Sonnet #326

 I question the evolution of emotion

How Darwin's foolish claim was shouted down

By men who felt by God, by faith, what's shown

Who came to their belief by the sum

of the very process Darwin showed them

So, is it better for us to follow where we are led

Or to snip the tethers of the dead

examine rocks and bones, pretend

We know what we're doing with all of this --

But science emerges out of evolution, too

There is no destination to the world in bliss,

There is no safe harbor, no home, just truth

The rocks beneath our feet scrape and shape our shoes

And we scrape the rocks slowly with heels and toes

Sonnet #325

 I found the lamp; the genie came and granted

The three wishes, and I thought about my son

Who is not yet three, and what could be won

By one so young: to have his moment supplanted

With whatever whim he has, a tv show perhaps,

A giant garbage truck that changes colors on command

He pretends to cook ravioli so he’ll have that on demand

And in thirty years, he would tumble through his mishaps

And ache at all the pain he brought upon himself

By spending all his power on the whims of youth -

I have the lamp; The universe is mine, what else?

Control of others? A power to change the truth?

Just toys and fancy. Hold mine unspent, three prayers

I am too young, we are all too young, to wish into the air.

Sonnet #324

We call the hard ones strong but they 

Are not. The jagged cliffs are shaped by sea

The wind blows down all the mighty trees 

And we sit upon the beach and sea spray

Tickles our noses where the wind catches

The drops, and we bask in that cool water

And swim among the reefs, fish scatter

And they are so small, so delicate, patches

Of light glistening and alive and so small

And all our strength all our hardness breaks

Upon the beach, where tiny sand’s pull

Gently holds us up and swallows us, takes

As much as it carries of our skin cells,

The tiniest worms devour the mightiest who make

Sonnet#323

No sonnet sits upon this place to make

a little sense from senselessness, no

poem dances out the poison, shimmy shake

The Tarantella is not needed her, so

too the military march, there is no poem

standing here, upon this moving mark

And so abandons pages, forgiveness, and pain

And carry all the things I might have heark-

ened in my brain, I let it all remain

I shattered up the rhyme scheme because no poem

is here, just scattering denials and words

that scatter into more words and a bit absurd

How we just line things up and say the words

And pretend that you can hear me speaking the absurd

Sonnet #326

From all the darkness that I gather

All the moonlight reflected, all the stars

I find the center of the warm dark, the bars

of the cage of the world of me, were 

I in sun, I cannot think for long, 

There's too much light, too much beauty

I have too much to live, too much duty

To the living world, but the dark song

lingers in my chest, the knowing what comes

For if it can be taken from me, it is not

me. If I could lose a hand and still be some-

one, then my hand is not me. If I could stop

My heart and pull it out and put another one

And I remain, eternal self, let all flesh drop

Sonnet #325

 Nothing prepares us for a restless night

We expect — we always expect — to dream

Expect to wake refreshed and stretch the light

But when the air is still and calm and we seem

Unable to breathe inside of it, unable to settle

It always comes as such a surprise, a gift of time

In darkness, a gift where we are left to wrestle

Out the ransoms of the daylight, scrape the slime

Off our psyche, read a book, go for walks, be still

Here is the restless hour, the long night, ticking clocks

Alone in this limping, humid storm-swept swell

To think and think and think until the mind is locked

And the windows finally shut, and night guests ramble

Until their voices stop, after the party, and words untangle

Sonnet #324

 For love, I trim my beard outside,

So little hairs don’t clog and mess the sink

I use the sliding glass as mirror where I think

The neighbors cannot see me, as I hide

Without a shirt, electric clippers whine and chew

And soon my beard is through, this bits of me

Tumble all about the deck, and they blow free

Where I know the birds and mice will gather through

And make their nests in my lost beard, I’ve seen them

Tossed them from an old galosh I forgot in the porch

Swept the empty nests away from under pots and when

I see the sparrows in the field and know how we touched

The field mice in the cinderblocks bravely

Stealing in my garden, we are connected, all of us

To I who plant and mow and shave and live and rust

Sonnet #322

All the places I have slept are always here

