{"id":6766,"date":"2020-08-24T19:19:09","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T19:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/?p=6766"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:19:40","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:19:40","slug":"xxx-sonnets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/xxx-sonnets\/","title":{"rendered":"XXX Sonnets"},"content":{"rendered":"
 <\/span>\r\nCharacter poems of then-current events and personal romantic sonnets<\/em>\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\nBy Gregg G Brown \r\n \r\nCopyright \u00a9 1991\r\n\r\nPublished by \r\nBLAST PRESS \r\n\r\n <\/a> \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/a>Jonathan Miller, U.S.M.<\/h2>\n
\r\n\"It is night. Date-palms are rocking on the leash \r\nOf Time, the hurricane, that straddles our defeat \r\nWith two-legged winds, and stalks the dusty town \r\nWith a sheriff's clinkered heels until we're mown \r\nDown by our ambitions to police the world. \r\nTonight the Mid-East's bunkered sandlots lash \r\nDynamos of fire into the throttled air to crash, \r\nOn cindered houses abandoned years before. \r\nThe generals' camouflaged tent is staked \r\nIn the vampired heart of our affairs of state; \r\nOur bloodless motive moves in for the spider-kill, \r\nTouching each fly-fat thread centered on our ill. \r\n \r\nAll things are playthings, and the roar \r\nOf the black ocean here consumes our speech at night, \r\nLifting its frail levities in a matchstick's \r\nMinute light. God knows I was not born to kill--- \r\nWho grew up in Indiana's tidy wheatfields tilled \r\nBy machines as patient as mothers, giant-wheeled, \r\nThat came sighing with sweet scythes when autumn cooled, \r\nKeats-like, and the silo's sundial shadow \r\nMet itself in the empty auguries of the meadow. \r\nUnhoused thousands are beating to our copter's mill; \r\nPrayers raise them cresting to their crescent moon \r\nAnd Allah's sweet-water paradise filled with girls. \r\n \r\nThese are God's sufferers and wear his brand \r\nOf salvation creased in skin and hand; \r\nDoling out bags of rice and reconstituted milk \r\nFrom the throbbing helicopter's side, half tilt- \r\nIng into the begging sea of faces, I wish \r\nFor a lunatic's rare absolution of my guilt, his bliss. \r\nStigmata almost washed away by weeping still \r\nEat into the innocent wrists. Now, at Easter, \r\nThey hold their small hands up, robbed \r\nOf all that held them, tongue-tied, to earth, \r\nAnd rise like moons, balloon-willed, lovely, free \r\nAt last, to their creatured deaths; until we die \r\nNothing stops the cresive wanting of our breath.\" \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Schwartzkopf, Duke of Iraq<\/h2>\n
\r\n\"I will go wash; and drown these desert honors \r\nthat stick in my throat. Three weeks before the grand \r\ndefeat of our enemies, I dreamt my tent squalerous, \r\nruined lieutenants killed by infiltrating mustard gas \r\nthat couldn't sniff out the winning colors \r\nof our almighty flag. My aide snored on \r\nunder his moony brow, refusing to wake \r\nfor anything less than the Judgement Day; I'll pass. \r\nIn the wheezing trenches we squeezed off rounds like mad \r\nin an unending philippic against the damned. \r\nDust-erased faces blink skyward from their rust lakes \r\nof blood, off, on, off, on. \r\nNow downed in a North Carolina airplane hanger \r\nand tired of the itching laurels that itch my scalp \r\nI stare bemused at what our wanting has brought us here: \r\nDisinterred love scrambles up my lap.\" \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Nixon Now<\/h2>\n
\r\n\"Broadbacked noon has come humbling among our wicked spires; \r\nI came trumping in, Ike's prat-boy VP, \r\nflipped the sinister death-ace on its head in Laos \r\nto a vermillioned flush, a cornucopia of flowers \r\nscissored off by dear Pat for my tweed lapel. \r\nCoronated by my foreign policy's jewelled accretions, old man \r\nof the treasons, whispers stitched to whispers, \r\nI age in New Jersey; grown familiarly bland \r\nI confer my Ovaltine-sweet opinions on the mass, \r\nsaddled with a politician's over-zealous over-friendliness still. \r\nWhatever has happened has happened. \r\nSmooth-trunked Atwater by a humorous tumor felled; \r\nHow many more must wither and lessen? Stopped \r\nat the bullet-proof pane all day, I watch \r\nthe dogwood whiten and the rich magnolia finish... \r\nWhat love cannot conquer I leave to my will. \r\nThe winning children still swing back \r\nto their crooked papa at Xmas... a few bright, colored lights. \r\nI am no thin-spined De Sade, adoring thorns!\" \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>William Casey<\/h2>\n
