sw00042usabys-15.jun.sonnets.11of25

11 of 25                                             

 1976 Today
                353 bicentennial year sonnets (153-167)

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June: Year-day 153

Esoteric jibberish, foolish talk.
Some of what I have rhymed is tough to sense,
and why?  You'd think I'd not want my thoughts dense,
forcing readers to closely eye, to stalk,
to untangle vines from bushes, from trees,
and winds from waters, from hillocks, from fires,
extricate my desires from my desires,
here, jumping, climbing; there, on hands and knees.

Yet my words gather and part as they will,
not that I do not imprison their plays;
but sometimes--as when one swallows a pill,
observing the changes it makes, and weighs
them--words appear: a feral, foggy chill
within; but gentler than torrid forays.

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June: Year-day 154

Somewhere in the tapestries of the air
a bit of a weave defines who I am,
or was, or may yet be; yet changes there
as a wolf becoming a bleating lamb
or a coat of moss the skin of a snake,
and so whispers, wheezes, whines to me me
in words tough to grasp, whether for my sake,
yours, or no one's/ I/ even hear them, see.

Look into it, if it soothes your heart; trace
each/ chameleon turning/ as you can.
Maybe what's invisible eludes you
less readily than it does me.  One's face,
you know, is not seen without help.  Who ran,
trueing the false, falsely fieing the true?

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June: Year-day 155

Richard Kostelanetz, your visions splinter
the windows in my blood, driving the ice
in so that I have no name for the winter
hardening there, far from romantic, nice,
touched with fantasies of emotion I
can snuggle up against.  Oh, I know you
don't wish death, though you are/ more of the sky
than the roots, more pure math type in hue.

But, listen, Rich, I wouldn't mind so much
if you wouldn't; your cold sky beauties catch
my heart in my mind.  Let my warm earth touch/
move your mind in your heart.  Still, though we scratch
gossip, we show & sell, Kostelanetz,
honest addictions: our graphics, our sonnets.

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June: Year-day 156

Bridal wreath, red maple, sun: West Bend, bright
for "Alice in Dairyland" and this year's
"Alice" finalists.  Young women's hopes, fears
pageanted out in three packed days of flight
into and from the no-man's land of truth.
Candelight heat, spirits releasing care,
fragrance of virginity in the air:
what fate portends in a mole, a wedged tooth?

Janice Marie, name of the miss who'll win.
Janice Marie, name of my wife--not entered.
What will the first do with her year of fame?

Some will say we are dying, fast in sin.
Some will whisper: "By evil they are mentored."
White, red, brilliant yellow: so winter came.

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June: Year-day 157

Bold Forbes, Elocutionist, Bold Forbes.  Third
horse in four years to win the Kentucky
Derby and the Belmont Stakes.  So good, lucky:
yet neither good nor lucky enough, spurred
though he was by a jockey of deep skill.
Oh Secretariat, last of the great,
how soon will one like you charge from the gate
and fix us again with the triple thrill?

Heywood Hale Broun, sports' announcer exquisite,
always I am pleased by your dandy visit,
your mixing of literature and sport
and history, your warm distinguished air
counterpointed by flashy clothes.  Swift, spare,
the thoroughbreds sweat to match your report.

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June: Year-day 158

Pentecost.  Anniversary fourteen
of that hard blooming from the seminary
to where I experienced more of the cherry
in me, bringer of injury and keen 
embarrassment I still haven't defeated,
even though my embarrassment's now more
for those who malign than from any sore
I feel from the center of where I'm heated.

Embarrassments of other kinds I jail
however/ ought to be significant,
and easily could: our ignorance of
the praises Aaron Burr and Nathan Hale
deserve; our letting self-hatred reek, rant,
destroy; our choosing/ clean hands/ over love.

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June: Year-day 159

As many things as I reveal to you
about me, there will always be things I
will not reveal, things hid in corners by
my fears and shame and better sense, askew
or not, so you can never cleanly view
who I am, not that what I let you eye,
anyway, tells much, whatever blue sky
it seems to fly through, however on cue.

You will just have to live with what you get
as the trees' leaves jitter, waving hello.
I haven't prepared a succulent breeze.

What you know you know because bodies let
some things out despite what their wills would show;
but for much more than that you'll have to squeeze.

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June: Year-day 160

Coincidence has charms that chill my spine
and urge wandering laughters from my heart.
Reading Anne Sexton's "Gods", its fourth-last line--
I was on the toilet--gave me a start.

Coincidence blows bubbles through the air
that float good moments from when I was young,
and bad ones too.  Coincidence wakes care;
reminds me of when the honeybee stung.

