Sonnets 41-60

Aaron Blumenthal

Author, musician

41.

He walks along the silent streets of late

In late night's hour, his ears composing song

Of something half in the air, like fishing bait

To bid his quiet mind to leave its lawn.

The dew there reeks of ecstasy and lace

Stained by the wet of love—those tired, old tears—

And all the thoroughfare of vaporous years

Ring like a shade disbanded in the furnace,

A hissing mist, those fuming years, time's yearn

The condensation made there when the sky

Rises, the compensation laced upon the lawn,

The last hushed sounds of languor low and nigh.

Those streets and dark can only save his mind

So long the dawn and love will stay behind.

7/18/14 I don't like this sonnet at all.

42.

It's time you woke, you rebel spirit of

The evening hour. What thoughts have you brought to visit

Me today? What broken whiff of love?

What invitation to reflect upon

Past faults, passed in the caught breath

Of youth as folly? I knew my fawn and fawning

Would end—I knew my heart would end, my death

The ceremony of all insurrection.

It's nearly time to sleep, thou brutal chain

Of fear disguised as love about my mind,

About my mind, about my mind. The same

Can be said of thee, and thoughts devout to your kind.

Some time I'll cross with You and ask "What is it?"

And in that hour taste my long reflection.

41.

He walks along the silent streets of late

In late night's hour, his ears composing song

Of something half in the air, like fishing bait

To bid his quiet mind to leave its lawn.

The dew there reeks of ecstasy and lace

Stained by the wet of love—those tired, old tears—

And all the thoroughfare of vaporous years

Ring like a shade disbanded in the furnace,

A hissing mist, those fuming years, time's yearn

The condensation made there when the sky

Rises, the compensation laced upon the lawn,

The last hushed sounds of languor low and nigh.

Those streets and dark can only save his mind

So long the dawn and love will stay behind.

42.

It's time you woke, you rebel spirit of

The evening hour. What thoughts have you brought to visit

Me today? What broken whiff of love?

What invitation to reflect upon

Past faults, passed in the caught breath

Of youth as folly? I knew my fawn and fawning

Would end—I knew my heart would end, my death

The ceremony of all insurrection.

It's nearly time to sleep, thou brutal chain

Of fear disguised as love about my mind,

About my mind, about my mind. The same

Can be said of thee, and thoughts devout to your kind.

Some time I'll cross with You and ask "What is it?"

And in that hour taste my long reflection.

43.

I know I don't know you, but when I close my eyes

I tear to see you, your face, your sad, pale face.

I didn't mean to flirt with you—I was shy,

And those times, those few times, I asked you to grace

My meal, my table, it was because I was too

Afraid to speak much to you when we were in class.

Please forgive me for writing to you now;

I think about you all the time and pass

My lonely sorrow and regret for love.

I wish I had been brave enough to speak

To you more than just those times I attempted to bluff

Bravado, nonchalance. I think of all the weeks

I put off speaking to you, past passed by,

And never said, "I love you," nor will, and die.

44.

It must be the caffeine keeping me awake

Because I swore I'd never think of you,

Never adore the paleness of your face,

Because those thoughts entail I love you, too.

My muse must be the woman on my mind

And motivation for the exercise

Of those wearied powers brightest to the blind,

Since seeing you enslaves all truth to eyes.

The lateness weighs at me and I'm too tired

To think about a broken-pavement past

Endowed with all the rubble I'd admired.

To be awake and dreaming long for sleep:

Is this to love a love the past can't keep?

45.

How dost thy lonesome soul now fare, alit

With worried wonder at the passing time?

Have you found love these past few months a bit

Like lists made lists of love before, behind?

Tell me how her hair swirls, ghost against

The black-made canvas of an agèd sky,

Or of the figure to her voice, her breasts,

Sweet lilting fall, like candles fall, to th' eye.

Or is it something else, some other prize

To capture, wading through the waxy pools

Of men admiring all that I despise

To take my comfort quickly like a fool?

Tell me this, or any account of gains,

That I may tally what of me remains.

46.

The break of day conspires breathy dusk?

Like eyelids falling, softly lit below?

A languid candle’s flame which flays the husk?

Of sky from sky, the black of night to show.?

