Sonnet #376

When morning comes to crush your back

And ache your knees and stink your mouth

And the caffeine headache pulls you south

And the cool October and the damp and black

Of a slower sunrise than before and rain

Enough to flood the gutters, and it comes

This morning happens and happens and runs

Into the weeks ahead, a cycle turning more to pain

Where every morning bones are harder,

Every morning pain is worse than what it was

And this is the price we must pay to live longer

In this skin and meat we borrow, feel the fuzz

Of life, the wonderful joy, the warbling songbirds

Sonnet #375

We will meet again, or close enough, for

 All that's old is new again when 

the face returns reborn into the spin

of ribonucleic acids, and the faces worn

the beating hearts and voices come back

close enough, just about, maybe better

I hope better. Next time, I hope my bonesetter

makes me taller with a softer voice so cracks

won't form where you leaned away from me

And maybe I'll be smarter, and you'll be strong

And when we break each other's bodies

the bruises won't last quite as long

Reset again, perhaps, another time, another we

Ten million years? a billion? All our reincarnating

Sonnet #374

 You make what you eat so eat very well

Find sculptures to crunch and paintings that smell

Like ten thousand years of love has been baked

Into thin sheets of pigment and scraped

And chew them slowly, get them stuck in your teeth

And swallow long draughts of tears and breathe

In the howls in the dark, the laughter and then

Cut the books into nuggets and bread them

And fry them, but only the best lest the poor

Quality prose makes you sicker, the door

To the world is made of hunger, a vast empty

Center that swallows and spits bones and vanity

Serve them up for others, let us all eat

Trade gruel for gruel and meat for meat 

Occasional reminder: Buy some books, man!

https://www.amazon.com/Sorrow-Cranes-J-M-McDermott/dp/B09Q12DW94

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https://manhattanbookreview.com/product/sorrow-of-the-cranes/

Sonnet #373

 I have forgotten more than I will ever know

I used to spend hours reading and writing 

And now the weight of obligation throws

All hope of immortality into the rubbish bin

Good enough is all I can muster, a bit of book

A bit of music, a bit of healthy food, no wine

In the dark, no late nights burning what I took

From time upon the altar of precious time

And I touch the spines of old friends, attempt conjuring

Fragments of memory, faded now, like piano songs

No more practice, so my fingers forget forget forgetting 

How do I even end these stray lines written and gone?

Do I say something beautiful, now, to conjure the song?

Do I end with a wisdom? Either way, I am taking too long.

Sonnet #372

 The stones of ancient houses fall and become

Homes again for moss and bird and snake and friends

Who tend to gardens green and gather bones

Of ancient things to spill them artfully again

Upon the tended ground, pretend the new is old

And gather energy of masons long forgotten

Into these museums of gathered things, a cold

And decadent sort of tomb without dead men in

So we can cheer the temples without their gods

The coin without the king, the touched things here

Where no one touches them, and we nod

Upon the memory of man, a story accumulated here

Where we recline in green, commission art from pain

And sell them to the robber barons who buy and explain

Sonnet #371

 We used to live without conditioned air

In every house and building we would sweat

In summer, and burn the fireplace to eat

Remember winter when the barren stares

Of hungry children forced a reckon ing

Separated from this we gaze upon the past as idylls

Simpler times, and they were simpler. Being

Dead is very simple. Living is harder still

For we keep alive by poisoning the tank we breathe in

The ground is scraped into a thin smear

And we live our complicated survivalism

Where every stone is bent to pillows, all tears

Become an echo of hardship past, and mortalism

When it appears, rends harder where the ground is tender

Sonnet #370

 Reasons not to write a book today

Include the barking dog that needs a walk

The children in the house that want to play

And certainly there’s you who needs to talk

The dishes in their heaps attract the fly

So wash them with your wild and precious life

The windows are dirty, so are toilets, and we try

To hit the gym and live a little more, meet a wife

Perhaps she will become one, and time spent

Interviewing and preliminary hiring all potential

Brides who may or may not help you pay the rent

Seems mission critical, plus the leeks are turning

Didn’t you want to make that recipe you used to love?

Books can wait. No time. Find a box for art. Shove.

Sonnet #380

Follow water to the low places, and swim

Let your sweat and tear drops seek the bottom

Dwell where they pool, caught in the shadow's rim

between the groundwater and the echoing golems

that march beneath the earth, all blind and lurking

and marked by word of god upon the brow

to walk these darkling trails, and with their jerking

footfalls carve the trails where water is low

Follow water into these ancient pathways of gloom

illuminated only by the shimmer of the water

and the glimmer of electricity in the stones

March until the steam begins, the magma shatters

the stones and becomes the water and all golems die

where clay dissolves. In this place diamonds rise.

Sonnet #369

 When I write, a single line and then another

Becomes the sound becomes the word becomes

A picture forms that’s worth a thousand words,

And pictures painted each a single thread runs

In single lines clumped in bunches, makes

The world more beautifully rendered reveals

As much from what is not than what it takes

From pigment fragments, crushed ochres; reels

Of film a frame a frame a frame a single word

Eventually spoken, and we in our cities mowing lines

Into the ground and laying bricks of work

Each one of us our little lifeline bending and entwined

From far enough away and deep enough inside

We are bound together into a single gorgeous line

Sonnet #368

Give me the cosmos in fourteen rhyming lines

And I will tell you all exists for love

For what fair use is all this void and shine

If only one can feel the pull and shove

Better shared and better faced with you

Hide under blankets and whisper in the dark

About the mysteries we are too afraid to view

The black telescope beckons, will we hearken

The trembling darkness of the endless sky

The galaxies upon galaxies made for show

Be told and sung grow old and teach why

Discuss the color of the stars, grow old

In endless chatter where the edifice accumulates

For love, all for love, the cosmic glory we recreate

Sonnet #367

 I have a box I keep for my beloved

Inside this box, I wait to be adored

When I get home from work, I shove

Myself into this box, and when they’re bored

They let me know how good I am

For waiting in the box. I am petted. 

Take me out and feed me toast and jam

But outside the box I am hated

A simple metaphor, I know, but listen more

For there are boxes inside boxes, outside boxes

There is no polite society without the box stores

Where we choose ourselves, and move from boxes

To other boxes like molting skin: boxes slam

Into each other, and bruise our skin

Sonnet #366

 The children raised on robots will not cringe 

At work the robots make; they will long

For strange ephemera like I remember tire swings,

metal lunch boxes, the theme songs

Of Saturday morning cartoons, climbing trees

And the world they build with robots will

Never feel like home to me, but to these

Small ones dreaming the screens will be all

Their homes will be flatscreens, floor to ceiling

Always predicting and running algorithmic

Visions of whatever makes them metrically idylling

The lights and cameras and machines of smoke 

And mist will fill them up always in a kind of bliss

And I on my deathbed will long for a window, the sun’s kiss

Sonnet #365

 All that is lost should stay right there

Where would I even put it? There is no room

The cupboards uncluttered, the cabinets bare

Are cleaner now and prepared for whom

Or what or where or why, just leave things clean

For now. And those lost toys wandering free

Like the ghosts of cats will curl into the seams

Of ancient photographs, remembered fondly

Oh mug, oh shirt, oh pen, oh piece, I wear

The echo of you all, always, but better now

I leave my shelves for dust, and wipe them clear

And let my dreams be empty, make no show

Upon the fabric of the room, for whom or why or what

Comes cluttering along, I do not know, yet