Michael Burch Poet Sonnet

Imperfect Sonnet

Imperfect Sonnet
by Michael R. Burch

A word before the light is doused: the night
is something wriggling through an unclean mind,
as rats creep through a tenement. And loss
is written cheaply with the moon’s cracked gloss
like lipstick through the infinite, to show
love’s pale yet sordid imprint on us. Go.

We have not learned love yet, except to cleave.
I saw the moon rise once ... but to believe ...
was of another century ... and now ...
I have the urge to love, but not the strength.

Despair, once stretched out to its utmost length,
lies couched in squalor, watching as the screen
reveals "love's" damaged images: its dreams ...
and emulating limply, screams and screams.

Originally published by Sonnet Scroll

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Leo Larry Amadore January 23, 2020 at 11:31 AM Very good! The very "imperfection" of your 'sonnet' distinguishes it as an authentic and original creation neither straining to fit a conventional mold nor protesting too loudly against orthodoxy but expressing complex and truly felt human emotion. Thank you! Michael Burch January 23, 2020 at 12:42 PM Thanks, I'm glad you think so. Some of my favorite sonnets are rulebreakers, like Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" and the curtal sonnets of Gerard Manley Hopkins. I like the original definition of sonnet as a "little song" without all the rigid rules.