In the Dreamtime, I can feel the ache of camping

And the unsettled damp of motel mattresses where

I could not quite escape the musk, also stamping

down the exposed springs of dormitory beds

my body remembers every couch and hospital

Amy body, in the Dreamtime, knows when instead

Of waking from my dreams, I stay in them all

So ask me how my back aches and my knees groan

And I will say that when I sleep all sleep remembers

The lost lovers, whose beds became so cold, the stones

Beneath my back when I napped in a park, December

Comes, and my dreaming power grows, every memory

Of mattresses stacks upon the pea of self, I wake from every

Sonnet #321

Soon every mountain will become a carved thing

A head or pressing heroes or marching men with flags

Every face of rock is just a canvas, ready to ring

the greatness of the dead forever out of rocky slag;

Since every stone will be carved to be memorials,

naturally, the birds and insects will evolve --

they dance already on the statues in arboreal

parks, and will someday specialize where stone dissolves

into faces, and every nostril is a nest, and every strong chin

overhangs a shadow, shelters stone birds and insects

these future natives of a country all built of memory, 

will erode it, in time, where excessive breeding breeds neglect;

The storms will come, and earthquakes, too, and scatter

all these great men dead in echoless shatters

Sonnet #320

Dog barking in the night, I know this song

But I never sing along, because I think

Of Cinderella on her throne, queen of drink

Not pretty, now, and the birds and mice along

The walls are more loyal than the servants

That resent how she came from them and they

Will never be like her, the dust of cinder that they

Leave inside her napkins and pillowcases and ants

Allowed to crawl among the crumbs left on dresses

She swears they are doing it on purpose, but they 

Swear it is just the mice and bird caresses

For her whole life she lies awake at night, pray

To keep this place in life won suddenly say nothing

Hold all the night inside your chest, keep breathing.

Sonnet #319

The squirrel thirsts enough to chew upon

The thickest pomegranate rinds, to drink

The tartest, not yet sweet, the hardest sink

Of teeth gets but a drop, and throw them down

After just a few swift chews, and in these ruins

Broken ornaments and desiccation of the flesh

I harvest losses off the ground, and press

The fruit, or shake it, just to see what drew in

Where the skin was broken, all those jewels

My poor pink quartz, my gemstones of mourning

All that glittering, and that squirrel, desperate fool

Will be trapped in this place a season, hoarding

All the treasures of this fence-line, the cool

Days come; to eat the pomegranate seeds, in this burning

Sonnet #318

They’ll remember how you make them feel

Of course. They’ll remember what they think

Happened where the feeling cleans the sink

And washes dishes in it. The feeling peels

The dust back from the fans and spins the room

The feeling moves the furniture around

To dance the shadows properly and sounds

A lot like what happened, I guess, except the boom

Of it is all the work of feeling; Since feeling is first

Who cares to argue with it? Primary sources

Always seem the most reliable even when the worst

Source is the first source, and it pours and pours

All over the palace of memory, shouting and laughing

At the end of our life, the doors close with feeling

Sonnet #317

On my porch, a cat has taken land that was not his

A feral Tom, young and lean, has fought 

And won, and gleans his meals from drought

In my neglected flower beds—poor anoles

My green friends hunting moths in citrus shrubs

And all the singing toads of twilight in irrigation

Lines, I fear for them. This wild young son

Who likely fought his mother, wants no rub

Of human kindness: but I try to build trust

I negotiate his favor with bribery and calm

Like the chieftain before him, the black wild crust

Of my sidewalk, who rolled gracefully into my palm

Only to bite, I will try to make peace, be friends

Kingdoms rise and fall, the earth abides, without end

Sonnet #316

To love a wild bird is to love without
that love returned for birds are scared
of us, at best, or steal what we might share
Because we love the way they fly about
The place: they sing and paint the sky
But will we sacrifice for them? We will
Put out seed perhaps, or plant a hedge they fill
We keep the pets in at the fledging time;
Do we let the bugs swell in number?
They eat the bugs -- They need them --
Do we let the dead wood stay there
and fill the grass with flowers? When
mosquito sinks her tooth we spare her?
Birds eat them. They need them. So do we?
Would you dare allow the blood to spill for free?

