Sonnet LXIV

And it's the championship match when I
first realize how much I love this game,
but I have never once been forced to try
with all my heart before for their acclaim

I think I want to maybe win. The shame
would overwhelm me if I lost: I knew,
I know, I lose. And mine is all the blame
I can create; but what is there to do?

And how to try? The methods and the rules--
what are they? How to care? I know I'm cold
Is this what losers feel like? (feel like fools)
If I don't give my everything as told--

I splutter at this incoherent win
I'm not sure I'm ready to give in

Sonnet Cycle: Eromenoi

I.

My wish for you is that you would permit
my hands and eyes to show you secret Earth,
that I might watch as you discover birth
is death and learn to take delight in it,
to know again through you the joy of wit,
to take again from learning subtle mirth.
I lead you now to virtue, and the worth
of it will grow in you as you are fit—

but such delights are only in a heart
untouched by any sin that stops a prayer,
and I will never do for any thus,
for what you give me when I play this part
holds much more worth than even twice our share
of pure Philosophia holds for us.


II.

In whatsoever guise you may appear—
a love-struck girl, a scholar, a tattoo,
or the petals, pink and red and clear,
of the magnolia—I long for you.

In whose-so-ever voice you might début—
the novelist’s, the archangel’s, the news’—
I hear but little else; all sounds accrue
your meaning. But forgive me; you suffuse.

As soon as I can grasp the thing you choose
to make your home, you slip away, and I
am left with heaps of pink and clear red bruise,
a silly boy, a stupid girl, all shy,

expecting I’ll uphold the vows I swore
to you in them. It’s you whom I adore.


III.

When I do a thing that’s moral,
I wonder why I do that deed.
Is it for the victor’s laurel,
a morsel thrown to my own creed?
Is it novelty? For kindness
is as new and cruel as blindness.
Or can it be that in my heart
there is an honest urge to start
doing godlike deeds? No, rather,
I think it must be childlike joy
in having weapons to deploy:
favorite rôles of heroes. Gather
and call me cold, for I love best
the faces that I manifest.


IV.

Let’s say a man is under such a curse
that he must feed on cherries or receive
a most horrific death—or even worse,
feel pain no kind of doctor can relieve.

And let’s say, too—if this we can conceive—
that there are only two small cherries grown
in all the wicked world. Now, I believe
he’ll eat them, flesh and stem and stone.

If there were only one thing left unknown,
one pure, new thing, I know that I’d consume
it whole. The hunger that I would postpone
does struggle to relent and to resume.

I swallow meats too quickly to condemn;
I never taste the merest scent of them.


V.

Knowledge makes one cease adoring,
for knowing well cuts high from low,
and the stain is past ignoring.
Yet love is the desire to know.
Touching something perfect only
will despoil it, yet the lonely
and sinful heart desires to touch;
it begs for nothing half so much.
Is this paradox too ugly,
too cruel and desperate a sport
for gods in heaven to support?
Yet the gods, who sit so smugly,
are victims of the supple bow
of Love and the Desire to Know.


VI.

Is it not right that we desire the Good?
Our souls, made incomplete, beg to be filled.
The Good is True is Beautiful and spilled
on Earth by God, and you, small angel, could
compete with Earth for beauty. If you would,
you might outshine all monuments we build.
And listen: I am true and iron-willed,
the truest you will ever understand.

Then let us blend like watercolor paints
that bleed upon the page—for every hue
is chromaticity of one lone shade—
and let your tutor’s otiose restraints
be thrown away; for all that he may do
will not cause Fortune to be disobeyed.

Sonnet LIV

At times, I'm overcome, and to resist
the world's unspeakable vulgarity
becomes too much, as though I saw the gist
of all that Is in piercing clarity.

I wake in morning's cold austerity
with paling resolution: I conclude
that sleep, like humankind's sincerity,
will never be enough to cure my mood.

I see the end of all things; we've accrued
humiliation only. We invoke
our passions and our efforts, but, reviewed,
they're nothing but the Instigator's joke.

We wish that people cared for us, but none
of us can really care for anyone.

Sonnet LII: Foreigner

There is such shame in every word I read,
in every image, each recorded sound.
The others do not understand my need
to wallow in the beauty that I've found,

or if they do, the thought is dipped and drowned
in the deep ugliness that makes its base.
I see it, too--I see it wrap around
the edges, blunting them, smearing the face,

and muddying the paint. And then this place
embarrasses me with its blatant sin,
which isn't mine except I choose to chase
a language not inborn, a foreign skin.

Why couldn't I have loved something innate
instead of pointless daydreams and self-hate?