To tell you what I've been afraid to say
And have some hope of hearing you respond,
Even if you tell me you aren't fond
Of me in that same way, for this has sat
In me too long - it must come out today.

Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets XIV

It has been a little while since I indulged in the analysis, rather than the composition or contemplation, of sonnets in this space. This ends now! Let's take a look at another old sonnet of mine, and see if we can't say something helpful about it.

I'm not allowed to say how beautiful
You looked tonight. I think I might go mad.
I looked at other women, but a pull
From your appearance took from what they had
All my appreciation. Look, I tried,
I really did, to look away from you
But I just couldn't. My own eyes defied
My every order - though I must admit they knew
What I desired better than my mind.
I know I shouldn't say it, but desire
Makes me incapable of being blind
And I must tell you. I could say a fire
Burns within me, but that's poetry:
Let's just say you look beautiful to me.

What Went Wrong:
There is one very awkward phrase here: "a pull/from your appearance took from what they had/All my appreciation" not only doesn't roll off the tongue smoothly, but is quiet convoluted when you look at it outside the context of the sonnet too. The ending feels a bit pat; I've noticed, and I expect anyone who has been reading either these old sonnet analyses or the new sonnets being posted here has also noticed, that I have a tendency to that sort of, well, not quite oversimplification, not quite sappiness, but perhaps (over)tidiness. The poem has so much enjambment that the neat unrolling of that last line seems perhaps trite, and certainly in tension with the rhythms that have come before it. The trope of refusing poetry in the middle of a poem is also overused, which contributes to that sense.

Not Too Shabby:
I like the rhythms here. There's a lot of enjambment followed by a half-line that creates an end-stop, and vice-versa, where a half-line leads into a one-and-a-half. That start/stop rhythm seems to reinforce the message of the poem, while also leading towards a certain degree of ambiguity about the sense, if not the sincerity, of the narrator. I really like a couple of the figures, particularly "desire/makes me incapable of being blind," which I find to be a neat aversion of the blinded by desire trope, and the first two lines. The visual emphases - even the "look" as an emphatic - also seem to be handled fairly well, without becoming overly belabored. And, despite what I said above, there is something redeeming about the last line and its setup: it refuses to go any further towards poetry than the initial desire at the top of the poem. In a sense, this poem is a spiral - a circle with progression - because it begins and ends with the desire to express how beautiful the love object is - in one case expressed through the refusal to express it, in the other directly stated. Rather than vowing eternal love, etherealizing the love object, or even elevating the diction of the statement, the final line simply achieves the desire posited at the start: "let's just say you look beautiful to me."

Lake Effect

The winter blasts beyond my power to warm;
The sun shines high, but gaily wastes his beams.
The breath is visible, and holds its form
For desperate moments, while the city schemes
How best to chill the blood and freeze the soul.
It is a hard place, and permits no ease,
Swallowing men up, downing them whole
Without a chew, for if they simply freeze,
They slide down easy. It devours us,
Yet we believe that we must struggle on,
Standing in lines for tickets, or the bus,
Wishing in vain that wind and cold were gone.
The summer is too brief of a reward
For winter's pain to be, for long, ignored.

Seaming

And if I told you, muttering my dreams,
That one of them was to have been with you,
Would you take pity on the hundred reams
Of poetry presented for review,
Or simply slowly suck Cadbury creams
Allowing my self-torture to renew,
While watching me come open at the seams
Waiting to hear something from you too,
Whether disdain or pity, or (what seems
Most likely) both mixed up at once in lieu
Of any sweeter option (my heart deems
More than your pity too unlikely to
Be mine)? What would you do? I cannot tell.
But I am certain it would not end well.

Constipation

The words won't come, no matter what I try.
I say so many others every day,
And yet although I gnash my teeth and pray
For strength to say these, though I sit and cry
Beating my head against the wall, or sigh
In sunken slow despair, I cannot say
The words. I'd push them out another way
If it existed, but it doesn't. Why
Am I so blocked? The rest come tumbling,
An endless, meaningless tumult of words
An almost subinternal constant rumbling
That drowns out cars and trains and waves and birds,
But now I need them I am only mumbling
Crumbling them in my mouth like old potsherds.

Sweet Division

I could come with you, but that would require
That I be willing, as I know I'm not,
To do what you are going to do, aspire,
As I do not, to be have what you have got,
Or wish, as I indeed can say without I doubt
I never have, to act like you have acted.
But still a part of me is walking out,
A part I've persecuted, and redacted
From my own consciousness - it wants to be
Like you, or with you, one of those, and so
It follows you as you depart from me
And will continue, wherever you go.
And it will call to me - or is that you? -
Across the distance as you fade from view.

Any Knowledge

My arm, as if a foreigner to me,
Slips quietly around you in the dark;
I did not order this effrontery
Nor can I disavow it as a lark;
For there's a part of me that wants to reach
Around your shoulders, pull you close and tight,
And learn, from a straightforward way to teach,
Exactly how you feel. So every night
I wonder if I dare - and if my arm
Has taken the initiative, can I
Really deny my own intent? Your charm,
The dark, the moonlight...all of this is why
I did it, even though I didn't know
Before I sat which way my arm would go.

Only Made Of Clay

Ah, such was not to be. I should have known.
The mountain crumbles slowly over time.
The vegetation which has gaily grown
Over the bare rock begins to slowly climb
Into the little fissures, and displace
What held the stone together. Everything
Just wilts away, and leaves the mountain face
Broken but not quite lifeless. In the spring
It will be beautiful, but differently;
The majesty and grandeur is all gone,
Replaced, it it's replacement, by a sea
Of waste fertility, whose wild spawn
A terribly beautiful. No height
Can hold its ground in such an unfair fight.

Why

I'm reasonable. I realize your flaws;
I never called you perfect anyway.
But I still think you're wonderful because
Your presence helps me make it through the day.
Your smile lifts my spirits when they fall;
The mere prospect that I will talk to you
Pulls me up when I begin to stall
Preventing me from crashing. Just a few
Impromptu words from you can turn around
The dreariest of hours. When I see
You, even from afar, I know I've found
While you're still visible, serenity.
I know your faults. It's just that I don't care.
Life's always better if you're always there.