Sonnet #315

Indifferent to the fascist state, the wild pigs

come before the morning twilight, to eat

among the food packaging left along the street

They have no natural predators, these pigs

Perhaps a car might strike them, or a hunter

With a strong gun, or a trap, but once they gather

In the fields, there's little left around to bother

And they wander where they will. Never

do they think of order, never do they think

That buildings can be made on purpose

By beings just like them. They sniff and sink

Their jaws into the detritus, and relish those

bits of food cast out between our teeth, our drinks'

melted ice pooled. Indifferent to fascism imposed.

Sonnet #314

The spirits of the night take feline form
Or perhaps a rodent, either way, they move
Where their spirit moves them, and they love
Where their musk is ripe. I hear the storm

Before I see it, the flush of birdsongs in the dark
The stars that dance between the clouds
The streetlights mute and hush and proud
A spotlight on every avenue, a chorus lark

The sunlight curtains all the narratives of night
I hear the storm before I see it, where lost
children wander in the street, unbroken bright
And the drifting papers of the world, the cost
Of doing business in a neighborhood, that shite
That blows around, and where's that storm? Is it lost?

Sonnet #313

The time the grapes are ready is the time
The mockingbird comes hunting in
The tangle of the vine and trellis lines
A dart and hop and hunt and climb

I see the bird and he sees me, we speak
A language of possession old as life
In a glance, he says the world is strife
And all he sees is ripe is life, he takes

So I allow and see him take and when
He’s full, I clean a bucket, and some shears
And take and take and take and then
When he returns to vines he wears
The gaze of loss, where once was friend
And all the grapes are mine. And he stares.

Sonnet #312

I have a kind of restlessness that wakes
Me up before the dog, like a possum
I wander in the dark outside before daybreak
And sweat away the anxious dreams that come
When I am still awake, they chase me down
The street, and hide in shadows, passing cars
I hear the bad dreams barking and forlorn
Against the fence line, and the black fast dart
Of cats, all black in streetlight shadows, racing
Under cars, I walk until my dreams don’t hurt
Or at least until my legs hurt more, from pacing
They follow in the darkness, cling upon my shirt
Bad dreams, bad dreams, I wish to negotiate
A peaceful treaty, we’ll break bread on broken plates

Sonnet #311

A wise man told me to live for work

Never kill time, because my will

To rise up and make my mark fills

Me up and time’s shadow, death, always smirks

But I waste what I want, and encourage the same

Your work will falter, too, and when it does

It won’t matter whether you were in the throes

Of genius, driven and strong, or if your quiet name

Relaxed into ease and infamy. Diadems drop

As wise women sing, and our walk sends

Every moments’ step into a virgin snowfall, so stop,

Drink the wine, and ease into a fine, cool autumn

be kind enough to time and death that when it is the when

You can laugh and have a brandy with them

Sonnet #310

The traveling bards that hide in the trees

Ask so little of us who love their songs

Trees and flowers and keep the cats inside too long

If you can, and leave the garden be

The jubilee season, they journey south and sing to all

The songs they share as they go

Their gaudy costumes, their nimble dances, the show

All the world is a stage, the leaf curtain falls

The spotlight leans into their beautiful glow

Time the thief who gathers sins

Say this: say I’m weary, say I’m slow

Say the earth declines where I set in

I set some seed out, planted trees and flowers

The birds in their passing sing my hours

Sonnet #309

What memorial stone will we place

Where glaciers fade into the sea and all

The trees collapse into the barren soil

And burn -- we stand alone upon the face

Of stone, digging down to caves to save

The tiny pieces of our world that can be kept

In darkness, there, and no one else has wept

About the dead for quite some time. We’ll brave

The darkness, there, and eat the rocks

And carve memorials with broken teeth

To all the creatures we devoured, these blocks

Will stand until they erode or begin to breathe

No doubt we will invent some realism

And build and paint some glaciers in some convenient chasm.