Time time and time again relives dark gain?

Of endings till that star-grained sky relieves?

The wearied Atlas, loosed of his spirit’s pain,?

While Phoebe forever waits dead Dawn’s receive.?

What brooding pall in finite plaits to make?

Our chains and rail us to the pen of hours,?

While rail us with the pen of ours our sake?

So long so long we pick o’ th’ sky such flowers??

How are you this fine, day, so easy to shatter,?

And what of the pieces, precious time, thereafter?

To S___'s Scarf

A poppy soaked with water, bloody silk

Streaming like solid wind from its folds.

Wet, almost rubber, buoyant with the click

Of water dripping from the paper bowl.

A warble of greens and grays and blues and gold

In sudden streaks to slap the rising crests.

You put the flower back; you're leaning over

The lake so careful—two fingers—I try not to look.

So I look at the trees, their hands full of shadows and leaves,

And I look at the sky with its pillow stuffing falling

Out and spreading thick like a virgin tea.

My hands are cold from the wind—you get a call,

No, a text, that consumes your face with a glow

That through the breath of the lake looks like a skull.

48.

What has the sonnet ever done for me

Which speaking to you wouldn't have done better?

You're beautiful when you dress a certain way

And wear red lipstick charred like coal in fire,

Or when the sallowed sun caves in your cheeks,

And hides there with the lie of blush and oil.

When I think of you lain my nights when solace seek

I find but thoughts of hair and rhythms toil

Towards that wreck of wasted words you'll never

See, or here kiss th' cloth of pillowcase

I've made out to be your cold and cotton face,

Heated by the tired breath best used to groan

The loss of things I've not yet lost, nor own.

What has the sonnet, ever-done for me,

Which better done you wouldn't have to speak?

49.

I hope it doesn't snow today, the sky

A murky river of clouds impressed on blue

Unmoving in the grayness of the wind.

Those loops of fleshy color, water-hued

Betray the habit harbored in the veil

That nothing falls save that which rises first.

The flight of dew, the cold of noon prevailed,

That little bulbs grow stiff and trembling burst.

What travel takes the sweat of morning's brow

To find how housed the corpse of river's booth

And angeled drizzle spirit in the sow

And stitch of the high-banked vault of heaven's ruth.

The coy, cold wind imposed the chided child

Foretells the toll of winter's sordid while.

50.

When in your turns in turn you turn to find

The tattered pattern of the pattered course

Of coursing time a river of the kind

That kind to start starts startling in the force

Of feeling weighed one way like reason, wait,

And in the course of wading through still mind

Still mind the grass now paved of dated date

Like date with seeds of date and bitter rind.

A round around the finger's never cold

But when its ghosted gold of half-dead goal

Whose grave the dying mines to gravely toll

What's mine, what's yours, what's taken, what you stole.

Embrace against the current current, brace

Again lest later lost all love erased!

Dear Poet Keats

Dear Poet Keats, dear John, it was not fair

The way the world was, to you, your family.

Whenever I see two words together, there

I hear your trace, the loving pulse and breeze

Of vowel to vowel and shadow's leafy elope,

That broaches well as dark elide dull fear.

Your verse were ever perfect, wild with hope

And hope's sad huntress, incensed to brimful tear;

Melancholy, pale to blinding and cold

To kiss, her rueful lips alive with the blood

Of black ablution, midnight-clear and bold

Accoutered of mortal time, fresh youth, young brood.

(This one doesn't have a final couplet)

53.

It'll happen you know. Eventually. Just ignore that

I'm going to die, you're going to die, we're all

Gonna need to figure out this life thing before

We die. Let's go look at things that aren't alive

But just living, like plants and a lake and some grass on a hill,

And pretend that because it's bright out we're somehow more

Alive, attuned to nature, more properly

Appreciating the time we have that, lord

Knows seems like forever, but that doesn't matter since

It's all gonna end and there's gonna be that time

At the end when you're lying there, scared as shit

Because you know at that point that it's gonna end finally,

And what are you supposed to do then?

How are you supposed to prepare for that?

54.

