Sonnet #400

 We pray all wrong, but at least we pray

We love all wrong, but at least we try

Give credit for effort for sometimes we lie

To ourselves about our needs: we say

To god the things we need to say to someone

Instead of him, and to someone we speak for

What we think we are supposed to long for

Instead of what we truly carry, afraid the one

We hope to love will only love us back

If we sound like we are praying and god

Will be the only one to bear what we can’t shake 

We try; listen when they speak and nod

When god tells you what your beloved should

And when your beloved pretends to be as good

Sonnet #399

 I have some secrets that I cannot tell

About the things that happened to us

If you get to know me more than well

Perhaps I’ll tell you who did them to us

We call it intimacy, perhaps, to speak of

All these hidden scars that we don’t want 

To mark us where the world can see, love

Me where i hide from the world, in my haunted

Places; the world asks the same of us: find secrets

Where she does not wish to share and love her anyway

Dig into the caves and dark corners and regrets

Of the creation glorious the lost species and far away

Nebulae, all the pains of history and broken men

Who broke the world, see them all, love them

Sonnet #398

 Life under the bad regime contends

with all the normal things, the bills

the many letters in the post, the still

mornings when everyone sleeps, it ends

in fits and bursts where tiny lizards

chew upon the fabric of the world

a little bite here, a bite there, and girl,

don't you know it's coming, you've heard

the boys may sign their lives away

in wars that only ever made a few dimes

for a few dukes who have plenty, but say

the young men are gone, say hard times

and the lizard men are going to offer girls a deal

Oh, just smell it in the air, that fetid sign, a steal