Sonnet #308

In the park, there is a trail that runs through woods

It’s paved and there are bridges over rocks

The trees along the path are pruned and blocks

Prevent the mud from flowing like it would

It’s such a simple thing to see the seasons

Step out onto the trail, there’s wooded lines

There the flowers bloom and snakes unwind

And trees blossom, seed, then come undone

My son rides quiet on this trail, there’s deer

The dogs pass through, he smiles and calls out

The birds rise with sunlight, cicadas there

I took my son to church and he knew nothing

And I knew nothing, and they all knew nothing.

Sonnet #307

When the trains came to this country

They blew holes through mountains

The tracks ran on blood and misery

And everyone cheered them on the plains

I imagine a country with no tracklines laid

No highways carving cliffs of construction

That rise above the grass sea and river braids

A place as empty of us, some dirt tracks run

A few old blacktops twisting from river towns

In one hundred years this will be how it’s done

When planes fly to coastlines and cities, and drown

Among the dust where people move on who had cheered

The mountains bear the scars a thousand years

Sonnet #306

Coyotes know the streets, just so, they know

The nights when lanes are clear

They know the lights change and the fears

When engines rumble in the hills and grow

My friends, my romans, countrymen, you want to know your streets?

Tag coyote where she sleeps, and let

Her walk the night, where quiet footpaws set

And tag the cats and tag the dogs and watch their feet

The streets are only borrowed by all that step

Even we who build and claim to own do not

Own ground: we walk in daylight drive

In all hours and only for a moment hold our spot

And never see a corner or a place where thrive

Seeps in from forests, where wild things plot

Adventures unimagined, life and death

A story of familiar homes where mysteries breathe

*(Author's note: I think sonnets can be a little or short as needed. Still works like a sonnet.)

Sonnet #305

We walk in shadows in our heads

We stumble blind from room to room

As the shin bumps we learn our path to bed

This is a metaphor for how we speak and groan

It’s a symbol, of course, this living in a house

With other people in it, where we walk in the dark

Squint into the slanted light and seek a spouse

We will bump into each other, soft and hard

So these familiar steps will bend towards painless paths

Our fellow housemates bump and wander, and lest

The metaphor extend too far beyond the grass

Of night, let’s just say the dark must be addressed

And all who speak will claim the path ahead

Always sing out where future footfalls lead

Sonnet #304

The solution is so simple but if only were complex

If all we have to do to save ourselves

Is slow down, plant trees, garden, live well

Stop driving for a while, and have respect,

It seems so simple, plant a tree a day and then

Stop driving for a while, eat at home

From the garden, where joyfully grown,

And then we save the world, so simple, yet

Better it be some feat of engineering

Some massive construct moonbase crypto bet

Better it be a scheme so wild and difficult in constant steering

Make it visible from space and take a global bond debt

Make it corporate, make it loud, make it swallow workers whole

Only these salvations are permitted to the bold

Sonnet #303

Reclining in the lime leaves, still as stone,

The green anole lizard dreams, smiling

To sleep among the citrus trees, reclining

Where smell resolve the nightmares as they come,

I walked before the twilight turning lights 

on as I went, a violation of the calming sky

The creatures of the moon came up to try

and climb into the lightbulbs and the bright

Blessed darkness, we will always break the veil

And even into shadows of the sky we send our drones

We reach against the death to kill what kills

And analyze the dreams that hide in bones

But the reclining lizard dreams and smiles so still

Just wait, he sighs, for all light and heat will come 

Sonnet #302

Will the birds remember me, when my garden runs to ruin?

The grapevines wild and rambling free, the trees

So wide and beckoning, I will be

Standing in a shadow of a kingdom’s come,

And birds, my friends of fair weather, passing

As wind and rains roll on, my friends who come

They take what they need and then fly on

And I stand at the window, watching them wrestling

For a place to stand among the powerlines

Do they know how much I love them?

Do they know the quiet glow of joy unwind,

With the cardinals’ flash of red and pigeons’ waddling zen,

In some shadow kingdom, the eye of god will be a bird

And it will, indifferent to me, speak a single word.

