sw00054usabys-13.dec.sonnets.23of25

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[ last modified: 2008-09-21]                                                       

 1976 Today
                353 bicentennial year sonnets (336-351)

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December: Year-day 336

I am more intricate than a computer.
That is why I don't compute.  That is why
the frantic searching on my inner eye
disturbs me, why I cannot be a suitor
who's confident.  Aware as I am of
the nuances surrounding an event
a human figures in, I can't content
myself with the luxuries of hate, love.

To the contrary, I must weigh and measure
every act, however caved in the mind
its birth was, however narrow my sight.

When an opening comes revealing pleasure,
I'm tempted to put good reason behind.
It's rare for the lonely to get things right.

(1976 / 1977 / 1978)

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December: Year-day 337

Who's to say the comfort of an old hat
is not what we want, the slowing of time
to a turtle's walk or a tree sloth's climb
or an oak's; that being a city rat
or a rat at all is the slink it's at
under the sway of a columbine,
under a boxcar.  Who's to hold good wine
from us just because we live in a flat.

Remember how the sunlight shows the dust,
brings Magellanic clouds of stars to mind,
and swarms of bees, and warriors, and death.

The one bloom/ worth growing/ is one we must
because a warm and rocking wind is kind
which lets us/ like its flavors/ in our breath.

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December: Year-day 338

What immaturity! what fright! my friend,
keeps us entwined by an incomplete law
not likely to be completed, or end,
leaves me or you or anyone in awe,
advantages notwithstanding; keeps me
from giving when I should, missing a bough
by a length of self-doubt when I could free
myself from myself, squirrel tumbling down.

Yes I've been hurt, confused, moved to deflect
& deflect who I am, allowed to see
just a part of the whole Brian, to plow
for years the wrong ground.  I'll never expect
a Utopia, but Earth sure could be
a heaven of a lot better/ than . . . now!

(2-8-77 and 12-30-06)

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December: Year-day 339

The Milwaukee Library Book Sale: packed.
Milwaukee's Mayfair Shopping Center: jammed.
No one can ever say he's got it sacked;
for always wait tests/ for which he's not crammed.
Leaves in the hallways; plaster in the woods:
the decibels, too, of truth/ can be harsh.
So maybe he doesn't leave with the goods.
Even honkers die/ in a frozen marsh.

Driving yet sleeping, my mouth open wide;
Janice beside me shouting for our lives,
I don't understand; I've nothing to hide.
Oh what would tired men do without their wives?!
What winds, what rains in the blood still abide;
what should I season with porcelain chives?

(12-5-76)

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December: Year-day 340

For the musics, to be able to hear;
for the visions, to be able to see;
for the textures, to be able to feel;
for the flavors, to be able to taste;
for the odors, to be able to smell;
for the concepts, to be able to think;
for the beauties, to be able to joy;
for perfections, to be able to strive:

thank You, Father Creator, Spirit, Lord,
from Whom the vital universes swing,
from Whom the virtues enter to transform,
from Whom the prayers through which You are adored;
and back to Whom/ my life/ and all I sing
imbuing each bright air, each blur, each storm. . . .

(8-26/27-79 under my Alden St. Cloud pen name)

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December: Year-day 341

Who's to say who deserves damnation, heaven;
excoriations, plaudits; flowers, thorns.
Not I.  Not you.  If you're a burglar, Breven,
I'm a deceiver other ways.  The horns
of the avenging angels will shake my dust
as fearfully as yours.  Everyone's weak,
a coward some, who's human; fails to trust
enough, fails to seek what he ought to seek.

Even if you turn murderer and kill
this Brian/ writing here: this person who
renamed himself, this activist who still
trembles and hides (despite his beliefs), you
may not be/ worse than he.  Let the sky fill
with sun, with clouds.  Change.  What saves Man do.

(3-5-80 and 12-30-06)

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December: Year-day 342

The times are lean; I should be lean/ with them.
This winter, they say, will be mean and slow.
Yet, I'm alive--continuing to grow,
while around me people & others die
and there's nothing I can say/do to stem
their downward changings in worlds in this world
I've not, nor now, nor may ever touch, curled
as I am by events/ stronger than I.

A teenager drowns, an explosion kills
five men, a woman's// expired by a spear:
myriad examples to rustle rills
in neuro-vales.  Who knows?: a sudden fire
could ash both/ me and this;make my desire
& insight & music here/ disappear.