\r\n\"Hitler once appeared to me in dream, grim, \r\nrepentant, towing cowed Eva like a swallowed soul... \r\na hang of flapping hair shut one demon-eye in, dimmed, \r\nwrestling with itself, whirlwind angels laughing in his skull. \r\nWe killed him eventually; a few, true things \r\npenetrating to the innermost. I feel the arrow still \r\nmy brother lumbered from my leg; atop a joyous swing \r\nI rubbed where its rubber cutting nose had thrilled. \r\nOur afternoons were resplendent, unhurried, vague, \r\nas we tumbled as cowboys and indians in an unholstered rush \r\nkilling the shuffling vegetation and lizards that plagued \r\nour simmering summer patio. They would blink and push \r\ntheir low bellies in and out, alien, slow, \r\nthemselves. I wish the doctor would come and kill my tumor now.\" \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Warm Tomb<\/h2>\n
\r\nDad, high on inscrutability and his unconscious drive \r\ntoward the meretricious, undoes the buzzing crust \r\nthat baked him in place and disinterrs himself to give \r\none final, lacerating lecture; weeds crush his memorial bust \r\nwith an enduring, gorgeous green he'd scorn. \r\nFearing the CIA and copper Kremlin in his West VA cave, \r\nhis fevered eyes dripped in a marsupial's querulous skull \r\nas he cradled a shotgun's bucking butt to his shaved cheek \r\nrummaging for snagged fowl on the waste acres of his estate. \r\n\"Interlopers... Boys, when the world inverts this time \r\nand the kikes come howling for your heart, nothing will be saved.\" \r\nHis fat breathing heaved, \"buy gold coins.\" \r\nWhat we cannot remember cannot save us. Blinking and appalled, \r\nI dream that the sun is one of us, like my dad, \r\nforedoomed, fated, monstrously alive. \r\nDisasters livened him, the minor death \r\nof a fly, stumbling and stumbling against the windowpane; \r\nthe gross head all eyes, one damaged eye, limned in light. \r\nDust leaps from the stone I skip, dust falls... \r\nI circle back: dust laps his grave. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Middle Ground<\/h2>\n
\r\nAbandoned by our party in the garden park \r\nof Avon, I feel you shaken \r\nwith a queasy stiffness; brackish \r\nas our garbaged New Jersey beach \r\nsomething's rising, radiant-spiked, \r\nrising, rising, to burst as light... \r\nRocketing up from your ulcer's pit \r\nI ask myself, what is it, what is it? \r\nO how often have your hysterical, profound \r\ndistemperate electricities hit ground! \r\n \r\nSpliced fire shams and sparks \r\nthe matchstick held between us in the dark. \r\nNow undone by age, the spooky, loved \r\nhegemony of our plush masonic torch \r\nputters into mush in the gutted mud \r\nof the here and now, fading vivant, untouched. \r\nStill here after thirty remorseless years \r\nand too weak to laugh ourselves to tears, \r\nwe lean like water against the sand: \r\nNo world will hate what we cannot stand. \r\n \r\nStill posting for our finished race \r\nwe stand outlined, awaiting grace \r\nthat creeps against the boardwalk \r\nand seethes between the planks that cut our feet. \r\nOnce, aching with a haltered wish to win \r\nand chalked white by spindly dawn \r\nwe cantered to our easy beginnings and scoffed \r\nBruno Latini on the loser's green. \r\nRemember winning? Scarred by crusts \r\nwe cannot forget, that cannot forget us. \r\n \r\nOnce, swelled by dreams, we labored down \r\nthe awkward, parnassian slope, and stumbled \r\ncrown over crown when we attempted Ararat... \r\nReligion had us stoned, overloading \r\nour middleaging ballast, filled \r\nwith stones; they sat soldierly, \r\nround, white, yellow, white, alone. \r\nLook at what our childish \r\nurgent hands have crushed! \r\nAn Atlantis lays buried between us. \r\n \r\nWhen the fatal plane zeroes on my heart, \r\nfaint Fay Ray with cactus drink in hand, \r\nunerring in the air, amazed, alert, \r\nwill you, love, move where I hurt, \r\nor like the gruesome Gorgon sprouting hooks \r\nspit useless fire still, caught in the traffic's brawl? \r\nConspicuous the loss of consciousness.... \r\nrehabilitation the final joke of our crowd. \r\nConcentrating on the unmediated throb \r\nI think of you, myself, eyeing the prop. \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Election Day, Nov. 7, 1988<\/h2>\n
