sw00040usabys-15.may.sonnets.9of25

9 of 25                                               

 1976 Today
                353 bicentennial year sonnets (122-136)

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May: Year-day 122

The self-winding watch of the poem ticks on
so long as it's read, its readers held
and charged and changed/ by what they// look upon/
and hear/ as nowhere are emotions quelled
or the intellect left without designs
to ponder, place, be pleased by.  That is why
while a good ode, sonnet, free verse piece mines
its varied ways, it spells the ear and eye.

That is why this first of May can indulge
both Catholics and Communists and still
tick finely too, opening our mouths, bending
our recalcitrances, flattening the bulge
of our self-importance, used by each will--
and using in turn--toward times without ending.

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May: Year-day 123

Have you ever felt badly about
things you have done?  I have.  So badly that
I cannot stop thinking on some, and shout
bleak condemnations continually at
myself inside: so much so sometimes they
confuse my necessary thoughts with their
furious echoings, thunderous grey
in a spirit whose skies ought to be fair.

If God forgives me, who I believe does/
and has, who then am I not to.  All you
I've wronged, I know I cannot change what was--
however much I'd like to; know it's true//
apologies/ are not enough.  Because
we're as we are, we're best when winds are blue.

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May: Year-day 124

Confusion pervades.  The moral designs
formed in my psyche when I was a child
still haven't dissolved enough for the wild
in me to become act easily.  Vines,
bushes, trees/ chopped down, trimmed to formal lines
of such preciseness I have often smiled
sadly.  Viewing them, I retreat beguiled
and testy, my fingers/ playing your spines.

Give, and take, though.  All wildness wouldn't be
acceptable either.  Oh, incidents
occur requiring more of the one than
the other, the artist-woman must see--
having spoken, as I have, of balance--
must see it's relative to what's at hand.

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May: Year-day 125

Killing time's one of my proclivities
for sure.  I do it best when deeply tired,
letting my pen squiggle grey creeks where trees
have laid down; my imaginings getmired
in the swamps of dreams, the rem caves of sleep;
and somewhat well at a dance floor's edge, gazing
at lovers while into them daggers leap
and the blood from their spirits spurts, amazing.

The hours we force our beings to endure
the exigencies of ill-bred desires!
You'd think we'd had it with human manure
and the hard smoke of malodorous fires!
You'd think I'd have found an effective cure
in the face of tombs and sinewy spires!

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May: Year-day 126

Passing through, a salesman of pots and pans,
of services, of words, trying to catch
you off guard, get you to buy--my plans
for doing so preconceived, set to match
your wants so/ you equate them with your needs--
I work a little magic before you
which (if done well) plants in your senses seeds
of must have you nurture/ before I'm through.

Then, whether I stay to see them bloom or
hurry off to plant others, I relax
somewhat, smiling to myself, because one
who enjoys what I have to sell, whose door
isn't trained to crush feet, who'll pay the tax
of effort and time, is better than none.

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May: Year-day 127

In Japan, yesterday was children's day.
In America, another'll be theirs.
Childless at 35; likely to stay
so, still, I feel I understand their cares:
that though they jump and roll and scurry off
and seemingly want to laugh and dance past
any rule or need, turning just to scoff
when they're called, come home, anyhow, at last.

Of course, there are the unusual cases:
those, for instance, who run away for good,
withdrawing to more salubrious places;
those who/ run for a time/ to learn what/ should
be done/ so they and others like their faces;
those who suffer, can't run, but wish they could.

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May: Year-day 128

Desolate, a dead leaf on a rough rock
island in a swirling river, my stem
anchored in a crevice of that rock, shock
troops of water and wind tearing my flesh,
shattering my bones, I wait for the knock
that will snap my stem and set me adrift,
a wish I constantly chant as the clock
of the elements rudely chimes and ticks
and tocks my disintegration.  The moon
gores the cape cloud passed by the night.
The sun blinds a spread-eagled air.  Too soon
changes wrong what changes again will right.
Someone/ flicks a match, and its moved flames prune/
to brilliance and ash, wisped from sight.

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May: Year-day 129

So many poems exist, and will/ and will,
leafing into sun, their small voices pressed
against the wind, their bodies seeming still
in the turning dance for whichthey are dressed
variously--mounds, hills, mountains--as seasons
touchand are touched by them.  So many beings
traveling out with their feelings and reasons
momently caught for whomsoever's seeings.