3

If I can hear you snoring through the wall
You're probably too loud. It's just a guess,
I could hallucinate it after all
But I won't bet on your wife's happiness
If she's in there with you (if not, why not?
I wouldn't care to pry, but if she's gone
It's 3am. I don't think she forgot
To come back home. Yeah, something's going on).
Please stop, or get a Breathe-right strip, something
Or I, in retribution, may just sing
To wake you up, and make you stop snoring.
I'm serious about this. Please, please stop.
I swear you're shaking out the tile flooring.
Shut up, or at some point I'll call a cop.

CV

Sometimes I listen to a resume
And stand beside the beach before the sea
Whose shore, horizon-hid, asks mockingly
How I can dream that I will sail someday
Across its mighty waters all the way
Either to Magellanically
Back to myself, or, like a Vespucci,
Leaving a part of me abroad to say
What I achieved. The only answer I
Can make to this is that I will set sail:
The future is unknown, but to explore
Is, in the end, what I have come here for,
And whether or not my actions will avail
Me anything, I will set sail or die.

Disavowal

I don't know who I tried to fool, that time.
It wasn't me, it wasn't you, I know.
Trying to do that would be a crime,
At least against intelligence, and so
I must have had some other target. Yet
As far as I'm aware, only we two,
We two far too mature to be upset,
Were even there. I couldn't have fooled you
Even if I tried, and I insist
I didn't mean to, so I didn't try.
An immanence, an aura must exist
Of Something Else to fool - I don't know why,
But surely I could not have been that thick
Without it - or if so, it makes me sick.

Freezes

The greatest guarantee that I can give
Of my devotion is expressing in this:
Not that I need your company to live,
Or that I breathe the perfume of your kiss,
Not that the heavens shine more brightly when
You're here with me, nor that the sky grows dark
Whenever you're away, and not, again,
That everything you do can make a mark
Upon my heart, although these are all true -
No, it is that, despite the cold outside
Which forces mercury to hide from view
And makes me also want to run and hide,
If you called me, I'd leave my comfort here
To find you in the cold, despite my fear.

Across

It seems to me the sun shines much less brightly;
High clouds obscure what used to be my joy,
And what is left of it is now unsightly,
To make an undesirable alloy:
Electrum made of ugliness and dark
Lacks all the beauty that should shine from gold
Or silver's charm - instead it does a stark
Violence upon my eyes. I'm told
It passes, and the sun returns again,
Not with all rapid speed, but yet someday.
Gracious to think, but then I must ask when
(You know I have no patience anyway).
Only the knowledge this was once my sun
Undoes the ugliness that time has done.

Mature

What's that you claim?
I'm honest, free
From fault or blame
And, happily,
Treat others well,
Do what I should,
Don't act pell-mell,
Find common good?
You think that I
Chose how I am?
I wonder why...
It's all a sham.
Say, who's mature?
Not me, I'm sure.

Sigh

I know you notice when I sit and sigh
(Of course, I try to make it obvious).
You often stop to make me tell you why,
But I can't answer - it is always thus;
You want to know - I want to tell you, too -
But when I sigh it is specifically
Because I cannot tell you what I want.
From this small revelation you may see
Each caring question is a kind of taunt
Reminding me of what originated
The sighs you noticed. I think if you knew
The reason why your questioning so grated
You would not ask me anymore - but then,
Not asking would just make me sigh again.

Typhoon

The night is dark and shows no sign of sun
The hour grows late when it should have appeared;
The day is ended ere it was begun,
Leaving uncertain how we should have steered
By unseen stars under a covered moon
In absence of the orienting gleam
Of east or western sunlight. A typhoon
Blows hard against what was the eastern beam
When last we knew - but how can we discern
Direction in the endless, wasting dark?
No light will show, although our fires burn,
There is no compass for our sodden bark.
Our lives are ships at anchor in such weather
In a stiff breeze, with an uncertain tether.

Psalmesque II

O Lord that made the weather cold
Turn the bitter frost from off my face.
And Lord that on the first day told
The light and dark to each yield place
Allow some light to those who crawl
Upon the land you let appear.
And Lord, the maker of us all
By all that's holy or that's dear
Let not the snow fall down too hard
Lest ice should overwhelm our heads;
And Lord, our great and mighty guard
Allow us to achieve our beds.
O Lord, delay the storm and save
Us from a frozen, chipped-out grave.

Orders

Why can't he ever understand
That my life is not his to rule?
I don't breathe under his command;
I do not follow, like a tool
His every whim. What he desires
Is not the law to me, nor is
The urgency my soul acquires
Derived entirely from his.
Whence did he come to this conclusion
That my mind was in his grip?
What is the source of his confusion -
Some prepubescent acid trip?
It's only courtesy that I
Ever listen and comply.

Medium Message

Not everything can be categorized.
Some thoughts, although important, are unsaid.
Some words are not quite speech, when they are read,
And some are meant to be when they're devised
But do not end so. Some, when first apprised
Of such a disconnect, think what is said
Must trump the rest, while some believe instead
That all are equal. What I've realized
Is that I value more - I care more strongly
About who sees or hears my words than what
Medium was used to make them known.
What's said to you matters, rightly or wrongly,
More than to others, no matter how shown,
Even if by calligraph woodcut.

Put Off

One day I'm ready and the next I'm not,
But since I always will procrastinate
It doesn't matter which it is. I got
A little better once - but I was late
Deciding what to do, and so no dice.
I'm still the same, and wavering as ever.
I won't improve, although it might be nice
To be a different man - but I will never
Make that decision, either since I'm slow
In making any choice, no matter what,
Or just because a part of me says no,
I am not ready - whether head or gut.
Maybe someday these both will align
But I won't hold my breath - right now I'm fine.

Court Claims

Some claims should not be made sans evidence;
For some, mere intuition is enough.
Part of the question is resilience:
Can those accused recover from the rough
Interrogation if it should be proved
That they are innocent? If so, it's more
Acceptable that, as one may be moved,
The accusations fly. But if, therefore,
The opposite is true, if those accused
Cannot recover what they will have lost,
Then accusation must not be abused
Lest it rebound unto the subject's cost
Despite their innocence. Claim, if you dare,
But if you do, be sure to claim with care.