Have I passed this way before?  Will I pass
again?  Whether or no, there are returnings
that cave our mouths, stun our eyes behind glass.

And where they are not, they're replaced by yearnings
that cycle everything even so.  Under
an ocean's deepest kingdoms, Man's cleft wonder.

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June: Year-day 161

Cartermania.  Everybody's gone
peanuts, cracked and jumped/ right out his shell,
waving his thin-skin flag over the lawn
of his ignorance.  Oh, Hamilton, hell
were you on when you said the masses couldn't
be trusted to choose who's best for this nation,
two hundred now, of united states!  Wouldn't
you thrill to see what's come of this creation:

All the peanuts queued to be cooked, and crushed,
and processed into the creamy and smooth,
nowhere crunchy, nowhere natural.  Sam,
how many of them/ have been Jimmy-flushed,
and smile, as if only what's soft can soothe
their ailings!  Pray I'm wrong.  I hope I am.

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June: Year-day 162

Outside the drapes the glary winds so shiver
the leaves/ I think for a moment it's raining
against this building's bricks, the sky a giver
of snippy lashes; but I'm merely straining
for metaphor and relief, the truth shows,
as if dryness and flatness are not mine
to use, as if I much preferred quick blows
to the heart, the guts, the head.  Life's so fine.

Albert Goldbarth--your eye at the knothole,
looking out from the park of your strange dreams
as your galaxy races, births, and whines,
amazing/ the editors' eyes--your soul
delights me too, some; yet rarely what seems
is: imaginations remake the signs.

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June: Year-day 163

A / New Jersey.  Victoria and Swine 
in combination?  A variant of
Hong Kong with Swine?  The final/ loss of love?
The result of my forgetting what's fine
and good about me has/ acquired its shine
more centrally from one who stands above
my ambition, my silly wish to show
my self too far, than/ from me?  End of line?

Having missed death in a half dozen places
because someone wanted me kept a while,
I could peacock in my luck, though I know
such fanning would obliterate my traces,
mock the strutting in my unearned style.
So, I guess I'll just warble/ where I go.

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June: Year-day 164

Anniversary eleven for me
and Janice, wife who keeps mesome ways chained
as also herself because she's/ remained
my spouse, and well may contiune to be
no matter how much I wish I were free
those moments I don't want to be constrained.,
don't want to be--as I've often complained--
shadowed & silent.  Let them/ hear and see.

Anniversary eleven.  And I,
because I'm neither famous nor rich nor
self-pleasing gutsy, may exit my door
(if I get that far) but ought never try
to  enter it, knowing how hearts decry
the insouciance of a weedy flower.

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June: Year-day 165

Early morning: Ohio: the pale clouds stick out
their flaming tongue; the thermometer cracks,
anticipating.  My teach aunt, stout,
indomitable, drives; the U-HAUL tracks
behind.  We washboard past the eiree lake,
the Pennsylvania grape vines--the Olds
Cutlass, silent, smooth--intending to make
Swampscott by 8 PM if the planned holds.

Strangers we pass, each my sister / my brother,
special / gifted, bad / good, sober my glasses.
In a rotting nation, not much relaxes.

This moment, that, I wish I'm somewhere other;
still, riding toward Emerson land, the grasses
of upper New York waving, spins my waxes.

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June: Year-day 166

The America of business is to
spoil the view: the next exit 30-A,
Johnstown, New York, for Gulf and Holiday
Inn, right there on that red/white sign for you!
right there near the top of that high round hill,
surrounded by trees and trees.  Yank it out!
Can't you hear your guts jumping/ up to shout,
"Yank it!  Chop it down!"/ juicing/ for the kill?

Loose your triangled flag, so debonnaire.
Fine.  But if you own a business and/ so
need to advertise, do not let whatever
helps to sell/ become the/ land of your care/
so its flag will dishonorably show--
but, crud, why sputter so.  Green trees forever.

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June: Year-day 167

Ralph, here I am, an ignorant man
in Concord, my hands on your headstone, praying
for strength, hoping that through such help I can
say with my pen/ much that is worth the saying
so whether I seek the heaven of Yeats
or Valéry's universal self or
communion with the Oversoul or gates
to another, or my, or no thought, more
than just a tit and a tat of the poems
I make will attract eyes and please the ears
of those who behold them, changing in small
but affable ways the cares in their homes,
raising a laugh, a smile, an insight, tears/
touching a hunched heart toward/ the straight, the tall.
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11 of 25


Brian A. J. Salchert