Sonnet #301

If all the chickens in all the silos were set free

some survive a little longer and walk in moonlight 

and daylight and dappled forest shade and fight

down into the roots and live, we would see

More chickens than we could ever devour

More birds than any man could ever take

Of course there would be damage and break

Where niches in the web of life would sour

But think, set free, loose and limber and running

where all the corners of the meadows hold them

How these birds would swell in numbers, sunning

on rocks, stunning in bright feathers, hunting, feeding them

who hunt, an abundance beyond the work of man

Two birds in the bush is worth more than one in the hand.

Sonnet #300

Once I stood in a market square before the town 

Was ready to wake up, and the cathedral rang her bells

I stopped and listened and waited for the chime and swell

To decay, a gorgeous song, a ritual of sound

That marks a city holy; and when it died away

The pigeons cooed again, returned to rafters,

The windows opened up and all that rattled plaster

of the old city shook loose the night's dust and gray

If the bells ring, and no one is there to hear it...?

If there is someone there, who remembers the bells,

But no bells remain, how will the echo bear it?

To stand in the quiet morning, once, to know, to tell.

I swear upon the empty rooms, all music echoes still

The winds of time will carry all sweet whispers down to still

Sonnet #299

I mow the grass, and grass regrows, and grows

We dust the furniture of course, we must

And sweep, But next week there’ll be more dust

And I plucked the rose and placed in vase but the rose

Will wilt the week away, and die as plain

To be replaced again by next week’s rose

And all the furnishings will wear in my repose

Where my body presses down and causes strain

We wear down, we wear down, we wear all the way

In factories workers walk into fire dressed like spacemen

At home they shower off the sweat and hear radios play

The music plays a song and plays that song again

That brilliant singer travels to another town to play

And every week we raise a god from death in bread and wine

Sonnet #298

Heads you win - Tails I lose, so all that's left

Is to hope the coin lands on its side

And sticks there, a lucky break, my ride

to greatness counts on this, no theft

Just legal limbo in the corners of the rules

Where you and I can tie a little, and I

can take a little bit of what you hide

And the rules you write for me, my tools

Otherwise must belong to you and work

To make you richer, but I pay to toss the coin

My entry fee is paid, and I will never shirk

My duties, but I'm feeling lucky, and I think I'll join

Your club if this coin lands just so, I smirk

before you throw it up, because I believe in coins

When I'm one of you, I'll call the unlucky ones jerks

Sonnet #297

The only place the cardinal hides in red

Is when the pomegranate blooms have come in

spring

Those huge dresses burning red and cardinal’s flapping wings

For all the year, he waited for a safe spot screaming red

And for this brief moment in the tree, he has hid,

For all the year and turnings, I have waited for this day

When I could hide inside a the brightness forgotten, unseen, I say

What truth I need, and it drowns in other words and other ways

For this brief moment, I am no one worth to know

A voice among the wilderness, where I, in quiet, pray

To keep these flowers I have gathered here, and what seeds I sow

And when these bright flowers turn to fruit, my hiding will decay

And all my songs will call the wicked hunters to my home

Sonnet #296

If someone is going to have a monster, then

I have decided I should have it, first. Why not?

It will follow where I lead it, and menace and cause hurt

To them. It will be my monster. Mine. Before they can.

If we must live in a world of monsters, which we do

And I must live in a world afraid of all of you

And who will get the first monster to do for them and do 

It's best if I have the monster. I'm responsible, you

Will only use a monster to hurt me

So I will hurt you first, this pain I have

This fear, I give it all. The monster howls for me

I feed the monster, pet it, name it, I am brave

The monster will always respect the leash and me

It will bend to me - I'm sure it will - and never turn to leave

Sonnet #295

The trail I ran went under highways, so

I heard the echo of the cars and saw the pillars there

So like cathedrals, these hidden palaces, bare

Of all but holiest of things, stripped back to

Just the drainage water, the algae in the water

The desiccated wrecks of trash and clothes and blown in things

That echo back to life’s use, ghostly things

For ghostly places, where lost priests wander

The stripped back essence of all holy art

I am here, desperately here, this spray paint spectacle

The way the columns hold the sky apart

Where the muscles of the world, the ventricles

Flow so fast, and in those shadows hearts

Echo, lost souls, lost souls, angels of drained potentials

Sonnet #294

The mantis takes the color of flowers,

the shape of leaves and thorn, the hunter

always looks alike to what has power

to seduce the victim close, it's hard to fear

such beauty, the smell in the air of finest 

nectar, the promise of food or drink, all clear;