Fates

What hidden secret must I now uncover
If I would be who I was meant to be?
What is the prophecy I must discover,
The deeper meaning of my being me?
There must be more to living than, so far,
The world has shown me, and so I assume
That there are things, I know not what they are
That will depend on me to meet their doom.
What purpose have I? There must be a sign
To indicate my worth and my direction.
What is the destiny that should be mine?
What fate designs the course of my correction?
Or is it simply that I yearn for more
But there is nothing in what I yearn for?

Tales

I hear a story I do not believe
Told by a raving madman on the street
Yet so compelling that I could not leave
Where he stood ranting. Many thousand feet
He claimed, beneath the city that we know,
There lies, and none know how it did arrive
A massive altar, on whose polished stone,
Still smooth as when its maker was alive,
And round about it, relatively low,
Inscribed in language and in script unknown,
A seeming incantation writhes, which seems
Although unread to promise only ill.
I left him panting, sweating, standing still;
Let him alone pursue such idle dreams.

Why

A question haunts the poems that I write:
How do I know that you inspire me?
The answer is that saying that feels right;
Your presence causes more fertility
In what, before, was wasteful poetry,
Dull and uninspired, almost dead,
And now comes back to life. I used to be
At my wit's end and languishing; I read
The works of others and, despairing, said
I cannot do this. Now I leap to motion,
Compulsively composing in my head
With just as much insistence as the ocean
Rolls with the tide. I say that you inspire
Because your presence sets me thus afire.

On Spenserian Form

There is one more type of standard stanza that I have neglected to mention, an oversight which I will here rectify. This is another English form, known as the Spenserian sonnet from its association with the sixteenth-century poet Edmund Spenser. It consists of a set of three quatrains and a couplet, much like a Shakespearean sonnet, but with a specific set of rhymes that overlap between quatrains. Specifically, the sonnet has a rhyme scheme ababbcbccdcdee: the second rhyme in the previous quatrain becomes the first in the new one. This allows for substantially more couplets within the overall structure, while retaining the flexibility of alternating rhyme as well.

The effect of this rhyme scheme is, broadly speaking, to tie the quatrains together more tightly and place (even) more emphasis on the division of twelve and two rather than the Petrarchan eight and six. Where a Shakespeare sonnet has three clear rhyme divisions (after each quatrain), the Spenserian has only one, after the last quatrain; in this, and in its number of rhyme sounds, it resembles the Petrarchan sonnet, but the placement of the turn is substantially altered. The Petrarchan form permits an extended discourse in the sestet concerning the situation set up in the octave; the Shakespearean allows incredible flexibility in where a turn can come; the Spenserian demands, insists, requires that there be a turn at line thirteen - or if there is not, it demands explanation (it is crucial to recall that poems can create effects by pushing against, as well as going along with, the conventions associated with the form). In either case, there is a magnifying glass placed on that section of the poem - as well as an expectation, again to be played with if desired, that the three quatrains will meld together. The intricate interlacing of those quatrains can produce beautiful effects; and it can also be used to create a heightened sense of disharmony if the enfolding rhymes are thrown into contrast with discontinuous thought. Scorn not the Spenserian sonnet, for it has hidden depths.

Psalmesque

Ah Lord consider my unworthiness
Not as in justice it deserves to be,
But in thy mercy, making error less
Diminishing thy harshness gracefully.
Be not disgusted with what you will see
Within my spotted and corrupted soul,
But gracious to me, undeservedly,
Making what is torn seamless and whole.
I know I've fallen too short of the goal;
I beg for help, though I have failed my task.
Do not require from me my full toll,
For I am penniless. I can but ask
That where I've faltered, thou mayest be my guide,
Where fault has bound me, let it be untied.

Conspiracy

Where can
We be?
What man
Is he?
Whence did
He come?
Where hid?
Where from?
He's now
Revealed,
But how
Concealed?
And who
Knew?

Readiness

I have been ready to compose for you
Endless arrays of sonnets at your word.
Speak but to me, and I will sing anew
Of what you will - the love that in me stirred
When first I saw you, or the way your smile
Spreads clouds away and breathes in fresher air,
The sweet curve of your body or the style
Your laughter has, how every weary care
Drops from my shoulders when we two embrace,
Or how our conversation, never-ceasing,
With or without the vision of your face
Has kept my ardor bubbling and increasing,
Or anything at all. I'm ready: speak.
Or else keep silent and destruction wreak.

Pro Forma

I have no tongue to indicate distress,
No pen to set my sadness down in ink;
Whatever I compose becomes a mess,
A blurry image of the thoughts I think,
And no true record of emotion. No,
I cannot speak the terrors in my mind
Without distortion, and, since that is so,
I am contained within a sort of bind.
The very act of speaking, which should clear
The senses and provide desired release
Obfusticates and pains me. I can hear
The lack in what I say, and so I cease
Silent, or almost so, when faced with pain,
Unable to announce it or explain.

Unutterably

Where did the daylight that was leading me
Go? Somewhere in the corners of my mind
Which once was lucid, brilliant, unconfined
There is a secret. Hidden inwardly
It craves the darkness, yet it cannot see
To tell when it is dark. It will unwind
The light I had. It has. I cannot find
My way out of myself. Sorrowfully
I blindly wander, searching for the light
Which what is in me pulls away. I stumble,
Grasping at the walls that are not there
Hoping for support. It can't be right
That without sight I still must sit and stare
Lest in my inward darkness I should tumble.

Quiet

I lead a rich internal life. I'd say
At least two-thirds of what I think stays in.
It's not because I'm fearful to begin
Talking, or because I'd rather stay
Safe in myself, but rather from the way
My mind appears to work. I hate a din,
And think that adding to one is a sin,
So I keep quiet 'til it goes away
Which isn't often. I have thoughts indeed
Would shake the very stones on which you stand,
And make your innards tremble in your breast.
Had I desire, or had I the need
I'd speak to you, and make you understand.
But I have none, and so silence is best.

Fifty/Fifty

I talk too much. Or think too much. One of
Those failings. Maybe both. I know at least
I must do one, for when I am in love
Both thought and speech together have increased
Too much for me to function, and therefore
I must conclude that one or both is so
Swelled up inside me that I am a bore
To others and myself. From this I know
It's likely both - I talk and think too much
(And I repeat myself, as you can see).
Both of these actions are a sort of crutch
For my discomfort, and so they will be
With me forever, and I'll keep on failing
At least so long as speech and thought keep flailing.

