Three Sonnets Inspired By My Reigning Ex

Warmly dedicated to SMJ Three Sonnets Inspired by my Reigning Ex Part 0 Sitting at the edge of the universe like a man atop a modern skyscraper who might look down to see the manic street full of yellow taxis and distant peers, the first thing I notice on a backwards glance is my snake-skin mortality shed and skipping across the flattened ether, a luminous orb on a linear course like a puddle-hopping pebble, eager to sink a lily-pad a child targets for the hell of it. I realize then - either I’m dead as a god should be, or just a pet project of a German ghost, his meager objective merely my way to forget. Part I Before you bed me, I assume the herpes risk you ignored so many turn-style clicks so many thick-like quick-strike Rolodex entries not so long ago made that cavalry slicks and right-swept Tinder mounts dutifully saddled have begun their bountiful itch. A testament, truly, of how beautifully done was every each one, each surgical stitch precisely sewn to salvage squeeze-box juice of battle-field strewn, the red zest of life a dead soldier blew, is once more, for you, stalling to flow; knowing your rusty knife has yet to slice temptation sterilized; knowing your scalpel’s cut keeps cancer canonized. Part II All around you, this kelp-wall compartment appears an ocean bloomed with room enough for early light to shuffle halfway bent, like time’s unpolished hedge, across the rough field where too young have men gone to die. Someone is responsible for all of it: The ghostlike fish who grimly swim upstream; the crunchy autumn leaves all creased and clustered; and this, the box you loathe in sleepless dream of birthday cakes and candles your grandfather fed the wish-away lawn using mustered strength from tears his daughter leaked, sprung to lie, who now only cries at her daughter’s grave, complaining of stubble when Pawpaw shaves.