SONNETS
and other songs and poems using similar forms
This section includes sonnets and other poems that are similar in form, mood, length and mode. They dont always follow classical forms and some of them are intermediate between ballades and sonnets. Most of them are "personal lyrics". There will be separate files for haiku and tanka and cinquains. Most of these poems were written in the 1980s or the first half of the 90s.
Do Poets Create Purgatory?
What if they wish us not to sing?
Those ghosts of olden times?
Consider our carefully crafted lines
Cruel cages of cold iron rimes?
Spirit traps entangling
Souls who wish only to fade
And not to dwell where the light shines
But to seek only quiet shade
And into oblivion blend and belong
Preferring Silence to our praise song?
In many societies one of the duties of a poet is to be a praise singer but do ghosts ever weary of being earth bound by our invocations of past glories?
and now some more irony - note that she or he could just as well be an editor?
Strange irony
Strange irony for poets and cruel,
Long after your own heart's grown cool
The lines that NEVER moved his heart,
No matter how you begged and prayed,
By critics and fans at last are praised,
And move many anotehr heart,
While to yours and his, it's a tool,
A key for remembrance cruel.
This poem was written for a sonnet competition held earlier this year
Winter's Grim Weight
An English Shakespearian Sonnet
Fight against winter's grim weight of grayness
Brightness shall return though we deeply grieve
The loss of Autumn's colors and the blueness
Of Summer skies, for now it's St. John's Eve
Name it, if you wish, Solstice, point of year's change,
Nadir and Zenith of the year's circuit,
The Middling days of the Earth's far range,
When we climb up as if from a dark pit!
The dark freight of the cold time shall lessen.
The starry circle turn back to the stance,
The Ancient patterns, of Spring, and the heart freshen,
When Light flows soft and strong, a steady dance!
Fight against the heaviness of your heart!
Summer shall return, dreaery winter depart!
St. John's eve marks midsummer in Europe and it was almost midwinter when I wrote this poem!
I couldnt resist the irony!
IS IT OR ISNT IT?
This next poem is kinda a semiballade and ironic about the craft of the poet AGAIN!
A ballade is NOT the same thing as a ballad!
Would anyone like to see a note explaining the difference? Let me know?
Delicate, but yet also vigorous,
Thay way, entrancingly glorious,
That method, seemingly mysterious,
The craft, that shapes a true sonnet.
For many an image flees the mind's cage
Yet never ends safely set on a page,
Bringing each would be poet despair and rage,
Longing to shape a true sonnet.
For it's elusive, and search east or west,
Whether north or south, wheneever you quest,
Finding its a cruel and perilous test,
The art to shape a true sonnet.
Fourteen lines of song woven like a net,
Far more than that makes a poem a sonnet!
"Distractions" -
Or Yet ... Still I long for you?! June 4 - 94
I study obscure old volumes,
I sigh and turn to lighter books equally old
Sweet ancient Lyrics freed now from large dusty rooms,
the treasures hidden that library shelves can hold.
yet still I long for you
I hunt for the newest writings of philosophy,
Tire, and open some fresh novel of fantasy,
Enjoying sharing some echoes of other hearts' dreamings,
A variable feast of alien strange whisperings!
yet still I long for you!
You are so distant and yet warm flesh seems better.
Two desires can touch and fuse together
Into one love that with luck might last and lengthen
Since love's flame if hallowed can the heart strengthen.
but such dreams rarely come true
yet oh I still long for you!
I was deep into my studies for my post graduate thesis on Plutarch at the time of writing.
This poem was written in the mid 80's! but I'm sure there are other people who've had the same experience! (and maybe gone on to wonder if they made an narrow escape )
SO HE'S MARRIED !
A time may come when you shall grieve,
that willingly my love you'd leave,
and this as truth, at last receive,
when sudden your blind heart shall see,
that knowing from which you did flee,
by naming my love mere make-beleive,
that both our hearts you did bereave,
but now in deep matrimony,
seeking another soul's harmony,
you'd hear these words and disbelieve,
call them mere cliche, like shining tears seen,
on a Heian poet's silken sleeve,
a common image, a cliched scene?
THAT SORROW WAS THE SOURCE BELIEVE!
Gentle Readers I should here confess the person I wrote this about has never seen this poem and probably never will unless he discovers it by accident, however unfortunately I'm sure some of my few readers know males who ... how shall we put this ... need to read more verse?
This is another eighties poem.
This Weary Heart of Flesh - March 31
Readers may wish to note March is Autumn>
This is the season of melancholy according to Keat's Ode in Australia
Who shall prove my heart's true mate?
Not the man who walked away!
Solitude seems to be my fate
Desire will forever betray
This weary heart of flesh!
For true love it grows late
Upwards winds the hard narrow way
For those who seek heaven's gate
Will it again lead me astray?
This weary heart of flesh!
> What pure spring, which gentle hand
Could ever cleanse and refresh
Here in this poisoned shadow land
This weary heart of flesh!
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