(A dying New Dealer looks askance at the changing of the guard)<\/em><\/p>\n
\r\n\"All night the grating visions. Curled \r\nin my electric bed against the prating arias of wind \r\nI watch my country go tiptoe towards the whirl \r\n.... The President's domineering, branded hip's unpinned \r\nby his eight typhooned, bleary years at the mast. \r\nOur older brother's younger rung squat-thrusts to the oarlock, lashed \r\nby the gold oar snapping from his grasp, spinning in quicksand... \r\nOne Yalie summer nicknamed him, The Antidote.<\/o:p><\/em> \r\nUnplugged by my heavy coronary, I lay lapsed, small. \r\nA tongue-red heart comes bleating like a wart \r\nsawn-off in the intern's dish, anxious to clasp my held-out hand... \r\nThe anesthetist drops his mask. Mailing in my vote \r\nI weep for America's wrong, unflagging heart \r\nmarooned like rescued Crusoe in the hospital.\" \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Edvard Shevardnashze<\/h2>\n
\r\n\"Lenin in his tomb is white and weary. \r\nBefore the world exploded into shards \r\nHis voice was the bull-roarer, and it soared \r\nIn waking syllables above the dreaming dead. \r\nLife's green branch is snapped above the boulevard \r\nWhere we march shouting, and the stick \r\nIs in our hands whose slurring fire flamed \r\nThe Kremlin's egg-shell spires back to ash. \r\nThe ruling house is rubble rucked with tars; \r\nTsars' bones cluck where dinosaur skeletons are. \r\n \r\nSmooth-skulled tanks from one-eyed turrets stare \r\nAnd move out like mastodons from their simple pits of ice, \r\nRolling up the capitol with a wish to kill and eat \r\nThe man-shaped offspring that teethed on mother-meat. \r\nIt is incessant springtime now, and a rash \r\nOf bursting apples cracks the wintered bough \r\nStunned by expectation and by prophesies; \r\nWhen I resigned Gorbachev to his statesman's fate, \r\nTelling off the congress with a blue face, \r\nWhat, love, rattled to the empty chute? \r\n \r\nNow we saunter and talk by the renewing river \r\nThat sighs and shifts and corkscrews through Gorky Park \r\nWhere the ferriswheel is shivering to its height \r\nAnd Moscow skaters wobble new-foaled, released \r\nFrom their eternal moment when Stalin stopped the stream, \r\nHis mustache powdering like a giant Jack Frost pleased \r\nTo see his humid hometown freezing into dream. \r\nChurches hold their quiver of new crosses up to light. \r\nMarooned in the humming populace of the Platz, larks \r\nDisperse with the bright bells beating like a gun; \r\n \r\nBy starred asters starred children lamb and race \r\nPast buoyed parents walking, and cannot wait \r\nTo see themselves staring up from the water's face. \r\nDripping workers grown cold in soldered light \r\nRivet the future's extinction together bolt by bolt... \r\nThe Comintern's cragging inmates stare and scream  \r\nLike storks in pilgrim plumage from their bobwire nest \r\nTopping the charring stacks; how long will stapled feathers stick? \r\nWhen the atom bomb blisters and their faces melt \r\nBefore the torn waters of the burning lake \r\nWhat will rise in ecstatic showers to dissipate?\" \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>“All those who in roaring triumph died…”<\/h2>\n
\r\nAll those who in roaring triumph died \r\nMust live in us, and, living, must suffer still \r\nSome bright ache of sacrifice enforced \r\nBy a doubtful will. Aim no spade at that \r\nChaste composure gods guard in forgetfulness. \r\nRemember the Fates' forgiveless testament, \r\nNailing Prometheus to his crag at dawn \r\nFor high hubris that was man's first sin; \r\nOr nodding Narcissus, winking at his twin \r\nAmong gold flowers loaded with their own sweet dew, \r\nUntil beauty like a surgeon's knife \r\nHad sawn him out of life to adorn a pool. \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>When we lie with the hot worst of our beings spent<\/h2>\n