(2-3-77 / 1-18-78 / 12-30-06)

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December: Year-day 343

"Our God is a delightfully messy God"
said Father Charlie Robinson this morning,
this soft-light gray Epiphany.  We're odd,
therefore, and meant to be.  Unplug forlorning.
I know it'sThe Immaculate Conception,
but mysteries as theselive beyond time
anyhow; besides, I, without exception,
am the last judge here of the sense and rhyme.

And I, I am a messy creature, finding
delight in humoring you/ writing poems,
and having a woman for my best friend,
and agonizing over every binding
unfortunate choice that drove me from homes
and humans I/ wanted to love, not spend.

(1-2-77 and 2-8-77)

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December: Year-day 344

When what time there is too quickly escapes
those uses I figured to put it to,
I . . . and yanking the dusty golddust drapes,
flag my obsessions for anyone's view.

Mad at the world/ yet ruled by it, I bee
confused, the ways I'm not/ lined with the norm/
stinging me: eyes, ears.  Oh pity poor me!
I'm such a speck in a whirling creep storm!

Oh kiss my frail finger cut by the wind
of the too-fast clock!  Commiserate!  I'm
you, too, you know.  No!  I ought to be pinned
and wriggling!  Why?  I've committed no crime.
My heart should/ be slapped around!  The hours sinned:
not I!  Bastard! dickerer with Dame Time.

(12-12-76 and ? and 12-30-06)

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December: Year-day 345

So, today, Auden came, at last collected
as I thought I'd ever want him to come,
yet still something's missing from one rejected
rarely as a poet; I'm like a bum
scavenging for it.  Oh well, should be used
to such times; after all, perfection's not
a human trait, though we're often bemused
into thinking so.  Wystan knew the lot.

"September, 1939"/ where have
you gone?  Am I deceived?  Or is it best
you are not to be found, scary and sad
as you were.  Surely, we, needing to/ halve
again, as in that/ Hitlerian West,
don't need to be/ reminded of/ love had.

(12-11-76 and 12-30-06)

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December: Year-day 346

Once behind in a lengthy project, filling
the holes by a predetermined time is
difficult; once far behind, weirdly thrilling,
as when one simply has to take a whizz
in -13 air.  It's done, but quickly,
when indeed it is done; and genius flies
or stumbles in the doing, the work slickly
or, god-touched, soaring with/ eagle surprise.

What I'm about here?  A kangaroo state
I'd say it's become, not likely to be
completed on time, as hoped; but, though late,
growing in a pocket, for you and me
attractive enough, neither weak nor great,
but in-between, like your usual sea.

(? and 12-30-06)

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December: Year-day 347

(#11 of 15 I removed earlier this year)

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December: Year-day 348

"A poem is never finished; it is 
only abandoned": Valéry--through Auden.
Like the car one cold morning/ I stalled in,
and finally walked from--wishing it his,
or hers--though I'd liked how it carried me
before I could drive it no farther.  Love
even stalled trying to give it a shove
in the sand reprieved by the ebbing sea.

Later that day, yes, looser, I went back
to it; but the moon was gone, and the track
of my imagination lost in water.

Strive as I did, my vision changed; the sun
stripped me bare; I was driving a new one
along the edge of pregnancies, of slaughter.

(? and 2008-08-02 / was #12 of 15 removed)

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December: Year-day 349

(#13 of 15 I removed earlier this year)

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December: Year-day 350

What one gains one day one loses the next
is a sometimes truth especially true/
when misfortunes and deadlines keep one hexed.
So prickly then it can be to get through,
one slips abruptly to a dank blue funk,
and the high rev energies one requires/
escape.  One may as well be heaving drunk
for all the light from one's serrated fires.

Oh desires, conclusions, oh pumpkin pie!
how I wish I could cry and cry and cry
and not find a person starting to stare.

Already too many would bolster me
because my frustrations sputter to free,
caring more for me than they ought to care.

(12-15/16-76 / 2-8-77 / 12-30-06)

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December: Year-day 351

The Hully-Gully monster rides again
on the back of the purple-girdle breeze,
lifting and holding from the depths of its fen,
because it is such a ridiculous tease.

If you were to ask, I couldn't say when
I'm likely to madden, likely to please,
catching my heart at the tip of a pen
graphing its passage on the barks of trees.

Immediate, delayed, consistent, broken--
you pays with your blood / you pays with a token,
unsure what to think once a word is spoken.

The dancers approach the edge of the stage,
syllables/ grow down/ and across the page;
wisdom jounced, foolishness screws/ age to age.

(? and 8-22-01)
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Brian A. J. Salchert