sw00055usabys-13.dec.sonnets.24of25

24 of 25                                                       

 1976 Today
                353 bicentennial year sonnets (352-366)

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December: Year-day 352

"Christmas is near"/ the decorations say,
dressing bare spaces with red white and green
that hibernated a/ year since last seen,
to prove once again one God's still okay.
But I have lonely my flesh to display
in this corner of hell, dark & obscene,
where, facing the moon, I awkwardly lean
from the chill regrets of another day.

Seek to understand the jester in me;
it will help you appreciate/ desire
and/ the fragile ornaments hooked to bones.

In the scent of a pine a moldy sea.
The destroyer of love is born of ire.
O rise from that past! where your spirit groans.

(12-20-76 / 1-20-78 / 8-24-01 / 12-30-06)

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December: Year-day 353
(#14 of 15 I removed earlier this year)

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December: Year-day 354

" . . . the transparent children"/ Anais writes/
is what she calls the young, the vibrant ones,
livers along the rough and heady heights
peaking/ above the clouds.  How each one runs!

Insolence brews evilly inside me
who doesn't want his champagne spirit corked.
I still prefer/ to climb and/ shake a tree,
to walk the weak prong where a path has forked.

Tomorrow's tomorrow, and my regrets
can neither be/ touched nor changed.  Only now
engages, rearranges, brims with bets.

Just so, I prepare for words/ with a plow,
pray suns warm, and the rain/ properly/ wets
each seed, the plant it becomes, the ripe bough.

(12-20/21-76 and 12-30-06)

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December: Year-day 355

Spin the head.  This is America.  Death
on a swizzle stick, on a strand of hash.
Glazes of mist on the windy streets, breath
clouds thinning in swirled snow, violent cash:
Pandora's pandemonium.  Still songs.
Be warned:  What sun comes up is upside down.
Rugs, beds, tables contain our wills and wrongs.
If you are a joker, I am a clown.

Glued to a car of incredible blue,
a life of attempts with minimal gain,
institutions that no longer should do
strike like pincers at my frustrated brain.
The dance of a rule whose life should be through
clings to another whose life should remain.

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December: Year-day 356
(#15 of 15 I removed earlier this year)

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December: Year-day 357

If I give You, Lord, my sexual being,
if I acquiesce, what will be gained, lost?
Loving a woman, a man:  What's the cost?
No wonder I sweat in my meager seeing.

That toppled trunk, stretching/ across this creek,
allowing me to dryly step my will
so long as I can balance half-way well,
engenders further dreams toward what I seek.

Yet, trying to heed else, heed me, unsure/
how else from me differs, which one is right,
perhaps we/ must expect/ arctic rejections
of realms to which one/ can't become inured--
human thought (sadly) a cold bloom of night
in prayed-for moonwash/ trapped in its reflections.

(12-31-76 / 5-17-77 / 12-30-06)

(Isn't insanity interesting.)

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December: Year-day 358

Bad dreams of ice-crystal snows again/ burning
the April flesh of my soul.  (Education?
A child must be shown how to know his yearnings
and grow with them when the ways of his nation
would change them; a child be shown how to save
in a world that would steal his eyes.)  The ires
of the -40 white, wave on wave,
swarm the dawns in my new heart, stoked with fire.

Fires set against fires then my world's become
until the green from me holds, frazzled Muse.

Don't tell me my nation's right and I'm wrong;
that it's better to spend and feel like scum.

Too often my skimpy wealths I've ill-used.
In sacred wedlock/ is not where I'm strong.

(1-10-77 / 11-11-77 / 8-31-01)

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December: Year-day 359

Christmas Eve, and the narrow snow/ wisps/ still
round boots, paws, bushes, gravestones, my torn love.
Whether I am a rattling pod above
or that force which rattles, rapt to until,
or something of both, my divided will
breaks down, curses my unchangeable past
and the seconds which leave much much too fast.
Christmas Eve, and the narrow snow/ wisps/ still.

Questions, questions.  Answers, answers.  Who knows.
Even the God Who made me/ won't come clear.
Just as I am, I would be His Son's dear.
And if for that I will suffer Hell's throes--
charred on one side, & on the other froze--
I can only sigh/ for those who don't fear.

(12-24-76 / 12-27-76 / 1-11-77 / 12-30-06)

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December: Year-day 360

Merry Christmas.  It's over; it's begun!:
the pimple of hurt has come to a head;
that partof my soul across which it spread/
soon will/ return to health, and sad hurt run
and be tissued away; and I renew
my energies to/ courageously work--
I wander long hours to learn what to do--
worlds provided for each powerful quirk.

