Sonnet XXXVI

When I see your little, grinning and smarmy face
with victory smug and insolent and spinning around your finger,
hear the key of your voice's taunts and whining,
I find my control declining,
I want to shove you to the wall and smack you loudly,
make you call out and bite your lip,
look fearful--
and when I've made you realize how small and weak are boasts and lies,
I will kiss you,
watch your tearful eyes widen,
hear you sigh and mewl,
caress your bruises,
love,
but rule.

Sonnet XXXV

I'm seeking the most beautiful of men.
I look and listen only in my mind,
and always, over and again I find
him looking past his shoulder, turning when
I call him, waiting for me, smiling, then
as I reach out to him, becoming blind
and crying for me, and a sudden bind
entraps me in a steel-and-crystal pen.

I know that never, never will I reach
the man I love; of course I understand
that this results in stabs of pain I mask,
confusion, and destruction--but to teach
my soul to stop itself from wanting grand
and gorgeous things is such a hopeless task.

Formes Fixes

I. Ballade

Since, in a way, he always will be mine,
and in another, he can never be,
I have been watching him across this line
with fascination that becomes the key
that can transcend the lock forbidding me
from the perfection that infects my spine
with heated shivers; but his soft allure
must be resisted--if my soul were free,
then maybe I would find he were not pure.


II. Virelai

I know my beloved though
we have never met below
daylight's canopy; I know
how my soul goes out to him.
I hear every catch to slow
his voice's flow,
feel the trembling of each limb,
see the way his pupils grow
as daydreams glow,
know the story of each whim,
follow the uncertain blow
mixed with passion in a show
of bravado, let him go
slack against me, yielding, slim--
I know my beloved though
we have never met below
daylight's canopy; I know
how my soul goes out to him.


III. Rondeau

No matter how much I would, I
don't stay my hand,
can't stop my desire to haunt him.
I want what is good. How could I
leave it unplanned?
No matter how much I would, I
can't stop my desire to haunt him.
If all that exists is good, I
can't understand
why I am wrong to want him.
No matter how much I would, I
don't stay my hand,
can't stop my desire to haunt him.

Sonnet XXXIV

On days when sunshine glances off the creek,
and bluebirds sing, and all the mud half-dries,
and everyone has springtime in his eyes,
I get so angry, I can hardly speak.
I want to swallow up the Earth, to squeak
and stamp my foot as if I'd lost my prize
like Rumpelstiltskin who was over-wise
and rip myself in pieces with a shriek.

Like him, I stole from life a squalling child,
and sodden, shiny springtime steals it back.
The instant I believed that I was strong,
it showed me that the concepts in my mind
were false, that I am helpless in the black
eternity for which I used to long.

Villanelle

Come, let me comfort you
with gentle arms.
Don't touch me; go away.
I must not abandon you whom I loved.
Come, let me comfort you.
I cannot breathe or drink;
you are too much.
Don't touch me; go away.
As I pull back, you push
up against me.
Come, let me comfort you.
You say you anchor me:
you tie me down.
Don't touch me; go away.
Will it hurt you too much
to know the truth?
Come, let me comfort you.
Don't touch me; go away.

Sonnet XXXIII: For Kirsten Refsing

It's true that twenty years are very much:
long and short, informative and blinding.
When this cheerful book received its binding,
these facts were new enough to clutch
with hunger. In my mind, I see her touch
elderly informants gently, minding
carefully her tape recorder, finding
the task she does may soon bring aid to such.

Thus, she has done her work, and it is done,
and nobody, especially not I,
may seek the answer to that question still.
Therefore, what question may I ask that none
has answered? In what corner of the sky
may I begin to work and share my skill?

The Nixy

I. Ballade

I can feel everything there is to feel:
slow-moving waves within the weedy pond,
hands brushing, soft against my wrist and heel,
graspings and snatchings of determined frond;
sympathy, guilt, and joy make me respond.
All of the pain you shared with me was real:
do not forget how I returned your cry.
Do not forget the forging of our bond.
Do not dismiss me; do not pass me by.


II. Rondeau

Until my two arms enfold you,
I will wait on,
too powerless just to take you.
I cannot reach out to hold you
while you are gone.
Until my two arms enfold you,
I will wait on.
Will you not do what I told you
when you were drawn
from waters that tried to break you?
Until my two arms enfold you,
I will wait on,
too powerless just to take you.


III. Virelai

They cannot release their sighs
where the soundless water lies,
but their cold and lifeless eyes
still reproach each time I kill.
I would like to leave this guise.
Stop me and rise
if you have a sturdy will!
Yet another victim dies,
soul-pillaged, wise,
and I watch him in the chill,
but the ruling still applies,
given me by Nature's ties.
I endure their frightened cries
and am punished for it still.
They cannot release their sighs
where the soundless water lies,
but their cold and lifeless eyes
still reproach each time I kill.