There are jobs where people do their best

That people ought not to do, folks wind down

Working and falling behind and working and behind

The basilisk waits for us in the million wires grown

where we allow it to grow, the coiling and unwind

in shadow places, in the edges of the law and the known

Approach the flower at your own peril, be wary, be brave

The snapping jaws will close. For retirement, save.

Sonnet #293

If I could explain this slowly to every man and woman

with money, who does not wish to pay for the poor:

You Will Pay More to Hold Them Down If You Do Not Pay For

Giving Them Enough. You will build yourselves golden prisons 

hire armed guards. You'll pay to build a world of panopticons

Because none of them can be trusted if they do not have enough

The cost of policing, surveillance, enforcement, laws so tough

that decent folk fear it, it has a cost in dollars, squatting on

your golden horde is very high. Beyond that cost, you cannot walk

down streets in peace unarmed, you will never know the city

As a place of peace, only as a place where people talk

And power is your only word to share, build your worst kind of pretty

Your empty-eyed children will tremble at your funerary wakes

And the fear you feel could fade with just that little mercy and pity, 

Sonnet #292

The birds have no reason to sing, I think -

The sun rises, song rises, when foraging

Is more important than music, storaging

The extra for a leaner night, and I think

The song reveals the birds to hawks, snakes

To all the hunters of the morning, who hear

Who listen close and move, there’s no fear

Of death when singing, the shimmy and shake

Of their dance among the branches is not

Meant for love, just yet, and even if it was

They sing in all seasons, these birds, not 

Just when spring arrives - there is no because

To songbirds, we are wrong to make their thoughts

With measures meant for music meant for us

When all the songs of morning are sung for no one

Sonnet #291

Things feel wrong all the time, like we

Walked down a road and got lost there

We pretend we are not lost, we see

The way things are like this, the most

We do about this is we say to cowboy up

To strap your big person pants on and work

Until you can’t even think about how we struck

A bargain to begin with that began with so much hurt

I am waiting for my son to wake alone

I can hear the wind blowing outside;

I remember how the parasitic wasps’ bones

Are built upon the agony of a moth child,

When the fig tree beckons, I savor wasps’ work

The tree envelopes, too, becomes the shape it hurts.

Sonnet #290

At evening twilight, walking, I must wonder how 

much of all the grass I see is living, how much a ghost

We do not seek the ghosts of tiny things, no spectral host

Made up of mayflies, tree stumps, blades of grass, flow

of ancient rivers dwindling underground, but the memory

of cities, the echo of that energy, rises greater than man

from space, we see the oldest roads in desert sands 

We see the outline of the walls of other centuries

empires lost to stories, I question whether houses

of all I see, if they have not more than this burned down

And what I see is an illusion of a place, where ghost houses

stand, ghost cities hold a shape in time, and remember how

these things used to be: All the residents are ghosts, all espoused

of their vast kingdoms come from will to remain - illusions, proud

Sonnet #289

There is a time for everything under the moon

A time to toss, a time to turn, a time to think of waking

A time to try water, hot tea, hot milk, to ease the aching

A time to give up on sleep and leave the bedroom

What will I do with this wild and precious darkness?

There's no one here but me. This is my secret place

A garden in darkness, the toad songs and cats' chase

The blowing spring winds carry lost things, in starkness,

There is a season for lost dreams, I hunt them in shadow

Among the shadows, I will find my peace without rest

In watching my weary waking world and dream to know

What darkness called me here to see, what little, what left?

There is a time for everything under the moon, I go

To walk alone along the roadside. Do not follow. This is best.