sw00045usabys-16.jul.sonnets.14of25

14 of 25                                             

 1976 Today
                353 bicentennial year sonnets (198-213)

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July: Year-day 198

Spritely in the gust an US flag flaps
its happy hellos and happy good-byes
as if it knows its republic will rise
from where it's been taking extended naps;
and maybe, just maybe, from there perhaps
no longer lapse in its reach to be wise,
welling tears I resist/ into my eyes
because people care in their hearts and maps,
because people care in their thoughts and stands,
because people care in their souls and keys.
Jordan, Dellums, Kovic, King, Mondale, Carter.
There's no denying the strengths in/ this land's
resources; that the right use of them/ frees
green for hope / white for honor, as we charter.

(2007-01-06:  As I have elsewhere said,
whenever I read something I have written,
there's a chance I will re-vision it.)

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July: Year-day 199

Perfection is the human dream, the flame
the runners carry, the fantasy land,
a sound we thought we heard once from a band,
shiverings when we think/ a certain name;
and no persistence of extravagance
will cloud, expel, erase it from our wills
no matter how it crams our senses' tills
and pulses our hearts in a frenzied dance.

Nadia Commeneci: remember her,
as Matthew Arnold in his "Dover Beach".
Not even tornadoes can cause a stir
as powerful as is in the will of each
who arcs the stamina to so prefer,
jumping for galaxies beyond her reach.

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July: Year-day 200

If I can love you more than you love me,
what's it mean the end of the world's at hand;
what's it mean the ocean nibbles the land;
what's it mean your spirit is/ up a tree?

Maybe we should congratulate the wind
for not listening to the sounds it carries,
and past here/ tears apart, and past there/ marries,
thickened by closures; by openings, thinned.

Answer me, lover, or answer me not:
I am passing known; I am passing strange.
Sometimes you can touch me; sometimes you can't.

You must either handle or leave the lot
being together forms.  To rearrange
me/ might take too long/ to be worth the chance.

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July: Year-day 201

The wind today is that exciting kind
which brings to me rolling images of
long journeys/ & loosens my bowels as love
difficult to speak does/ so that in my mind
traveling to the far away is all
there is/ with the sounds of that wind; my senses
are almost closed--angels of recompenses
replacing them.  I'm horizontally tall.

The deserts dream of inundating the seas;
the mountains dream of titillating the skies.
Sometimes I want my verses to be trees;
Sometimes I want my verses to surprise.
Sometimes I drop my body to its knees.
Maybe tomorrow we will find real eyes.

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July: Year-day 202

And unimaginably far away
galaxies of burnt-out stars litter space
and the ripened blossom of our small race
shocks fruition with its naivete.
Yet future's future, still, we scheme, project.
And what sweet bloom/ doesn't want to/ die proud?
Soon Machina sapiens, crying loud,
may demand more praise than we now expect.

But if what I am is a preparation
for the beginnings of a deeper nation,
so be it, so be it, so let it be.
This work and my others will then ascend
as bodies of love between friend and friend,
and my race blessed/ for how well it can see.

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July: Year-day 203

Some days when time is short I wish I could
inhabit/ one of these/ adroit designs
as easily as I can speak, for pines
would freshen my lungs then and sunlight would
bring strength renewed to my bones, my rude heart.
I might receive more wealth than I could spend
as if I'd been given a rainbow's end,
a pot of gold virtues from which to start.

Today, like so many others though, will
fails to produce, to thaw the soil; and all
I'd raise stays seed.  Harvest devoured by rats
couldn't irk me more.  I am hot to kill,
yet can't, for such killing would fall a fall,
twice end me.  I must be/ patient as cats.

(1976 and September, 2007)

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July: Year-day 204

I write: for myself, for others, for you.
And the sky is light, and the trees full.  Share.
Let what spirits communicate be care.
Dolphins protect.  Godlfinches accent.  Do.

I write: for myself, for others, for none.
When the sky is yellow, the sun is blue.
I'm the black in a leaf, the green in a flue.
There are many forms/ from which joys are spun.

The current rises, the current descends.
The mouth of the poet jabbers and jabs.
You'd be surprised by what a sneak thief grabs.

Nothing's pursued to its absolute ends
by any other than the god who blends.
"Be various yet one" command my slabs.

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July: Year-day 205

Since AM 4 I have been/ stupid tired,
unable to finish by 7 what
I could have/ by 5:30.  Such a nut
I've been, though now knowing much I've desired
was fated by/ the events of my birth.
Maybe hypnosis/ would help my life too.
Still, I like to think I alone, can hew
my way to wakefulness, improve my worth.

One-color rocks/ don't begrudge and complain
because petrified rainbows are not theirs
to hold the deep eyes of a complex brain
and tease it away from its daily cares/
though their one color brightens some/ in rain.
I don't have to dull myself/ with my stares.