\r\nWhen we lie with the hot worst of our beings spent \r\nAnd may with the tired betters of our natures speak \r\nConferring solidity to what had been lent \r\nWhen passion's cry had come amidst our squeaks, \r\nHow can all our honest talk supplant the boast \r\nPerjured lust had disinterred with sighs \r\nOr gird our tropic with an icy coast \r\nWho had viewed spare reality through panting eyes \r\nThat embroiders fine over grievous faults \r\nWith threads of desire, spurring false shapes from dross, \r\nBy peck and pull of the seamstress's wanton art \r\nCovering our many minor shames with one gross? \r\nWhen we into a twinned couplet twist our spans, \r\nOur bodies' rhyme is more than others can. \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Nothing is in a little space confined<\/h2>\n
\r\nNothing is in a little space confined, \r\nAnd, once, confined, is finished in its effects; \r\nNot so the love that your eyes divines, \r\nIn speculation out-vying philosopher's packs, \r\nIn dwelling on what has no inward bound-- \r\nThe sovereign rarity of a single soul-- \r\nBlessed with magnifying power to catch sounds, \r\nShowing your dimmest whisper true to all; \r\nThat love which your eye to all eyes shows \r\nIn universal application spills, \r\nHealing sick knots of hate that in loved bowers grow, \r\nErasing from men's sins their stain of ill. \r\nAs there is no staying of the sun by obstinate night, \r\nSo there is no caging of such love's light. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>When, all insecure, before howling mountains<\/h2>\n
\r\nWhen, all insecure, before howling mountains \r\nThrown, I make my breviary all of pleas \r\nAnd pull a dark choir of fears from one tone: \r\nThat you forbid with \"No\" my devoutest \"Please.\" \r\nWhen begging poorly after with my poor bowl of want \r\nSome thrifty grain of your rich rice to eat, \r\nI repeat my fervent graces for that sup \r\nUntil all my kneeled body a trembled flare \r\nOf stark uncertainty resembles, \r\nMy hopes all poured in the concentration of a cup \r\nThat I might from the spices of your eye unpent \r\nSome seasoning of affection by my heat. \r\nBut whether it is a matter of soul or bowl, \r\nThe sum is this: from your least grows my all. \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>My silent love is ripped by warring thoughts<\/h2>\n
\r\nMy silent love is ripped by warring thoughts \r\nThat troop to rebellion from my crowded heart \r\nAnd from my tongue's enemy camp cry all my cause. \r\nArmies in my veins raise blushing fires \r\nTo burn me out of hiding towards your tender smile. \r\nBut since I am so modest shy of light, \r\nAnd like the gloomy groundhog room in caves, \r\nMy dark eyes may never touch your pure sight \r\nOr caress with lurid roll the motive of your sighs \r\nWhich like a bonfire from space, neatly tucked \r\nBeneath quilted clouds of opposing rain, \r\nBurns obscured, or lies damped to dross unless \r\nYour dripping eyes these fired words drift across. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>The wasteful sun wakes blinking in morning’s weeds<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe wasteful sun wakes blinking in morning's weeds, \r\nStoking bland buds until they burn as leaves \r\nAdding shade while the sun must spend his seed, \r\nAnd end generation in a spilling breeze. \r\nCrowded near the generous golds you smear \r\nGreedy plants, like myself, stand wiped by light, \r\nOffering hungry faces that all in green appear \r\nTo feed on molten surplus of your beams. \r\nDo not with banker's measure judge too hard \r\nAll those who live in interest of your sight; \r\nSuch scales would swing me too lightly into clouds \r\nAnd judge my weighty love a zero dram. \r\nPaymaster of all my joy's fees, with me descend \r\nOr cycle skyward, where all our wages end. \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Time has set his eating stamp on your kind face,<\/h2>\n
\r\nTime has set his eating stamp on your kind face, \r\nInfecting more deeply what each day's renown \r\nPromotes, until he has all smooth grace consumed, \r\nRaking acid trenches where flowered fields had blown. \r\nBut you shall be revenged on what thief time can take, \r\nFor though every flower dies that in April had its head, \r\nAnd woodpeckers mark seconds while they make, \r\nAnd blossoms burst, their shriveled petals shed, \r\nAnd mountains wash eventually to sea,  \r\nThey have nothing of what your soul intends--- \r\nFor effortless beauty cannot from you leave \r\nThat have in mental gates stored beauty others lend. \r\nIn your mind revolves an uncorrupted rose, \r\nAs in a glass ball, whose petals cannot close. \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Out of time’s cramped oblivion let<\/h2>\n
