172

Posted on October 18, 2010 by urbansonnets

The fact of true and utter stagnation

can equal victory when blood flow stands
for next to nothing and dissipation
is best gestured by the movement of hands:
Frantic, frenetic and disciplined by
the most Giant Prestidigitator 
to have ever lived, the truth was skinned by
its only warbly commiserator: 
With some sleight of hand straight to the temple,
a searing cut was thus exposed from which
a quick stream of bile was heard to mumble, 
"Eat and feed and eat and feed off the rich": 
Which was taken to mean that we had lost
this war of attrition and flowers tossed.
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171

Posted on October 18, 2010 by urbansonnets

I can't think without dreaming anymore,

and that is not as pleasant as it sounds,
since my roots lie too deeply to deplore
and the magic is so black, it astounds:
The gate opens easily; the rusty
latch moves upward without a single creek
to flow through, just air, sound and time, lusty
for total asphixiation's mystique:
This means the rust is useless as a sign
of true time in this dank, damp atmosphere,
and my tetanus is frozen and must dine
on the quivering blood cells of a seer:
In this dead swamp thoughts outlive their cultures
but inherit all their seamless ruptures.
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170

Posted on October 6, 2010 by urbansonnets

Chaos is life, and crisis is like death

in a single instant — cradle to grave,
wax to wane, as the most jovial breath
crashes off the see-saw just to behave:
The plank wavers until it finds balance,
but the air is less humid than before;
to re-mount is to take a frigid stance,
not to mention that the body is sore:
The historical push and pull plays out
in the air, land, and sea, and will do so
until the Greyhound hunts down its gray snout
and drools its blue blood, and that's dry long so:
And I had never balked at the free food,
till I tasted bile in the hands we chewed.
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169

Posted on September 30, 2010 by urbansonnets

The wait can seem endless until you wait,
and the minutes that pass slowly just match
your speed at the time, the steadiest gait
that ever did tread upon the wide thatch:
Naturally, you were born to conform time
to the fluid process of true spirit,
which coils and uncoils without any slime
like a leathery serpent in a pit:
It was camouflaged in its own darkness,
an expanse of space so void of violence,
until Time sliced his scythe through his dark dress,
cutting himself into past and presence:
The snake sloughed itself to the otherside
with a twisted law: conquer and divide.

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168

Posted on September 26, 2010 by urbansonnets

The pressure on us was something immense:

to make suffering beautiful our task,
to carve meaning onto friezes so tense,
whereupon stone figures frolic and frisk:
Relief was low, evasive and sunken,
like a fleet of overburdened cruise ships
that merged with the horizon while drunken
fishermen kissed the stars with salty lips:
The air was purple – it was a good night;
the moon had just left its baby fullness,
and old cycles had tottered out of sight,
and a new oppression was upon us:
Where we failed before to sketch our vision,
we must make sense of our indiscretion.
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167

Posted on September 22, 2010 by urbansonnets

The sweetest songs used to stick in my ears

as smoke did to freshen up used jackets
that were never washed but with spilled out beers,
before the bans soaked the barroom markets:
There was a stallion in the ranks of men,
with a pungent voice and a noble chest,
and as he hummed a chant from one to ten
a parade of flesh danced at his behest:
In that line there were loons, brunettes and waifs,
and a curious demon who pointed 
at the stars with his very sights in staves
of lasers calling out the anointed:
"Leave a light on for our mistier days,
when the lord worked in mysterious ways."
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, URBAN SONNETS!

Posted on September 20, 2010 by urbansonnets

With great pleasure, I am able to say that I've been crankin' out the poesy here on www.urbansonnets.com for a full, whole, entire year! I'm averaging over a post every two days, which is truly something I would have never expected. 

In commemoration of what is a massive personal milestone, I have published an e-book for Kindle called Oasis of the Sea: Sint Maarten Sonnets, which includes every single sonnet that I wrote on that island during my five-week stay there in June/July. You can check that out here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0042ANYHK. 

I have many people that I can thank, but I will take this space to only give props to one: my 10th grade English teacher, Mr. Hudak, who introduced me to creative writing via the sonnet. It was also through Mr. Hudak that I first read Dante, Hugo and Cervantes, and through whom I learned that clever insubordination was often more educational than shutting up and doing what I was told. This is a highly-valuable lesson that I'm still trying to unlearn, but only half-heartedly. Whatever happens to me and to these "Urban Sonnets," Mr. Hudak will prove to have been instrumental in painting this egg that will eventually hatch. For that, I give bottomless thanks from the depths of my linguistic and sentimental stores.

–WRG
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166

Posted on September 18, 2010 by urbansonnets

Lapses in arbitration are the norm

inside the plastic bubbles of forced thoughts
groveling to the six senses, fraught with form
and friendly misfirings – the bliss of doubts:
One's joy is the other's twice-swallowed tongue,
bifurcated in esophageal 
burials and in dirges twice unsung,
as the revived ones hang, incorporeal.
Another one bites the pulv; her eyes soared
on the strings connecting the dots of dust
that shine golden in the lamp glow's accord
that must signify dusk, missteps and trust:
To inhabit a tongue would presuppose
a tight space, which if doubled, would not close.
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165

Posted on September 17, 2010 by urbansonnets

I latched onto the word "prefect" last night

in a dream that rattled me in its ease,
its flow. I saw clouds roll across the light
like an addiction to pleasure-as-breeze:
The Ocean must keep singing forever,
and the tropical plastic-y sound waves
reawaken the beast that lies clever-
ly in waiting beneath hellish enclaves:
The Office is dark and scorned in the night,
but we work on, against the ripped current,
with milky gloves and a case of stage fright
that steadies our path as our knees are bent:
I dream of textures and teas when awake.
The Imperfect is a vision opaque. 
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164

Posted on August 26, 2010 by urbansonnets

There were Parchman Farms and now Parchman Pens,

and my face grows fat as I search within
for a means to progress despite the sense
I get when I push my mind into sin:
I was captivated by the lightness 
of skin – not color, you perverts, but weight;
I mean, how could my skin frame my likeness
and only total the tithe of my fate?:
Is this where religion enters the fray?
Is darkness equal to the force of light?
Is vision a function of night or day,
or does it encase the flesh of what's right?:
I went to Nation to answer my doubts,
and came home with the Truth, smothered in shouts.
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