Talk to this person, talk to that, and walk.
Sometimes I wish/ my fingers held some chalk
I could write on the air with; but, no use:
my minds will let me be/ only obtuse.
I must spring from the field like a new stalk,
spring from the marsh like a northering goose.

(12-25/26-76 and 12-30-06)

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December: Year-day 361

Faith:  Believing that what is beyond one
is also above one; that one, however,
is of that; that one's inward eyes are ever
smiling with pleased awe at the touch of sun
one moves in and is; that no life is done,
ever, no work; even the stillborn, clever,
odd, the suicides, live on, cannot sever
themselves from the whole, the glittering run.

O plant a tree in memory of me,
make of my body a sparse ring of ashes
to benefit the ground around that tree;
make of my bones and flesh a memory
in the grassy earth where the chipmunk dashes,
in the trunk, limbs, branches, twigs, slick green slashes!

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On page 25, among other comments, will be annotations
pertaining to specific sonnets.  Happy New Year.  BAJS
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December: Year-day 362

Confusion:  me, 'times: a sign on the road
changed by events, contradicting itself.
Determination in the face of me: 'times;
respect that will not let me kick the toad.

The path up the hill, the path through the woods,
the path backwards, the no path need; the shelf
with that image of a me gone; the rhymes
I walk into, urged to buy/ all their goods.

Reason is reason, rhymed or not; delight
delight.  If you can't stand to look at me
naked/ along a shore, run with your spite.

Though I understand we cannot be free
in a world ruled by selves/ where no one's right:
open, close, as the flowers of the sea.

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December: Year-day 363

Read, read out loud, for the sense and the sound:
a canyon's long magnificence, the scourgings
of its ancient river, the blare sun/ ground
deeply into an earth shocked by its urgings
these mean dry weeks; the men alive, then dead.
Exploration is but the edge of growth,
prime as it is, affirming that you've sped
"what-am-I-missing" past, cursing the loath.

Read, read out loud, for the mind and the heart
and the ways they entwine, light against shade,
water with soil, disease measuring health.
Happily, it matters less where you start
than/ how you move/ to learn where the words made/
must bear/ the ringing designs/ of their wealth.

(12-28-76 / 3-26-77 / 12-30-06)

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December: Year-day 364

To see last is to see first, and the Fate
(ethos) confining Man because he is
limited/subsumes but does not deflate
his Freedom (logos) to answer & quiz
nor Power (pathos) to make & become
as best as he can.  So Man's spirit does
star pride, tease to believe Belief is dumb.
He'll learn.  It at least moves him past what was.

Rune, I'm aware I cannot prove You are,
that no one else can prove You're not; that leaves
sparkle in wind-puffed fire, that rains shine rocks,
that this gift of language as I use/ bar/
change// contains but one world.  Whoever/ grieves
and joys/ enters doors, regardless of locks.

(I am not sure when the above was first written,
and neither am I certain about any revisions, 
nor do I recall where the Fate, Freedom, Power
ideas and connections originated from.  Aristotle
came to mind, but some 2006-03-30 searchings I did
caused me to decide Anais Nin was the source.)

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December: Year-day 365

All the passed spaces I've yet to fill, know,
having failed to each day despite my pride,
outmaneuvered by rain, sickness, drought, snow,
and/or laziness, killer of the guide!

All the sonnets, the dogdamn sonnets, twits,
I'll still be in in March of '77,
trying to prove I can beat time with wit,
trying to create my own basking heaven!

I tell you the world is inside out?  Stay.
I tell you the world is crumbling?  Relax.
I tell you the world's spun insane?  Play.

The universe collects its own dark tax.
The universe pulses beyond us?  Pray.
In delicate souls, the delicate flax.

(?)

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December: Year-day 366

Year's end again.  And if a world's, so.
I'm no priority king, no sweet bee.
I rate no praise for the heart I've let grow
in an acid soil, in a fuming sea.

So it is kiss & die in a closed room,
trying to laugh at an uppity world:
not even a spider can so assume,
sensing how leaves and winds and claws have curled.

Confusion?  Uncertainty?  Yes; abide.
A heavy seed lodged/ in a granite rock
once waited well over ten thousand years.

More brilliantly than a slide rule can slide,
more precisely than a clock can ticktock,
try, try, try, Hunbruab.  Unwind your fears.
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24 of 25


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Brian A. J. Salchert