Improved

Life itself could be enough for me
Were I not, selfish, dedicated to
My own improvement and prosperity;
Because of that, I take a different view.
I must have room to feel I have improved;
Some state which can, by reasonable acts,
Make me have hope that, someday, if I'm moved
To make the effort, working from the facts
Before me, I can be a better man,
In mind, in outward seeming, in my strength,
Or any other part. If life should ban
That self-improvement, I might find at length
That life is insufficient. What I'd do
In that predicament, I wish I knew.

Third Monday in January

It almost seems, well, inappropriate
To use his words, even remembering
His legacy. He spoke for us, and yet
We fall so short of him that his words bring
Beyond the sadness for his shortened life,
And for the hope that he personified
Of a peaceful world after the time of strife,
A sense of shame because, though deified
As far as man can be in this dull age,
We have not realized what he desired.
We have not reached the turning of the page,
The inner contemplation he required,
Or all the change he wanted. No, it seems
That, though we're closer, those are still but dreams.

Firefighter

Every place where you touch me still burns
Not in a bad way, no, not that at all
They burn so beautifully. Even the small
Point where you brushed my hand now yearns
To feel that fire again. My body learns
By swift degrees to love the heat. I fall
More madly for you while I feel the gall
Of my skin burning. It's as if pain earns
The right to look for pleasure - or as if
The pain itself were joy. If I were cool
And unaffected by you, it would be
So different. I wouldn't be the fool,
So awkward, so incredibly...stiff
But as it is, I burn. It changes me.

Movies

I've seen so many movies where a guy
Has never met the girl he claims to love,
And yet he shakes his head and wonders why
She doesn't want him and she's thinking of
Some other man instead. So many scenes
In which the hero moons about a girl
Who doesn't know him. In all these routines
The hero's mind is in a tilt-a-whirl
Between his hope and his reality
And so he seems to stalk her, looking for
A chance to meet her, and a chance to be
The man she wants, the one she will adore.
But I will always hope my chance will send
Whatever love I get to a dear friend.

Cornfed Fantasy

Corn is a vegetable, a lovely grain,
But hardly everything it ought to be.
It growns in endless rows out on the plain,
A vast engulfing mimic of the sea.
Yet in that sea no fish can be allowed,
No kelp or other interloping plant.
It stands in monoculture, tall and proud,
Not since it will not share, but since it can't.
We keep it safe from everything but us
And so devour all it can provide;
I barely doubt it will be ever thus,
And naught but corn will ever grow outside
While we shall live under the shade of ears
Grown ever taller with the passing years.

Had

Had I a thought inside my weary head
It might have been of you. But then of course
I haven't, have I? No, I have instead
A strange compound of aches that take their source
Perhaps from you as well, but how can I
Be sure of it? I cannot think enough
Ever to be sure. My mind will lie
Off of its normal track, out in the rough,
Wandering in weary tracks of pain
Without the touch of any sentience.
Whatever may have slid inside my brain,
I'm sure it never will make any sense.
But if it does, it will be since you knew
That thought that wasn't might've been of you.

The Road to Hell

The best intentions that I've ever had
Were waiting at the bottom of the stairs,
Searching for a stupid writing pad,
Or for the laser printer's toner spares;
In other words the times when I cannot,
No matter how I wish or I desire
Act on the new intention I have got,
But rather must allow it to expire
A mere velleity, wished but undone,
A want that cannot rise up to a deed.
These thoughts evaporate before begun
Because, although perhaps a fertile seed,
The ground was stony, and the timing wrong
For good intentions to have lasted long.

Penitential

I have been tempted, Lord, forgive me that.
Beyond temptation, I have sinned as well;
Some indiscretions, too, I have winked at,
In others and myself. I must now tell
This litany of sinfulness in me
Or else despair of mercy, for, denied,
These ills will stink unto eternity,
But once admitted may be put aside.
The stubbornness is me is not so great
Though great enough itself to be a sin
That I am tempted to prevaricate
Or to deny the depths I am sunk in.
Forgive, O Lord, the faults I have committed
Once in humility they are admitted.

Impiousness

When once my mind is set upon a thing
It is quite difficult to dissuade it.
A stubborn demon in my will will sit
And he will not abide its altering
No matter what inducements you can bring,
Or implications, made with greatest wit,
That other courses could be good. No fit
Of reason can remove him, nor no sting
Of guilt. When I decide, I do decide,
And he will be there guarding my decision,
As long as it may take to make it so.
He's my enforcer, and I am his guide;
Between us there can be no imprecision:
Our mind is settled; that's how it will go.

Static

The things you touch bear an electric charge;
They shock me when I take them from your hand.
The tingle isn't really very large,
It's just enough to notice. When I stand
Beside you, I can feel a crackle in
The air that orbits you and touches me;
Sometimes I even know where you have been
Because I feel the electricity.
Some say you wear your clothes in layers
That rub against each other, and so serve
As generators, and indeed conveyors
Of real discharges. But I'll never swerve
From claiming that you have a spark about you
That your clothes do not feel when they're without you.

Holy Day

No one should, on a Sunday, sit outside
An empty church, and lonely, on a step
Half-covered with the snow, half-empty-eyed,
Sigh to herself. Why is the wide transept
Not open to her, warming, comforting?
Why are the doors shut up and barred within?
She can still hear the children's choir sing,
Its false sopranos cautioning from sin,
Hear the new priest address his straying flock,
The whispers in the pews. But she is still
Outside; why were the doors made with a lock
That open to community? What will
The landlord say, when he returns to judge
Those who have closed their doors upon a grudge?

Odd Ditty

A mind that's garlanded with strange attire
Like all the verbs that crowd around in mine
Is quite confusing. More when it's on fire
Which rather tends to ruin what was fine
In all that garlanding. It's rather strange
To coop up with such oddities and burn.
Of course, that's not to say I'd like to change,
But rather that I, like a butter churn,
Go endlessly around inside myself,
And alter what's inside. Being so turned,
I wonder how each world stays by itself
And doesn't jumble others; but I learned
Eventually they separate again;
But I'll be plenty buttery by then.