So, likewise, this embodiment of me,
cracking open, uncurling, stretching: shape
displacing sky, transformation of air,
transformation of earth, of distant sea,
the enchanting and enigmatic rape
that fire is, dancing, still, taking to share.

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May: Year-day 130

Give me the grace to forgive myself, Lord,
Life, for my too quick tongue and too quick pen
though I fear even that will soon be ignored
by circumstances: again, again.

Give me the grace to give of myself, Truth,
Way, and not just for solace before death
but moreso that Death as Rude Icy Tooth
die/ because I and others honor breath.

This moment, next, allowed to flash, alive
in a world rife with splendors, sorrows, loves;
or taken from it, the matter of me
shed, left behind, compressed to dust, to thrive
in trust, whatever new beyonds, aboves
I work to move my spirit toward.  O see!

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May: Year-day 131

The world is full of recipes I'd just 
as soon forget, and full again of others
I'd just as soon remember; let the dust
hide, or not, whether grandmother's or mother's
or Aristotle's or yours or mine.  I'm
told there are large carnivores and small birds
dying out; that somewhere too soon in time
die this Earth's needed elements, and words.

The usual, usual: Synergetics,
pyramid strength, Findhorn and Lindisfarne,
the double helix, cloning, cybernetics,
cryogenics, black holes, painting the barn,
tush, Steps to an Ecology of Mind,
exobiology, things left behind.

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May: Year-day 132

Stopped to see Tom Montag last night, and learned
it's time to get back where I started from,
to deal more directly with what we yearn
for: a United States where we can come
and be comfortable, whatever forms
our chattings take.  And so the history
of our nation must be rewritten: storms
flavor its bland skies; songs nest in its trees.

Oh, I know Tom may find it hard to praise
this sonnet path I've decided to walk,
it being too formal, too civilized:
its borders too perfect for storm cloud rays
to fall on with pleasure.  But let me talk
so; even here blood and thorns exercise.

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May: Year-day 133

Expansive journals of Lewis and Clark,
of Jefferson, or whomsoever we
in this blessed country of the supposed free
are privileged to use against the dark
of the many stories sold us to mark
our patriotism: thank you wells the sea
in us under the moon;thank you each tree
of our good wishes from its budding bark.

Brought here, born here, let's recover what's true
beyond where George's axed cherry tree rots
and old dark Abe's vaunted honesty grew,
knowing historians' redolent plots
may not be the ones to hold ourselves to
if we're going to abide, loose fear's knots.

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May: Year-day 134

It's about time we let those who so hate
that they'll kill willy-nilly where a foe
is visioned have the days of the mad fate
they apparently want/ so that they go
to their deaths quickly and happily, leaving
the rest of us to end our differences
in peaceful ways, and avoid the false grieving
of those heroing those/ who tossed their senses.

No need to spout what revolution is;
that it's sometimes right to die for one's thoughts;
that this nation was born in violence;
nor even to say your rights are as his,
or his less than yours.  Fight only soul droughts.
When they kill in Boston, they make no sense.

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May: Year-day 135

The words: "Rebellion to tyrants is
obedience to God" require no fancy
philosophical support.  No blank quiz
of questions either.  We needn't get antsy.
What's true in its heart/ is true.  Or, at least,
we might say: "Obvious is obvious."
When somewhere out of the brush a crazed beast
attacks, detering it is up to us.

So the king of England wearing his crown
as if he were sovereign of part of heaven
had to have that crown knocked off his cocked head/
to learn what's poorly built must crumble, down
to its last weak brick, the incessant leaven
of truth infusing it until it's dead.

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May: Year-day 136

Common knowledge it is/ too often we/
make what is simple complex, leaving death
outside the window no more than a breath
of cold air designing, so what we see
enchants us better than it frightens us
who in artificial warmth think our lives
cannot be suddenly nipped.  Who survives?
Anything can be blanked without much fuss.

Today the air is hung with rain and fog,
and the long flocks of ripples migrate south
again/ on the asphalt flyway; our thoughts
likewise, if we let them, sucking the grog
of this weather too long.  Pleasure your mouth
with the liquor of light, and warm breeze draughts.
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9 of 25


Brian A. J. Salchert