\r\nOut of time's cramped oblivion let \r\nYour gentle nature shake glad tomorrows \r\nThat goes all honied now with sorrow \r\nAnd walks in shrouds of sighs blaspheming heaven \r\nThat ever spiked such bitter in your palette \r\nWhich only youthful sweetness had leavened. \r\nDo not tread in anger at the skies \r\nWhich melt and change indifferent to men \r\nAnd all their waste of importuning cries. \r\nReturn to dewy looks of love again \r\nAnd let the sad house of death, draped with pall, \r\nThe merry carpenter delight reframe \r\nAnd with each love-look build new chapel halls \r\nArched against the tart recurrence of your pain. \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Who can mourn what time has stripped bare<\/h2>\n
\r\nWho can mourn what time has stripped bare \r\nAnd left standing with an empty purse? \r\nIf you cannot breed sighs for fleas, by time's char \r\nDefaced, and drained, weep not for me, nor curse \r\nThat my descending bier, like the locust, \r\nMust hibernate some days in winking earth. \r\nMy long shadow still scuttles on the crust \r\nIn these crabbed figures you now rehearse; \r\nAs long as men use some ounce of breath for speech \r\nMy weight will not be all in bones dispersed, \r\nBut may by their moist utterance some white heaven reach. \r\nAll things in all things somewhat mingle; \r\nDeath, whose wreath is thorns, but compounds the tangle. \r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Let me not drape with too much dignity<\/h2>\n
\r\nLet me not drape with too much dignity \r\nThe little sinful wishes of my will; \r\nFor when I come cajoling from the wanting sea \r\nThat beats within me, my dripping wishes make me chill. \r\nBut even so, all sogged with indecisions, \r\nAnd trailing everywhere dark seaweed thoughts, \r\nMy desires throng past watery hesitations \r\nTo overpress your protesting shore of rocks. \r\nThen the cold squid that wraps my tepid heart \r\nContracts, urging me all my wickedness retract, \r\nWho blusters lack-breath still among your parts \r\nWhile my inner sense eyes the sea's retreating tract. \r\nSo it is I have come to love too all-sudden \r\nAnd with sighing whim walk backwards, begging pardon. \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>When love’s swelling wound is by conscience pricked<\/h2>\n
\r\nWhen love's swelling wound is by conscience pricked \r\nAnd all the propping stilts like lily stalks \r\nAre with comic's timing out from under kicked, \r\nWhat is left that may be bandaged by our talk? \r\nAttraction's balloon, which gave us mild rise, \r\nHas had all its static power neutered \r\nBy our cross looks, and no new-issued sighs \r\nCome lowing from our bellows here abed. \r\nOur tender wide swaths of kind regard \r\nAre stapled through by compelling argument \r\nUntil we, bloody-fingered, but prop shards \r\nAgainst the next assault on our separate sinking tents. \r\nStill, when I feel you lying here, I think \r\nThere's fire in us yet to swell our loves \r\nAnd all our rubber war of hatreds shrink. \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Have I not, laden with my melancholy<\/h2>\n
\r\nHave I not, laden with my melancholy \r\nDose of liquid dreams, poured all out at your want \r\nAnd gilded laughter on my lips' disease \r\nTil your lips Midas' taste? And have I not \r\nA little nation of desires spent \r\nIn the sovereign country of your thigh? \r\nOr the fission of all my atoms burnt \r\nLike a penny candle, extinguished by your sighs? \r\nAnd have I not, the gold of owning love \r\nOut of my pockets picked, made towards you \r\nWith all the winking signals of a delighted ship \r\nNo matter what tars in my ballast moved? \r\nStill I'll burn my tars, and my weightless body wreck \r\nIf you'll still prove a catching coral for my wrack. \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Although you shrink in all the world’s commend<\/h2>\n
\r\nAlthough you shrink in all the world's commend, \r\nMy eye, being so bound below, must see your state \r\nExalted forever, and in lisping wish hear commands, \r\nTraining all my weak powers to stand as your prelate. \r\nAlthough you wish stern winds in changed motion blow, \r\nOr face themselves, and in opposition end, \r\nThey shall bend and stop as your desire goes; \r\nAlthough you wish time's ruin to suspend \r\nAnd keep vital death inactive that yearns to kill \r\nOr erase all your age's scars back to birth, \r\nEach small wish shall be the everything of my will, \r\nOverturning Atlas and his tipsy earth \r\nBy my modest course; for what your least dream has said \r\nSpeaks prophecies to my ear of lead. \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>You had grown quiet in a snowy field<\/h2>\n