Course

I cannot be more than I am, which is
Enough. I am content with being so.
Other potentials hiss and fizz
About my head, but I can let them go
Still unimagined, for they hardly count.
More might be wished by others, but not me;
I know myself, and do not need to mount
Beyond my bounds. I am sufficiently
Provided in myself for all I want,
And though I cannot rise above my soul,
Why should I want to? From my inner font
There flows the liquor that can keep me whole,
And I am all I need. I know my way,
I'll follow it, and have no wish to stray.

Mine

Mine. I promise she was mine, not in the way
You vulgarly may think it. Mine in me,
The heart inside my chest, beating through the day
And calming or uncalming in the night,
Mine so that if she fell into the sea,
Were washed away in it to distant shores
I would be drawn straight to her. Mine by right
Not of a conquest, nor of birth, but of
A constant pang of irridescent love,
Mine by the pain with which my love adores,
And now despairing, remembering she's gone.
Mine because I must mourn her, mine therefore
Because when I must, single, carry on
Each empty moment makes me miss her more.

Fict

I have been known, sometimes, to make things up
And never more than now. It's a defense
Against reality. I drink the cup
Of falsehood to the dregs, indulge in sense
And lick my lips with lies, lest I should think
About the truth, which freezes all my bones.
Enough of that! Towards that way lies the brink
Of that great precipice whose mighty stones
Rear up above the pits. To throw myself
Over the edge of that protective shelf
And shatter into pieces far below
Is something not to think about. I'll lie,
Prevaricate, and twinkle in the glow
Of make-believe, before I fall and die.

Calm

I cannot tell why now I am so calm.
I was quite furious, I'll have you know,
And would have wagered that no sort of balm
Could make me change my mind. But now I'm so
Outrageously at peace inside myself,
As if the passions that were pent up had
Been locked up in a box, placed on a shelf,
And hidden from my mind. This isn't bad,
It's just so strange. How did it come about?
What miracle descended on my head
To make me empty of the former doubt
And filled with all this...happiness? instead.
I'll take it, but if ever I revert
I swear, somewhere, someone's gonna get hurt.

Eye

The storm has passed, its rage has been abated;
The surge slid by and did not overwhelm.
The mighty beast's desire has been sated,
The craft responds to urging of the helm.
Where once was riot, now all is serene;
Where all was chaos, order is restored.
Where mud and grime, all has now been wiped clean,
Where turbulence, a calm and easy ford.
No fear now reigns where once it was supreme,
No anger lies inside the hearts that loathed.
No disappointment comes to those who dream,
No nakedness to those who now are clothed.
What's past is past, and in the future lies
A promise of eternal suimmer skies.

Only

To say
Something
I may
(Erring)
Try to
Change my
Worldview.
I try,
But fail.
What can
Avail?
I scan,
But find
My mind.

Erring

Where am I wandering, so far from home?
Why do my feet stray from the course I set
To find themselves in lands where few will roam
Willingly, and rather seem to let
The winds direct them than my head, their guide?
Is there a purpose to this strange event,
Or is it chance that I do err so wide
Of where I meant to go? For my intent
Was close-defined and purposive, and this
Seems for the moment to be unthought-out.
I know it's possible that I should miss
My target, but this far? I have some doubt.
There must be purpose; but that might just be
A foolish wish, and not reality.

As The Grave

The posture of my silence is a sham
Or usually it is. I speak enough
For dozens, and I can't deny I am
Often too vocal. But it's tough
To say I speak sufficiently, or say
I speak at all where it will matter most,
For at the crisis I will most delay
And whisper 'round my thinking like a ghost
Incapable, though full of wind and air,
Of making any headway towards my goal.
And since this failure comes, I therefore dare
To claim a silence overwhelms my soul
Even when I still can speak, and write
So long as what I mean is hid from sight.

Goldy; or Bronzy

There lies the irony within my life
Well, not the only one, there are a lot,
But one of them. I'd like to have a wife
As most men would, but O, when I have got
Close enough to wonder if this one
Is or should be the she, I hit a wall,
And confidence, attractive, blithe, and fun,
Deserts me in the moment that I fall.
The very words that, ere I thought, tripped light
And easy from my lips now hang on them;
The smiles that before could shine so bright
Now disappear, as if they self-condemn.
So where I most should show my better part
Ironically I find a quailing heart.

Madness

There have been times (I wish that this were one)
When calm has flowed across my mind, and peace,
When all life's little troubles seemed to cease
As if the world were fresh. Oh, then the sun
Would shine out brightly like it had begun
To shine only for me, joy would increase,
And I could, for a brief moment, release
The worries that enfolded me. Now none
Of these great blessings is within my reach;
I am a storm, with no clear water coming,
I am the desperate, dangerous deep drumming
The kraken, massive cousin of the leech,
Whose toothy jaws only the mad will summon
To sit beside them on the sandy beach.

Orbital

Winter's a depressing time for us
The light is rarer than we wish it were
And though we wish we were oblivious
We can't help notice that we might prefer
A little warmth, instead of all this cold,
And cheer instead of dark and dreary days.
But there's a bright side; winter will grow old
And turn in time into a spring, which lays
Its greenery in tribute at our feet,
And in the sunshine calls us out to play
With friends perambulating in the street
Beneath the trees which canopy the way.
So struggle through the winter, but survive
So spring can make you glad to be alive.

Whether

I conjure up the snow and let it breathe
A clear cold calm that exits me with it.
It seems determined that its flakes should wreath
The heart in contemplation, yet I sit
Centering the snowdrift and at war
Within myself, shocked that the heat I spew
Does not melt me free. I let it pour
In massive piles above me, out of view,
Hoping the white itself can make me pure,
Fearing at last that nothing can resolve
The warmth inside that makes me insecure
'Til I, unlike the snowflakes, can dissolve
Into the world at large, and ease my pain;
If only I could conjure up the rain.

Dictionary

Define me in your mind, and let that stand
Instead of me, so that I may be free
Of any duty done at your command
Because the definition acts for me.
Establish how I think, how I respond,
What stimuli excite me and how much,
Then let me, so defined, so neatly conned,
Be algorithmic for you, and as such
Eliminate the need for me to show
By action or inaction what I'd do
Because in it you see, and therefore know
What you expect that I will do to you,
And let that be enough. Do not require
The living me to match to your desire.

