Category: Sonnets (page 4 of 8)

I was almost a bee by the time I was
born under propylene beams I was two
days old by the bee by the bay I was
under moon wood that was why I would
lie in the grasses at sunset was new
& cicadas were still under nights by
the light it was listening mountains
yodelled their blades sharp as I was
travelling backwards was time a part
of a star’s dim arrival it was there
in the way you were walking & it was
almost time to go I was sliding down
the honey hill the future was a tree
we had become a leaf at last a bee

silhouettes of moons rising boxcars are stencils
the shape of projections made by performance
poets who’ve never fallen in love wincing through
their routines screaming call a doctor (a doctor’s
haunted holiday home the leafless trees the free
shots administered at dawn the freezing branches
stacked with animals cries like a gurgling brook
an owl falls from a telegraph pole it disappears
before sunrise jack frosts (interred like jackals
highways streaked with radioactive delay yellow
buzzards playing banjos the courthouse gang that
put their own spittle on trial beef jerky (tales
of harvest balloons let loose in the ballroom as
deadwood slurs drool from the corpse’s mouth

he was the star that floated in water, lacking
space (& she was an astronomer in hawaii, or in
lower case (she’s the satellite’s document of a
dreamy eclipse (he’s like a word once lost, now
formed by her lips (when she says goodbye & oh!
that word all the stars go out (& it gets dark:
he drives through the night with just a radio &
his doubt (the elegant simplicity of life & her,
of their separation (caused snows from november
to fall across the nation (never does, we never
knew that the stars could dream (the reflection
we’ll never see; the white flakes’ mist a panic
beam (their lonely message across a face we call
the skies (cry or close your eyes –

               (i am a child