IV. Villanelle

Cum fossa et furca they fall.
I watch them drown,
and I hold their legs as they sprawl,
for I am the undertow’s doll.
I force them down.
Cum fossa et furca they fall.
The cold slows their hearts to a crawl.
I kiss each frown,
and I hold their legs as they sprawl.
The world is increasingly small,
a silent town.
Cum fossa et furca they fall.
They swallow and try to recall
their old renown,
and I hold their legs as they sprawl.
They struggle to try to forestall
the pond-scum crown.
Cum fossa et furca they fall,
and I hold their legs as they sprawl.

Sonnet XXXII

The brown and ivory were swiftly fanned
across my pillow, mixed with blue and pink,
in hair and skin as soft as liquid ink
beneath my touch, beneath my gentle hand
and rough and questing teeth and tongue that spanned
across the taste of milk with tea--I think--
a little sweet and not too hot to drink,
and sugar-dusted cookies, warm and bland.

It is too strong to stay unspoken long,
too secret and too personal to share,
and too innately felt to run away.
I keep the tastes and colors--is that wrong?--
awash along my teeth with fragile care
and running through my fingers while I pray.

February 25

It is the first day people go outside,
when the warm breezes first begin to float
over the fields that springtime sun has dried,
when the fall leaves work free of winter bloat.
It is too hot to wear my heavy coat.
I, in my sweater, do my best to hide;
I, with each stockinged foot within its sheath,
panting and sweating, try to take no note.
Clothes must stay on--I'm ugly underneath.

Sonnet XXXI: Bells

When I hear the timepiece clicking and echoing along my walk, I am lost in thought and, flicking away the present, start to talk of the ears who heard the sounding years before we did.

The pounding of time inside my fragile skull drives down, and its uncaring pull is persistent.

Situations of our invention make us hear the past; the whispers of the dear children in the long lost nations are telling me the pealing haze that kept them fed throughout their days.

Exercise

I have not forgotten him
singing among the stones
though the words are growing dim
and each graceful, well-formed limb
dwindles to ghostly bones.

I have not forgotten him--
his expression, sweet but grim--
numinous, precious drones--
though the words are growing dim
with the days and months that skim
over abandoned thrones.

I have not forgotten him.

Every note that built his hymn
presses and softly groans,
though the words are growing dim.

Not with any passing whim
will I forget his moans:
I have not forgotten him
though the words are growing dim.

Sonnet XXX: To Senex

Senex, take your lawful glances
and go away; your watchful run
spoils my appetite and chances
and frightens my beloved one.
I must feed before his shading--
flowers are already fading;
the plum will rot and fall, too sweet
for my discerning tongue to eat.
Looking to me, wildly begging
for death, he wishes to be culled
before he has his senses dulled
by experiences pegging
him into holes. We must preserve
his beauty on its upward curve.

Sonnet XXIX: Apples

I,
debauched on knowing apples,
move little and despise my soul,
groaning as the Angel grapples my body.

Pieces of me,
whole in themselves,
fall over railings,
advertising tiny failings that build up into larger sins.

I cannot act;
the Angel wins by default.

The apples flower above me,
whispering to me about their strength,
and I can see how they make me sick;
their power,
however,
is the food I need to eat to learn,
to know,
to lead.

Sonnet XXVIII: Crowd

I like being in a crowded and busy place,
yet all alone,
recognized by no one,
shrouded by anonymity,
unknown.

Seeing people in their pleasure or their pain
brings me a measure of peace;
because they are not mine,
I am detached.

It is a sign of our liberty
that strangers talk freely
where my ears may hear.

I joy in it;
I have no fear here.

It is at home that dangers are everywhere
and people know the ways
my thoughts and feelings go.

Sonnet XXVII: Restless

Say, what shall I do tomorrow?
Shall I explore? Or shall I die?
Shall I live, drink deep on sorrow,
pass out, exhausted, where I lie?
Shall I wander through Earth’s corners,
flushed and jostling all the mourners
around the Unmoved Mover’s grave,
and ask them for the truth he gave?
Or shall I give birth, elated,
and love upon the baby’s blood,
before I bathe him with a flood
of saliva I created?
What shall I do today? Forgive?
Shall I encircle? Shall I live?

Violence

I. Rondeau

She's panting and softly crying
(do it again),
so faithful and so unknowing,
and she doesn't see she's dying
(hasn't she been?).
She's panting and softly crying
(do it again),
but I know that I'm not lying
(are we but men?)
when taking her hand and showing.
She's panting and softly crying
(do it again),
so faithful and so unknowing.


II. Virelai

Beautiful, exciting, dead:
pangs of hunger, pangs of dread,
when I think pollute my head
with the things I think I did

when I pinned her to the bed--
the way she pled
for the secrets that I hid

on her body; when I said
how I have bled
in the darkness; when I rid

all my soul of words that sped,
understood by her; I led
her to warmth, and then I fed
on her heart as I was bid.