Poor Tom

O, have you ever been as I am now,
Howling unmeaning to the moon,
Angst-ridden and demanding, asking how
The world has changed, and why, and why so soon,
Insisting in an ineloquent way
Without true words, but merely soundful sense
That someone somewhere ought to fully pay
For what was done, and what left in suspense,
Gnawing at the air with phrases weird
And better left unparsed, ununderstood,
As if the mind had wholly disappeared
Leaving a frantic being? Then you could
Relate to me; but as it is, I fear,
You do not feel the desperation here.

Being 24

Ah Keats, thou hast me by a single year,
And as the sand-grains trickle through my fingers
A sense of thee inevitably lingers
As though, in age embodied, thou wert near.
Yet if thou wert, as I imagine, here,
Seeing my mind which constantly malingers,
Failing thy hand-stitch, though equipped with Singers,
Thou wouldst not recognize in me a peer.
Nor am I, for in such a little space
As I have had, or but a moment more,
Thou didst produce what time cannot erase,
Filling the seas beyond the sight of shore,
That I, from my usurpéd pride of place
Can still not see the ebbing of thy store.

Rye

Now, is it normal that I should feel ill
No matter where I've been or what I did?
Am I condemned to be an invalid
Despite my own desire? Am I still
One of those luckless few who cannot will
Themselves to happiness unless they're rid
Of all distractions, and so must be hid
From everything, lest they, perhaps should spill
Their cups of fragile happiness? Am I
Condemned to be unable, though I try,
To find a self-solution for my pain,
To see my joy go swirling down the drain,
And never plunge it up? All goes awry,
And I am left to murmur and complain.

Unseasonable

I feel a chill, although I know the heat
Is turned up higher than I wanted it.
Deep in my bones, rising from my feet
I feel a shiver, ending in the pit
That seems to have replaced my stomach. Why?
I cannot tell, except, perhaps some worry
Has, all of a sudden, on the sly,
Slipped past my guards, and in a desperate flurry
Of discontent, uses my nerves as tools
To make me so uneasy, and so cold.
Whatever is the cause, it clearly fools
My senses, which I wish I could have told
To be suspicious of such sudden chills;
Instead I shiver as the worry wills.

Borax

If I am boring, which I think I am
Sometimes, I'd rather I were told of it.
It's quite polite that you maintain the sham,
But honestly, I'd rather you admit
The hard facts of the case. Just tell me straight:
Are you as interested in what I say
As I am? No, no, don't prevaricate,
I'd like to know the answer right away
And truthfully, as much as possible.
Don't hem and haw, or put me off again;
My patience buffer is already full
And I would like to know. Be honest, then,
And tell me: do I bore you? Yes or no?
It's really something that I ought to know.

Quizzical

I wonder if you're the person I should tell
All of this to. And if you aren't, who is?
The answer to this minimalist quiz
Is I don't know, and so I might as well.
But if I do, I worry (far too much)
That you will take what I have said and turn
The flat emotions that, inside me, churn,
And turn them into meaning. And as such,
I oughtn't tell you, since I'm very sure
That they are meaningless, and only need
Expression as an outlet, which will weed
Them out of me. Expression is the cure.
But even if it is, should I tell you?
Now that I've hinted, say what I should do.

On Pyrrhic and Spondaic Feet

I have previously stated in this space that I am less than fully comfortable with the idea of the pyrrhic foot in English. Obviously there cannot be fully pyrrhic lines; English craves stress like I crave chocolate ice cream, and a line without any stressed syllables would end up forcing a stress in speech. The mind rebels.

Spondees are better; one can imagine monometer and possibly even dimeter lines that are entirely spondaic, because English will drink up the extra stresses, particularly with monosyllabic words or spondaic words like baseball. But longer spondaic lines seem odd as well; English builds up its love for stress on the back of unstressed syllables, sometimes long scudding swathes of them (like the common preposition-article construction you see in "on the back"). So in a broad sense, neither of these feet works as the meter of an entire poem.

But there are arguments for and against their application to English poetry as substitute feet within a larger metrical scheme, and this is what I want to address today, particularly as regards the pyrrhic, which I remain uncomfortable with. The argument for the spondee in English is strong; as I said, English likes stresses. If you have a foot that has, say, a main verb and its subject "he said," there will always be an argument that both should receive stress. This is even more true if the example were "John ran," because a pronoun demands less stress than a proper name and "said" is one of the least marked verbs in English. Besides that example, there are paired adjectives, or important adjectives with their noun ("dank, dark," or "dark sun") where it can be difficult to claim that either does not deserve the stress, and non-monosyllabic examples where two words demand that their internal stress fall into the same foot: "HE des/TROYED CAI/ro THEN" for instance.

Some would call these "heavy iambs" or "heavy trochees," making the claim that while English likes stresses, it also likes prioritizing stresses, and one of those stresses is primary and the other secondary, so we should properly say that there is an iamb or trochee (depending on which has the primary stress) with a "heaviness" from the nearly equal stress on the "unstressed" word. Personally, I can see that argument for some feet, particularly the feet made up of two monosyllabic words. As I said, pronouns take less stress than nouns; prepositions and articles also tend to be unstressed (see below), some verbs are less marked than others, and so on. But there are also feet, especially the type that involve stresses from polysyllabic words, where marking either of the syllables as unstressed in any way leads to some very strange pronunciation or simply a very odd look to the line and the word.

The case of pyrrhics is similar in this respect: many would call pyrrhic feet what others would call "light iambs" or "light trochees," this time with the "lightness" expressed in the nearly unstressed quality of the "stressed" syllable. However, I have much more sympathy with this view, because of the aforementioned desire English has for stress. As an example, "the man of the dark glen" clearly has an initial iamb, but the other two feet are arguable, depending on how important the glen's darkness is, and whether one feels that "of the" has a stress in it or not. Clearly "of the dark" is anapestic; "dark" gets the emphasis and "of the" are both unstressed. But it is hard to say that neither of "of" or "the" has more stress than the other when they appear alone in a foot together. Personally, I stress the "of" more; articles are really hard for me to stress, unless it's "a" as opposed to "the" or vice versa. Otherwise they are simply unstressed. Prepositions can definitely have importance though, even though they are usually unstressed relative to other parts of speech. And I find this is generally true; most pyrrhic feet have at least one syllable that has more importance relative to the other, and that syllable gets stressed out of English's desire to use stress to enhance meaning. The only exception that I can see is that it is possible to have the unstressed syllables of two polysyllabic words appear together, and even there it would be necessary that neither have the secondary stress inside its word (secondary stress being what happens to the -dor of "conquistador," even though -qui is the primary stress in the word). This is rare.