The black sheen of leather, sleek and taut

Upon small feet, kicking, kicking the air

In gentle boredom. Ah, the rush and rot

Of love, that flit of the hearty thought, that there

A future breeds and growing feeds upon

Beat time, belated time, abated time.

But that you sit beside me, cross-legged fawn,

Is but the spray of chance, the fuming brine

Of beauty. But, what beauty? Black-lined eyes,

Black lines of hair, black, cold, soft, unfelt clothes,

Cruelty of the felt undone, denied?

(This one's also missing a final couplet)

55.

My dear love C___, so far away in dist

And memory, and only growing farther,

Please by the power of spirit's longing list

To the sad rhymes and iambs of fretful bother,

Restless bother let not mine you you mine

To mind do you will my sad prose to

You mine to my mind, do you mind, but would you mind,

Restless bother, let it not bother you,

My sad prose, repeated, blurred, translated, unheard

Again, a gain unheard though I unherred.

Why keep collecting shouts, the soft scars hard

To find, though kingdom be the prize, the hurt?

C___, a thousand C___s more I'll call till all

The jade turn gray and with the silence fall.

56.

A bleak ablution, slight as mist composed,

That ghost of time's desire moored at bay,

At bay assured of sense, that mirthless host,

Now washes over city-streets to flay

The tired genius, gagging spittled lore

At the hornpiece of a bronze and bloated age.

A light breathes fear across the molted shore,

See here the water writ and nothing waged,

The coffee mug's ceramic stain and stage,

That ring which, wrought of night never allayed,

See now its mouth conspire Brutus' rage

To fall to gruesome conscience, glory's prey.

Sweet Sinew sewed by sleight of hand now sings

Of halcyon days and doings love here brings.

57.

It hurts. Language; she's gone now, gone forever,

Gone just like she for whom I loved in middle school

And disavowed for another seven years later.

Well, she's gone, too. And with her went the me

In me, always wanting beauty. But beauty's,

Goddam it, beauty's gone, too, gone, gone, fucking

Gone, and god if I'm going to rhyme anymore,

That past erebeic like the fucking iridescent wind,

Pristine and dazzling in its irradiant inscrutability

Like a fresh-pumped cunt, and hell if I'm

Gonna line my words up like those little cherry

Tomatoes for you to take in your fingers and taste,

And all the juice comes out and nothing left

But a body, empty, hurt, and torn, of love bereft.

Housing Day

On the high tides of the morning are people sorted;

Loud swells of red, green, gold proud shout against

The wind, which even stirs at chills, living whorls

In chortle, bowered by the sea-blown banner. Prince

Long rallies volleys forth, flying like sand

Made fog in the brittle atmosphere of battle.

"Cast off," comes the sweet, anxious call; to band

The muddled droplets snap, of hush the rattle,

Of grain the fell wave. Let it not be that our quiet

Spirits rein the mettle of our intent,

Nor the fresh dawn expose our hidden fright,

That the bleak ecstasies of war be never spent;

For all's to be's to be: fate plays no part

But to be the standard waving in the harbor.

59.

I once thought I loved a girl I didn't know,

And everything about her was beautiful,

And my art was beautiful, too, but oh,

My sadness to see her! And yet I longed to see her.

Then she was replaced by another, a prettier girl,

To make the past one seem in all ways worse.

This new love broke itself, breaking the first,

And my past went to war with passion with paltry course.

Now a milder girl, less pretty than those two,

Has elected my attention with hers; that vote

Which once would not have been considered new

Gives voice to live desire's unchanged rote:

Love, thou fool who dwell'st of the mind's fair shade!

Settle; to know is to know beauty's longing dead.

60.

I feel out of myself. Fuck love, fuck it all,

Dark parted hair blinking in the half-dimmed lamp

My bed beside, that luckless sentinel

Who must needs watch mine exploits inspire the dawn.

Come pray by the brick road which leads to the steeple

Fog-edged to infinite thickness to tap the moon;

She's waiting for me inside, and here I am bleeding

Beside myself, with the pain close literal longing.

Sure up the steps clicks the honey pick

To renew the old assiduous debt to pleasure.

Look not to the inner image; rather fix

Thine vision to the gentler alchemy of measure

To measure, breath to the basin of the soul

Which, pray, this time to me you can recall.