\r\nYou had grown quiet in a snowy field, \r\nStood a little near the fence, did not move \r\nBut led sleeping flakes on your blushing tongue to yield \r\nTheir bodies back to water, misting love. \r\nHow like those little crystals, though in large, \r\nMy solemn wishes harmless fall on your magnificence \r\nTo dissolve in the huge waters of your marge \r\nAnd, losing all themselves, add nothing to your sense. \r\nFor you are more, in your silent warmth, \r\nLike constant earth that wears seasons for her veils, \r\nChanging summer green for autumn's gaiety,-- \r\nMore constant, more true, more everything of worth \r\nThan the fretful melts that touch your least detail \r\nAnd must, with touching, the seasons of their being interchange, \r\nLosing their winter dignity in your kissing spring. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>You into every raging ache of nature<\/h2>\n
\r\nYou into every raging ache of nature \r\nExtend some modest drop of placid bliss. \r\nHave I not seen the self-conflicting features \r\nOf some close friend melt to joy at your sweet kiss? \r\nHave I not myself myself reviled, \r\nMeditating bruises in a moody wood \r\nWhere mild leaves hiss seeming accusations \r\nAnd all my discontented soul moved hooded \r\nBy low-flying thoughts, until you stepped brightly by \r\nWhistling secret smiles from my black shards? \r\nEach good that thrives steals some good from you, no lie. \r\nUntil you stooped in grace, with leaning eye \r\nPeering from heaven into my sad case, \r\nAnd turned all my wrath to froth, I was waste. \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Sweet delight that perishes on the hour!<\/h2>\n
\r\nSweet delight that perishes on the hour! \r\nHow many more, to amend your faded score \r\nOf graces, must here attend and pass? \r\nCakes left at Diana's virgin temple cannot sour \r\nNor marching corruption force that holy door \r\nBlossoms have stopped up; those flowers are of glass- \r\nAnd sacred plantings cannot die. Although sore \r\nTo go with you, and not one extra empty minute \r\nBe commanded to rehearse, I must die \r\nNow sometime after rarest bliss has left \r\nA lonely globe abandoned by delight \r\nWhere birds twitter riches to impoverished skies \r\nDumb of answering song. O, look, the light \r\nIs lashing westward once again, extending night. \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Bronze eyes that stare unmoving at the sun<\/h2>\n
\r\nBronze eyes that stare unmoving at the sun \r\nWhile living glances wince, can no more stare \r\nAt that which dances here beneath, and runs, \r\nShouting dying cries to the deafened air. \r\nNo sinking eye can raise re-lauded \r\nWhat went hissing down, no monument of tears \r\nFountain forth what sadness mixed with water. \r\nMemory must her crowded chariot forbear \r\nAnd carry nothing, until statued grief \r\nBy gradual time has her banded sands dispersed \r\nTo stand no more; those distraught features lapsed. \r\nDistemperate art but paints a shadowed wreath \r\nNot real roses, nor can pinch dull clay to breath \r\nAs spent as Adam's, and nothing near his worth. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Prometheus Bound<\/h2>\n
\r\n\"Do not think my penitential silence pride \r\nOr arrogant stubbornness. It is not. \r\nNo, it is a consuming meditation \r\nThat works in me when my mind considers \r\nThe subtle hurts that load my outcast state, \r\nAnd of how in past time my estimation \r\nShowered ignorant honors on my jailers, \r\nGilding their crimes before their doing of them. \r\nBut enough; of what your hearts know how should I speak? \r\nListen to mortal suffering,-- how I \r\nSpied them fumbling with their helpless wits, and helped. \r\nIt is a tale briefly told. Not to scold \r\nErring man, but to show how much his stature's grown. \r\nIn their uncouncilled sight first spread vain webs \r\nOf woven pride that gave far-seeing judgement \r\nClose cataracts, obscuring heinous crimes. \r\nAnd into their young hearing they had poured \r\nNot mellow summer songs gathered from the air, \r\nBut stuffed deaf ears with brays of their own praises. \r\nThey were not men, but instead resembled \r\nThe shapes we see in dreams, mingling all. \r\nTo their burrowing lives I broke some light \r\nThat had been darker else. Like timid ants \r\nThey lived and ate, and kept house in foul caves. \r\nNeither stars of winter nor the presaging scent \r\nOf springtime did they know by counting moons, \r\nNor was laden summer by signs revealed. \r\nBut every matter was pursued in ignorance, \r\nFull of wrong causes, false heads and false tails, \r\nInverting logic until I came and gave \r\nRisen stars names and mapped their difficult settings. \r\nI ferreted out the art of numbers \r\nThat put in the simple scope of man's discretion \r\nThe control of nature, and lettered rude mouths \r\nWith speech that made but oohs and ahs before, giving thus \r\nDiscursive memory its mothering talk \r\nThat nursed the nine. By my gentle bough \r\nBeasts came lowing to the yoke and plow \r\nTo perform with docile thanks hard labor \r\nMen laid idly by. I made them love the rein \r\nWho move lordly chariots with prideful steps. \r\nAnd from the burning tongues of gods brought down \r\nStolen fire \r\nAll these fool's arts I made for man alone \r\nWho can't glue together some salvation for himself. \r\nBut when gods threat, saving devices perish \r\nAnd cleverness holds up stumps, not hands, to pluck \r\nThis downcast body from its tortured state.\" \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Among Fugitive Hills<\/h2>\n
\r\nCaught in sweat under a May moon's baleful eye, \r\nTrembling in his stripes, the rapist's case \r\nTwists against him: cops are rooting in the cleft \r\nWhere he has hid, and has bloomed his mortal joy; \r\nWhite was ever the webbed habiliment \r\nOf innocence, of youth not yet betrayed \r\nBy aching age, the body stretched and splayed \r\nThat had known quiet concentration for a toy \r\nAnd stared down blowing hours at a spider's weft. \r\nA spotlight loiters up the cliff in searing zigs. \r\n \r\nRed sirens in a burning forest moan, \r\nStage left; another crooked mountain over, \r\nAnother tragedy. Our killer in the brambles \r\nMumbles curses, thumbs a furious bee \r\nOut of his dirty ear, and spits against night clover. \r\nScratched like Christ, but cynical-tired \r\nAs prosecuting Pilate, he must pause and puff, \r\nAnd stain the winter hawthorne that upholds a spray \r\nOf indifferent spring, swelling the sublime \r\nWith idle odors under a star's demurring haze. \r\n \r\nBut round again, like a repeating hymn \r\nFlashed the indicting needle of their light \r\nPinning him, an ape-man up a tree, pinned \r\nHim who thought to leap and bite and still escape. \r\nEvery downstream salmon dreams the ocean's home, \r\nTheir first mistake. The manhunt's gripping snare \r\nInches in, a time-lapse bullwhip zeroed on a tiger's nose, \r\nTo ring an empty hawthorne hollywood moonlight spots. \r\nHe'd fled nimbly bleeding from the hot \r\nPursuit, but left his card; in an oozed gash \r\nOf one snapped limb, it read: \"Fred, Illusionast.\" \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>To A Young Man<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nI \r\nClose up the grave that called you idly by \r\nAnd bid you linger who, lingering, must fall. \r\nAlthough death's embassy out of tulips blows \r\nAnd spins fine madness from the spider's crowded eye \r\nAnd purls about the dusty adder's tongue \r\nHissing salvation, and is by soft promise pressed, \r\nDo not listen; Ay, although it reason  \r\nWith a multitude, and fix the staring crowd \r\nOn the last things, and make each one a ghost,  \r\nOut of straining vapors traced, do not;  \r\nThe mournful tones of those forgathered tongues \r\nBut make a solemn moan of bone to bone. \r\n\r\nII \r\nFirst stitch love to every circumstance, and sail \r\nThe round horizon through, sunset-stained, \r\nTo flat heaven, which holds all joys in one wide view... \r\nThen melt scars from the very hardness of all life \r\nAnd be resolved to a contented water-drop \r\nBefore you question death. Was there ever sound \r\nOf trammelled corpses startled laughing from the ground? \r\nAlthough you tear at eyes decayed, begging see,<\/o:p><\/em> \r\nAnd from dead tongues crave lavish answer, \r\nThat can never come; those hearts are sunk through bursting