For this reason, although I will scan with spondees, I will very rarely choose to call a foot pyrrhic. This is probably also a reaction to my instinct to organize lines around where there is stress, rather than where it can be avoided; I will prefer to see meaning in stress reflected in more stressed syllables than in an extra unstressed one. That is not to say that lines cannot be scanned with pyrrhics or that there are not differences in the stress values of "lighter" and "heavier" iambs and trochees, but simply to place where I myself stand in the spectrum.

There are some differences in interpretation, I think, that flow out of whether one calls a foot pyrrhic or weak iamb, or spondee or heavy iamb. A pyrrhic tends to imply that one should hurry over that foot (after all, even though English is stress-based, these names come from quantitative meter, where the lengths of syllables are what matter) while a weak iamb demands that attention be paid to the stress (where I say "iamb" here, the same goes for trochees, but iambs are more common so I'm just writing that with this being understood). Similarly, a spondee is heavier, gives one more pause, and demands that both syllables be understood as important, where a heavy iamb discounts somewhat the degree to which the unstressed syllable carries meaning or weight. All four have their places, and the differences within each pair are rarely dispositive of the meaning or structure of a poem; but the differences do exist, and they are worth carrying in mind when one scans.

Metrical Inversion

What happens when the line break starts to change?
When syllables slide out, or slide back in,
Stanzas and whole rhyme schemes rearrange,
And different sorts of meter start to spin?
Does all emotion have to change as well?
Can longer lines not have a lighter sense,
Or can a shorter meter never tell
A story dark and deep, or strong and dense?
Are those assumptions which first seize the mind
On noticing the weighting of the line
Fixed for eternity, or can we find
A space to alter them? Does a design
Inherently bear meaning? No, I hope,
For I like pushing meter past its scope.

Refrain

Time and again I try to write
The words I cannot say to you;
I know they will sound sadly trite
However they are said. They're too
Basic and too obvious
For me to find the perfect words.
It's like our parents talked to us
With metaphors of bees and birds:
You know it's coming, and I know
I ought to say it loud and clear
But silences that longer grow
Are hard to break, like this one here.
So rather than be witty, I'll
Say that I love you and your smile.

Truth

I might admit to disappointment here
Or say I've noticed something I don't like;
I might wish that I could just disappear,
Or tell somebody to go take a hike.
I might imagine life would be much better
If I could eliminate a few
Irritations, or say you're my debtor
Because of all that I have done for you.
I might decree that all that I have done
Deserves more credit than I ever get,
Or tell you all that I hate everyone
(At least, I'd all, that I have ever met).
But if I say these things, please do recall
I don't mean one of them, much less them all.

Broken

I was.
Who cares?
Who does
Repairs
On bro-
-ken hearts
With no
Spare parts?
If found
Please send
Around,
My friend.
No one?
I'm done.

Deafening

Some things are better left unsaid
Some words are best not spoke out loud:
A curse upon the newly dead
False fire in a close-packed crowd
An insult where a calmer phrase
Might have allayed the flames of wrath,
Unmerited excessive praise
That leads one off the harder path,
A lie that in the hearers ears
Seems plausible and so deceives
And plays upon the darkest fears,
A spiteful lashing out that cleaves
A love from love; and worse than these
What you just said with dreadful ease.

Indulgences

Is it appropriate that I indulge
The pleasure centers of my mind and spend
My hours on a gratifying end
(Which end it is, I will not now divulge)?
Shall I luxuriate in my desires,
Allowing the fulfillment of them to
Exclude all other options from my view
And heap up coal upon my inmost fires?
Or can it really be the proper thing
To only entertain the things I love
And only work to the advancement of
Those moments that can make my nerves all sing?
It can't be, who cares? It's fun this way,
And at the moment, that's all I can say.

Appearances

I'm often troubled when I seem most calm,
For I can shut my face from what would daunt
My inward self. I mutter a soft psalm:
The Lord's my shepherd and I shall not want
He maketh me to lie in green pastures...
And yet he does not save me from disasters.
Those I must, with the tools I'm given
Eliminate myself, for my free will
By whose prerogative I'm always driven
Must be the key to my salvation still.
If it were otherwise, what would I be?
A mere illusion of a man. Therefore
I arm myself with equanimity
No matter what I'm readying it for.

Preparations

I don't deal well with what I cannot change.
My mind is wired to believe I can,
With very little help, confront the strange
World that surrounds me. With a battle plan,
A bit of luck, and well-prepared reactions
I think I can do anything. I know
This is not true, but expect no retractions:
My intellect, and not my gut, says so.
Perhaps with training, long and arduous,
I might be able to accept my fate,
But sadly such a process would be tedious
And so I stay myself, and therefore state:
If there is something which I do not like
I'll plan a way to change it, and then strike.

Haze

Mildly inquisitive, I watch
The city pass me by from your back seat.
I do not have to drive. I drink your Scotch
(Open container? Bah.) which burns so sweet
And hot inside me. Yeah, you might have been
Saving it for yourself, but I don't care.
I wanted something, and, well, it was there,
Another day it might have been my gin
But there's no tonic water in the back
And I'm impatient. Actually, I meant
To talk to you about that little lack,
But you drove, and I drank, and there we went.
I wonder idly if we'll ever stop
And find I've drunk the bottle - every drop.

Knot

It's quite impossible that I should be
In love with anyone: I haven't time.
So I assure you, you will not see me
Sprinkle my days and nights with endless rhyme,
Sigh heavily and with a downcast eye
Mutter nothing's wrong, or flex my hand
As if the fingers itched. My cheeks are dry,
My heart is fully under my command,
And all of me is busy. So I'm not
Whatever you may think, or may have thought
In love with anyone, not even her
Or you. The matter's settled, let it go.
I'm not in love, and even if I were
I don't have time to let anyone know.

Drifting

The snow may fall as hard as it desires
(Does snow desire? Can we ever know?
Does it feel fear before our huge bonfires
Or say a prayer for melting far below?
Does every flake, unique in how it fell,
Have self-ambition, hope, despair and joy?
Does it strive hard to make sure it falls well,
And does a fire burning bright annoy
Its sensibilities? Can we offend
A snowflake, and if so, what can it do?
I do not know, and so snowflakes must fend
For their own good) I will still walk with you
And though we should be covered all in white
I guarantee my love will still burn bright.