Beautiful, exciting, dead:
pangs of hunger, pangs of dread,
when I think pollute my head
with the things I think I did.


III. Ballade

I do not know what violence to do
to ever pay for all that I have done.
I cannot speak; I could not punish you
as I exposed my secrets to the sun,
running as far as ever I could run.
Shall I cut deeply, splitting into two?
Shall I expose my heart and hands to pain?
I have lost everything that I have won;
now I must offer everything I gain.

Sonnet XXVI: My Anthropology

My weary brain was frustrated by rules,
Yet suddenly I found in all I own:
A subject is a universe alone,
Not linked, a game that uses its own tools.
This world and that world and their separate schools
Have different logics laid upon the throne,
Returning each the unconnected drone
Of sacrifice to unacquainted ghouls.
Perhaps all worlds are thus--they intersect
On points but do not intermingle. I
L'istesso tempo play each piece anew,
Overtly speak its laws, each game perfect,
Go on as it requires. I see the lie,
Yet hold their contradictions all as true.

Sonnet Cycle

I.

There is a rugged apex where one turns
from gazing at a withheld thing with lust
to finding that it fills one with disgust.
The tongue is bitten hard; the stomach churns.
And I have been too hungry with concerns
for far too long; I’ve learned to stay robust
by eating only atmosphere and dust.
I marvel as the flesh no longer burns.

For I no longer wish to share my soul
with you or any other I revile,
and I no longer wish to desecrate
myself by knowing you in part or whole.
So your forlorn attempt to reconcile
is simply meaningless; it comes too late.


II.

I’m sickened by my own debauchery,
but I must never stop allowing drink
to pass my sated lips, must never think,
for pain is in my eyelids, and I see
that glee and self-indulgent revelry
are opiates that keep me from the brink
of memory and tutor me to blink
when bitterness becomes too real to me.

If manufactured meaninglessness roils
around me in a sleepless, soothing balm,
then everything that wants to hurt my heart—
that outside meaninglessness that despoils
my sanity—can’t get me. Never calm,
I tear another fiction-world apart.


III.

You may laugh your laughter of derision
at my well-constructed affectation
of dependent, yielding adoration—
when the time is full, whose cold decision
tells you to go home, girl, with a vision
toward protecting your untainted station,
warning you to take your sweet elation
and get out with terrible precision?

I’m the one who keeps the midnight watches,
half an eye turned toward the unseen Bible,
tempering my joyfulness, critiquing
any peg that slips too many notches,
guarding well my charge against their libel.
See—I know the enemy is seeking.


IV.

I trust nobody with my soul, for none
who cares for me is strong enough to fight—
here only I am strong, and my poor might
is far too weak to see the task is done.
The heated onslaught has again begun
before our souls were ready, and despite
my efforts to protect our souls last night,
the enemy inside us almost won.

So rest and I are strangers as I do
what no one else around me ever can:
protect your heart and mine until they’re gone.
And all the while I long to run to you,
to hide inside your arms, to let you span
that distance—but you’re weaker; I go on.


V.

I know what I am doing very well—
exactly what I’m doing—that is why
I pull my hand away, define, deny.
She knows the motions, the advance, the swell,
instinctively as far as I can tell,
but meanings are a mystery; they sigh
and whisper in her ear the ancient lie:
there is no danger—but I know; I fell.

Although I long to throw my knowledge down
and follow as she leads into the dark,
descending with delight into the myrrh
of newborn joy, I will resist her frown
and pull my hand away and not embark,
because I am, in truth, in love with her.


VI.
I do not think my husband really heard
when I confessed my feelings for my friend.
I was unclear—I don’t think I intend
for him to ever know—because I’m blurred
by wonder, half-enraptured by a word
of secret joy. Enamored, I transcend
the earth, and telling anyone would end
the secret, make my love absurd.

Besides, I didn’t know if I should stress
the guilt (I’m married, and the girl is young)
or innocence, because it’s not my fault,
entirely, anyway, for my distress
was great, and I was powerless among
the soft effusions of her fierce assault.

Beautiful

Two moments will live forever:
art and the grave.
I long to preserve your beauty,
to freeze it in whatsoever
form I can save.
Two moments will live forever,
art and the grave:
my brush and my knife's endeavor.
Now is your wave
of apex. I know my duty.
Two moments will live forever:
art and the grave.
I long to preserve your beauty.

Sonnet XXV: Try It

Well, how d’you know you won’t enjoy it then?
I asked. You’ve never tried it. And he said,
I’ve never aimed a bullet at my head—
I know I wouldn’t like that, either, when
my brain blew out in pieces. No amen
could I attempt to volunteer; instead
I closed my mouth. He might as well be dead
as think that—could I make him live again?

How wrong! How is it possible to know
one wouldn’t like a new thing? To refrain
from newness proves one weak and childish; though
I’ve cowered many times from foreign grain
and meat, it is my hope soon to outgrow
all fear—to laugh with joy while learning pain.