|small gee for god; big bee for byron|
Strikes a chord with you, does it?
This shambling poverty of thought,
Insta-rated and underwhelming;
Thank god for Byron.

|keats versus shelley|
Sparing no injury to his phthisicky frame,
Keats lies atop a make-believe of cherry trees
Searching among the clouds
For wealth, health and a Grecian urn,
While Shelley does Venice
And blows himself a hookah.

|o poesy! for thee I grasp my pen|
Panning the wayward sky for inspiration,
A hope, a word, a beginning;
A versification so ecstatic as to transfix the senses and pierce the heart,
A lightning phrase capable of uprooting all commonality,
As outrageous a miracle in the minds of men as crucified immortality.

|requiem|
Unlike the wilting rose which has no higher calling
Than to bloom and die upon the stem,
And having relinquished its last perfumed petal
Retreat from memory again,
I fear that I shall linger,
Tethered to this eternal moment
By shudd’ring will and breath combined,
A brighter shade of myself than what of me I have left behind.

You wanted a love story, sweetheart—
    well, I’m an unwritten tragedy;
  hand me a skull and I’ll monologue
while Rome burns.
      We’re two acts in and falling fast,
         we’re half a city down and soon
            there’ll be nothing but ashes.

          You wanted a love song, baby—
        I’ll sing to you in a minor key,
harmonies in the rain under neon stars,
            screaming in tune with flowers in your lungs
      and blood in your hair
and city lights and city lights and
                                               city lights.

You wanted a love letter, honey—
“Dear Heartbreak,
   I’ve got purple bruises on my chest
     where my prose hits me. I’ve got
       a mess of clichés and a dark and stormy night
         and a pinch of melodrama,
           no talent but I’m trying, honest.
             I don’t suppose you could maybe
              unravel me a little?
               Cut me open like a knife through butter?
                Maybe then I’ll bleed words;
                 maybe then the poems will spill out of me,
                  entrails unravelling.”

You wanted a love poem, darling—
                meet me in your aspect and your eyes
               at ten o’clock tonight. Rome’s burning, baby,
              and all our lions are loose. No time for
    sonnets; we’ll climb the Colosseum with
    our flowers and our songs and
                             we’ll deny the gaudiness
                                                     of the day.

You wanted love, sweetheart—
I’ll give you everything I am:
           a burnt-out city,
           a soliloquy in G minor.
               I’ll play til my fingers bleed,
                     sing til my voice gives out and
                                                             ­            maybe—
maybe
it’ll do.

And did they hear, those on-looking distant
Rules, hear did they what was said to the world?
That story must be told by one “me,” can’t
Have a sonnet without that one letter mold—
First person voice, and make it beautiful,
Can’t have a sonnet that doesn’t love,
That doesn’t speak from a mouth of its own
That doesn’t rhyme, that does not resolve
Can’t call it a sonnet if it won’t grow old,
Not Shakespeare but Brooks, not Byron but Stein
And here— the words that did not do what they were told
And here— rules fall, away in line in line
But author? Who author, who inspire? Who make?
Un-sonnet, un-sung it, not claimed. Not take.

Keats swooned over a world that never was, except in dreams, and I've no use for that.



(sonnet #MMMMMMMDCCLXIII)


In lieu of aught we know:  blue skies t'avail
Sans blot of clouds 'til puddles mirror thence
Heavn's eye...take up the chalice to drink hence
That fragrant draught which yields as if to scale
More heady visions than we've drunk, t'exhale
Like sailors on the faerie seas, pretense
Our dainty meat; as lovers swoon for sense
Oer plighted troth, not as we know; sans bail.
Go into raptures likeas Keats would stir
And Byron knew to write, as Shelley drew
Up in his Ode, faint cuz ye know in tour
What minstrels sang in ballads, weaving to
Effect those silken strands to snare souls fer
The Devil's heights.  Cuz what we have won't do.

11Mar19c

A melancholic gaze
Upon my walks I have, born out of wanderlust,
Having thoughts and feelings 'bout dust
And Byron's ways,

The wind is in my raven hair,
    A poet is my heart,
Between hope and despair
I classify my written art.

Many women and wine out of still skulls
I am a stranger to,
But not to skills
Of natures who're romantic as a hue.

in this pestilence and heartache,
i doth lie here without remembering
an instance where i shall not stay
in this quietly bleeding prison

my hands have groped the air
for a phantom amongst the breeze
but there is no longer a soul to spare
when i am brought back to my knees.

i feel my prayers are but thrown
fruitless pleadings to the sky
my truths to bear, are mine alone
never will they be your plight

you hold your head to my chest
and we dream away the time
this prison feels like a prison less
when your heart is calling to mine