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July: Year-day 206

Extra hours at work/ because it is summer,
and because the Olympics is on, hours
lost at home watching TV--it's a bummer
in a way, not giving my writing powers
the time and quiet they need to complete
the daily sonnet I'd determined to--
my pen holding, my eyes ahead, my seat
trying to tell my head/ to carry through.

I've got to admit, though, however much
I enjoy writing these, I like to please
my being in/ other ways too; so, such
as/ I am doing: letting divers/ seize
me from this, weight lifters and boxers/ touch
my nerves, and bicyclists/ give me the breeze.

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July: Year-day 207

Long end-of-the-period night again,
checking in guests, balancing the accounts:
my punishment for wanting/ too much when
I've lost the resources for such amounts,
having committed them to secondaries/
becoming the patriot I dislike;
the masochist in me/ exploiting the fairies;
the learned polymath/ out for a hike.

Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, dollars, checks.
Debits, credits.  Tiring limbos of love.
Answers, mistakes--burning/ to find them out.
Frustrations can be such miniscule specks
and yet be giants in the ways they shove
a balancer prone to chastise and pout.

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July: Year-day 208

After living on bananas for two
weeks, Idi Amin's army peered at him
darkly, or so I've heard, while on Mars, who
but Viking I recording the red--grim
and striking and chocked with intrigue; and there
in Montreal, Christov lifting the weights/
almost beyond the believable.  Flare.
Reagan chose Schweiker.  Listen.  Watch the Fates.

Spinning with a planet clinging to life,
mixed in its evil, its good; always trying
to keep wrong from overbalancing right,
sunlight slicing more sharply than a knife,
a man unknown, a little man defying
the delicate moon with its scoop of night.

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July: Year-day 209

Moses, Babashoff, Wilkins, Cofin, Naber,
Haldeman, Chandler, Pace--Olympic stars
of these United States--bless them; the saber
diving of Greg Louganis--let the bars
of our anthem be played--the bright embrace
of Mike Shine.  How matters it if I agree
(in principle) there is (really)/ no place
in these games for nation boasting.  Let be.

Only, let honest competition reign--
an edict against insane politics;
from anything less this world cannot gain,
already in a Russian roulette fix;
from anything less each joy, sorrow, pain
cannot be/ haloed with worth.  Beauty/ sticks.

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July: Year-day 210

Persistence is the kingdom of the wise
and those incessantly misunderstood
penning their symbols in mutated wood.
I am a mountain goat that tries and tries.
Mark Vonnegut of The Eden Express /
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., of who knows what--
if I give you bibles, I give you smut.
I'm far too various for a set dress.

Even these sonnets with all they contain
can't tell you enough to hold who I am.
Even the faucet slides into its drain.

I'm down from my mountain kissing a ram.
A light from the future explores my brain.
More leaves wriggle their petioles/ & scram.

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July: Year-day 211

Overstrained my constitution again,
blithering about extra work at work
so a small pain has entered this tired jerk
in his left shoulder/ only to leave when
I've gotten his being quiet again,
head and body down/ somewhere stretching/ for
the currents of rejuvenation, store
of continuance/ through field, range, wood, fen.

Learn, learn, my wife's reason constantly pounds;
but it's after three and I'm still awake,
hoping to defeat a time-prisoned world.
Of course I enjoy the sounds of my sounds!
Of course I perceive the visions at stake!
At the cliff's dead edge my sapped body's curled.

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July: Year-day 212

In China last night many were told: take
to the streets: sleep there, the officials fearing
aftershocks from the tyrannous earthquake;
in Montreal, a bantam Russian, hearing
the judges decisioned against him, judges
immediately booed by the crowd, turned
from the ring/ crying, conceding why/ grudges
come/ when fate keeps the gold one's duly earned.

Misfortunes of nature and politics
will ever be with us I guess, I guess.
We'll never untangle the in/out mess
we humans stumble through/ where the burr pricks.
Yet our candles light because they have wicks,
and there's more than enough/ to praise, confess.

[ some revisions made in August, 2007 ]

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July: Year-day 213

Let me nominate today Poland's day
of thistwenty-first Olympiad, they
having done so well on track, field, at bar,
even an EastGerman partly their star,
being a Cierpinski.  And the rain, grey
and slippery, seems to have helpedtheir play:
young Yacek, tall, slender, cute, above par
in the high jump; the silver relay four.

Oh, the soccer squad, favored to win, lost;
but the pole vaulter found gold in a rain
and the men's volley balls rained on the Russians.

One lives what he loves, whatever the cost.
There's always The Rose of Heaven to gain/
and the fun of slitting/ a devil's cushions.
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14 of 25


Brian A. J. Salchert