II paper bags

Dear customer, just take the paper bag.
Your preference begs a simple "yes" or "no".
Not info on philosophies you have,
Or judgement when you take your books to-go.
How far you have to walk bears ponderance,
And so you tell me all about your day,
How much you have to carry, and from whence,
For should you 'pack it' what would people say?
The growing line behind you does not care,
I promise you your choices are not viewed
With scorn and censure, no, you will not bear,
Your stance on Nature being misconstrued.
You act as though you've slain a woodland elf,
You feel thus strongly? Carry them yourself.

I.....it begins.....

I

Quite tedious, to some unconscionable,
I do not know why I like sonnets so
Constant, counting tens each syllable,
The iambic can bring my wits quite low.
Perhaps, it is that very steady drone,
So close to my dull heart, a welcome guest
The patient counting of a metronome,
As if the poem and I pressed chest to chest
Could now lie coupled in this single bed,
The words and I, in moonlight buried deep,
The form in graceful lines breathes by my head,
A ghostly partner lulling me to sleep.
It helps to share the night hours with a poem,
The page gets filled, I don't wake up alone.

A Very Bad Idea or, The Sonnets Are Coming! The Sonnets Are Coming

In the interest of preparing for The Love Letter Project http://phren-z.org/ I have decided to write one sonnet a day for the rest of the month. If I can keep this up, we'll see if I can make it for an entire year. Hopefully this will make me a better sonnet writer or, at the very least, a better blogger. First iambic monstrosity posting tomorrow. Shakespeare help us all.

The Morning Shift

There is a comfort
To the morning register shift.
The early risers come to and from their coffee
In the yawning light,
Two dollars, a dollar ten, eighty cents
Impatient in hand,
And I know they want a newspaper--
The Sentinel, or The Times, the slim Wallstreet Journal--
As quickly as possible,
Never mind the pennies.
I really have no idea what people want the rest of the time,
Just that we are running heavy
With everything we want to spend.

Parting Gifts

You returned everything
Except my goodbye.
The one thing I wanted back.
You kissed and watered it
Just a little,
Just enough
To keep it growing.
I tried to drown it,
But it proved to be
Too a thirsty young thing,
Pretty,
In its delicate, carnivorous, melancholy.
It's funny--
What looks good in a vase--
What eats you alive.

In August

In August,
Demoiselle Cranes
Stretch their slender necks
Above the dying grasses
Again, for the first time, or the last,
Preparing to throw their improbable lacework
Against the eternal teeth of the Himalayas,

The hawks, and hungry canyons,
Trembling wings, and purple storms,
Season after season,
For the distant emerald certainty
Of home.

In August,
Two hands often reach,
Hover on the uncertain breeze,
Brush palm to palm,
Fragile as paper kites
Against the long blue of the sky.

Between reading Sheila Callaghan and Erik Ehn, my brain is getting funny

Peter Counts His Darlings, he doesn't know how

Flying is just falling backwards.
I fell out of nurse's pram,
Tumbled starward,
Never never looked back,
I think?
I don't remember.

Michael has puns
That are too old for him,
They stick out through his cradle
Like too long toenails,
Wendy snips them off with doll's scissors.

John is fighting to pulse through
His own machinery,
Sometimes he is a clockwork crocodile,
But not as hungry.
Wendy complains at the steam coming out of his hat.

Wendy,makes every corner a throne,
Her eyes sparkle by needle-light,
Nothing in her face is anything I understand,
Her heart is a bird, beating against a closed window,
She tells me that flying is just falling upwards.
Mother,
I think?
I don't remember.