Modern Sonnets Ii

MODERN SONNETS II I prefer the original definition of the sonnet as a “little song” of indeterminate form and length. These modern sonnets vary from more-or-less traditional to free verse. In Praise of Meter by Michael R. Burch The earth is full of rhythms so precise the octave of the crystal can produce a trillion oscillations, yet not lose a second's beat. The ear needs no device to hear the unsprung rhythms of the couch drown out the mouth's; the lips can be debauched by kisses, should the heart put back its watch and find the pulse of love, and sing, devout. If moons and tides in interlocking dance obey their numbers, what's been left to chance? Should poets be more lax?their circumstance as humble as it is??or readers wince to see their ragged numbers thin, to hear the moans of drones drown out the Chanticleer? Originally published by The Eclectic Muse Free Fall by Michael R. Burch These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel where suns revolve around an axle star ... Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours. Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel. Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell? To see is not to know, but you can feel the tug sometimes?the gravity, the shell as lustrous as damp pearl. You sink, you reel toward some draining revelation. Air? too thin to grasp, to breath. Such pressure. Gasp. The stars invert, electric, everywhere. And so we fall, down-tumbling through night’s fissure ... two beings pale, intent to fall forever around each other?fumbling at love’s tether ... now separate, now distant, now together. Originally published by Sonnet Scroll In this Ordinary Swoon by Michael R. Burch In this ordinary swoon as I pass from life to death, I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon; I feel no sympathy for breath. Who I am and why I came, I do not know; nor does it matter. The end of every man’s the same and every god’s as mad as a hatter. I do not fear the letting go; I only fear the clinging on to hope when there’s no hope, although I lift my face to the blazing sun and feel the greater intensity of the wilder inferno within me. Huntress by Michael R. Burch after Baudelaire Lynx-eyed, cat-like and cruel, you creep across a crevice dropping deep into a dark and doomed domain. Your claws are sheathed. You smile, insane. Rain falls upon your path, and pain pours down. Your paws are pierced. You pause and heed the oft-lamented laws which bid you not begin again till night returns. You wail like wind, the sighing of a soul for sin, and give up hunting for a heart. Till sunset falls again, depart, though hate and hunger urge you?"On!" Heed, hearts, your hope?the break of dawn. Originally published by Sonnetto Poesia Water and Gold by Michael R. Burch You came to me as rain breaks on the desert when every flower springs to life at once, but joy's a wan illusion to the expert: the Bedouin has learned how not to want. You came to me as riches to a miser when all is gold, or so his heart believes, until he dies much thinner and much wiser, his gleaming bones hauled off by chortling thieves. You gave your heart too soon, too dear, too vastly; I could not take it in; it was too much. I pledged to meet your price, but promised rashly. I died of thirst, of your bright Midas touch. I dreamed you gave me water of your lips, then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs. Originally published by The Lyric Fountainhead by Michael R. Burch I did not delight in love so much as in a kiss like linnets' wings, the flutterings of a pulse so soft the heart remembers, as it sings: to bathe there was its transport, brushed by marble lips, or porcelain,? one liquid kiss, one cool outburst from pale rosettes. What did it mean ... to float awhirl on minute tides within the compass of your eyes, to feel your alabaster bust grow cold within? Ecstatic sighs seem hisses now; your eyes, serene, reflect the sun's pale tourmaline. Originally published by Romantics Quarterly The Folly of Wisdom by Michael R. Burch She is wise in the way that children are wise, looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes I must bend down to her to understand. But she only smiles, and takes my hand. We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go, so I smile, and I follow ... And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves that flutter above us, and what she believes? I can almost remember?goes something like this: the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss. She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well if only we find him! The woodpecker’s knell as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree that once was a fortress to someone like me rings wildly above us. Some things that we know we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow. Originally published by Romantics Quarterly Pan by Michael R. Burch ... Among the shadows of the groaning elms, amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves ... ... Once there were paths that led to coracles that clung to piers like loosening barnacles ... ... where we cannot return, because we lost the pebbles and the playthings, and the moss ... ... hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair who never were enchanted, and the stairs ... ... that led up to the Fortress in the trees will not support our weight, but on our knees ... ... we still might fit inside those splendid hours of damsels in distress, of rustic towers ... ... of voices of the wolves’ tormented howls that died, and live in dreams’ soft, windy vowels ... Originally published by Sonnet Scroll Keywords/Tags: modern, sonnet, sonnets, free, verse, song, tradition, traditional, romantic, romanticism, art, artisan, freedom, write, writing, song, romantic, romantic love, romance