On the Blog as a Medium for Sonnets

So a question that constantly occurs to me as I write this blog is what the medium of the blog means for and does to the poetry I produce on it. This question, for me, breaks down into the following parts: what does it mean to make poetry ephemeral, as each day's poem is superseded on the front page by the next's? What does it mean, conversely, to have every poem searchable and archived? What does it mean to have so much poetry produced so quickly, and none of it edited? And finally, what does it do to have such a formal poetic form placed into the context of such a modern medium?

What does it mean to make poetry ephemeral?

This is probably the question that worries me the most, or perhaps not worries me but nags at me. I write a lot of poetry here, as you know if you take even a glance at my archive or even at the front page. But each one, whether good or bad, whether a labor of lengthy love or the work of a moment, whether precious to me or not, drops off the radar incredibly rapidly - and at the same rate. Who reads the archive? And if you do read the archive, how do you know which poem to read? In this sense, the medium portrays the poetry as if it were all created equal, which it manifestly is not. But because every poem disappears from view, never to return, there is no way to keep the best poems around, or, therefore to produce improvement in the poems by recognizing success or failure and keeping the examples of each before one's eyes. The poems become mere ripples in the stream, and lose their solid presence. Poems are meant, in some sense, to stand as "a moment's monument," in Dante's words, or "marble or the gilded monuments/of princes" in Shakespeare's. How can the poem be a monument, how can it immortalize anything, if it itself is ravaged by time, and indeed ravaged more rapidly than the physical objects to which it is compared? Does a poem lose something of its identity, of that crystalline quality that I desire it to have, if it disappears soon after its creation?

I hope, and think, the answer is that it does not. After all, if I write poetry in a book, or in a Word document, or in any other format, is it presented to the world any more than it is at the bottom of my archive here? Certainly not, and indeed, it is less available, less noticeable, less useful. Of course, if I were to write my poetry in another medium, I could collate and correct it before publishing it to somewhere it could be read by others; but equally, there would be a good chance that the poems might become permanently voided because I lost them, forgot about them, or simply refused to show them. How can this medium be considered more ephemeral than that? The apparent ephemerality of the poems is simply an artifact of the fact that all the poems I write (with few exceptions) are available here, and therefore the constant stream of them, and their constantly visible renewal, makes each one looks less important. Yet I would write the poems in any case, and they are certainly no less important and no more ephemeral here.

But, on the other hand, what does it mean to have them all archived?

The flip side of the above point is that, unlike other media, this medium provides a searchable, browsable archive of everything I've produced. Certainly from a personal standpoint this is both a good thing, as I have easy access to my work, and a frightening thing, as whatever personal truth is contained in the poems is not only publicly available, but available with its own history tagging along behind it. It is rather difficult to escape one's past in such a context. But I am more concerned here with a poetic, artistic level than a personal one, to the extent that they can be divorced, and on that side the issue is more the one identified above, that the archive is undifferentiated and therefore not ideal to use. So it is less useful than it could be; if I could find a way to differentiate the poems by quality, or by audience response (which I suppose could be achieved by comments), then the presence of the archive would become a much greater tool for poetic development. It does however tie me, however usefully, to my poetic past; it leaves the exploration of my poetic development, however achieved, open to the willing eye. At the moment this is only an archive of the past few months, along with spotted moments of My Old Sonnets, but if I continue it will grow and become both more useful and more interesting as a record of my poetic past, and of how I have developed as a poet.

What does it mean to have so much poetry, so quickly, without editing?

This jockeys with the first question for my attention, and indeed they are closely related. The role of editing in poetry is one that I have struggled with. I write my poems very rapidly, almost compulsively, and though I do edit them in the process of writing them it is very hard for me to edit them afterwards unless it is long afterwards. It is not, as it might seem to be, an issue of excess of passion, but rather an issue of being too close to the moment of creation; a sonnet that has just passed hot out of the forge of my brain needs time to cool before it can be reshaped. Or at least before I can reshape it. So in a sense, editing would not happen even if I were in another medium, just because of who I am and how I write.

Yet the blog medium is, admittedly, peculiarly unfriendly to editing, especially compared to other electronic media, such as simply typing in Word. The archive moves on so quickly, and posts that are edited themselves do not pop up on the frontpage but rather wherever the original was in the archive. So the tendency is simply to forge on, rather than to go back, and even if one does go back the edited poem is invisible unless reposted. So there is a distinct pressure to move onward, ever onward.

This in turn leads towards greatly increased poetic production in terms of numbers of poems. I have written well over three hundred sonnets for this blog. Petrarch wrote, or at least published, that many sonnets in his entire life; Shakespeare, less than half as many. This is certainly not to claim a position for myself alongside those two poets, but rather to point out the effect, in some ways, of the medium's constant push for novelty rather than reworking of old material. I am, and in some sense must be, continually presenting new sonnets and new work, and therefore exceed greatly the standards of quantitative production traditional for the sonnet. This is accelerated by the way in which the medium interacts with editing; otherwise I might perhaps spend more time producing better work out of the materials already at hand rather than creating anew.

What does it mean to have a formal, traditional form in a modern medium?

Besides the production point addressed above, the interaction of something so old, traditional, almost arcane as the sonnet with the slambang speed of the Internet interests me. This is perhaps particularly true because of the traditional approach I take to the sonnet (nothing without consistent meter and rhyme, please!). The speed and almost sloppiness allowed by the medium interact interestingly with the precision demanded by the form. I can push out the sonnet as fast as I can write it, technically speaking, but I can only write it as quickly as I can find the right words to fit the form; the form, and not the medium, is the constraint, the limiting factor, which is substantially different than it is when I write by hand, and even in some ways different than when I type into something like Word (because then there is a lag in publication, which permits more editing - see above - which in turn makes the form itself no longer the limiting factor). This has probably contributed in turn to my facility with the form, but it has also created a situation in which there is no automatic check that allows me to edit as I go along by making me pause as I compose, since the composition can flow as rapidly as it likes and be immediately posted. This in turn must have an impact on what eventually gets published, as there is less of a space for contemplation of the production either during or immediately after the process.