ribs, \r\nUnmanned by living wind those lungs, that once \r\nShouted down the busy sky's testament of thunder. \r\n\r\nIII \r\nWalk a humbler track, kiss pilgrims' dust, \r\nSet your laurel down to shade a sleeping bee, \r\nOr leave some lonely sacrament in a hilltop wood \r\nWhere it may go to seed in the depthless shade \r\nAnd sprout new sanctity to untutored wilderness. \r\nBut first shake off those saddest looks that weight an unwiped brow, \r\nAnd lift clear smiles to those now clouded lips \r\nThat indulged love, and from passion's unwearied kiss \r\nGrew frenzied, to touch, and stretch, and touch again, \r\nThe final mystery with whitened lips. \r\nThen drown the hop-toad sorrow in anonymous wine, \r\nLet afternoons unravel in the sun, and rest, \r\nAnd drowse in each moment's uninstructed joy. \r\n \r\nAy! Throw stones at your accusers' mirrored scorn \r\nAnd see yourself perched in their curled frowns no more. \r\nLife was a happy adventure first, where dewlaps sang \r\nIn an undiscovered dale in secret Arcady \r\nWhere grass was higher than our eyes. Once again, \r\nThough embattled powers and misted storms profane, \r\nRace to meet that child cringing in the din. \r\n \r\n[ NOT USED  II ]\r\n \r\nWhen a man stares in his face, \r\nBy rich deceit and intricate age undone, \r\n\r\nTeach the spirit that is your rich inhabitant \r\nTo foster lilies \r\nFor your portioned bed, to sleep and wake upon. \r\n\r\n \r\n<\/pre>\n
Kennedy’s Inauguration Night, Nixon<\/h2>\n
\r\n \r\n\"Eisenhower was a rube, I know, I loved \r\nto watch his pinned medals glitter against the sun, \r\nout-shining heaven in our low human eyes; \r\neven a deaf man hears the exploding power of a gun \r\nthat's pointing at him. So I heard \r\nthat hissing voice escape from a head bald as a tire. \r\nUnshaved in my happy rush to greet him at ugly dawn's \r\neach initiation, I kneeled and scraped \r\nthe dog-lickings from my master's unwashed plate, \r\nrevelled in the white-house grease, and after that \r\ndisplayed to my warm house-mate the tired, flat \r\nunscolded coating of my obsequious tongue \r\nunleavened by any pentecostal haste, or arching stab \r\nof truth's spirit, that catches fire on the worst dross \r\nto drag a grand thing back to its humble embers \r\ntopped by a smoky spire. I would brood my ruins. \r\nBut I knew how to keep my acid grumblings down. \r\nOne knew what one was and what one wanted to be. \r\nBut how did one know what wanting was worth? \r\nHave I closed up too much of what I ought \r\nto have left seething open? Was I too-much a mouse \r\nwaiting for the lion's roaring chance as I peered \r\nout from my walled hole? The drain-hole \r\nthat saves a whelming lung could suck my zest; \r\nI crest the world's wash, and watch \r\nthe lancing TV-eye mount my blubbered burn, an Ahab \r\non his wild whale, ready to needle me open again \r\nand sip my ambitious innards into its downward din. \r\nAround me grin and whiten the papers' lettered teeth. \r\nO Horatian mouth, drooling sibilants, o \r\nocean hunger raising the rage of insistent seas \r\nthat grind all my lifted fakes of paint to one grey truth, \r\nplease forget me, a shrimp among your inks, a tired tale \r\nto regale dry old maids with, not a storming nation.  \r\nAfter my quiet time I shall cut flesh \r\nto tailor my new suit with, all golds, \r\nto implore the masses' adoration. Eh, Checkers? \r\nso, absorbent nation, swear in your Kennedys and Johnsons; \r\ni swear, before the world has spun its globe to mush \r\nunder a forgetful sun, I'll come back to win, \r\nsurprising the reeling competition with a smile as thin \r\nas a knife-edge, and grind \r\nthese snowy pediments under my heel to dust. \r\nBut for now, turn in your watered sleep, bury me \r\nfar back behind the advice column, or cramped ads \r\nfor toothpaste. Sleep, o recumbent nation, \r\nwhile dreams are cheap. When teased into the arena \r\nby Fate's fickle feather once again \r\nand treated traitorously by our desires \r\nuntil we long for the approach of the lions, \r\nlying in the dusty sun, we listen to \r\nour overdue bruises mumble invective against us.\" \r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
End<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n
<\/PRE><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
  Character poems of then-current events and personal romantic sonnets By Gregg G Brown Copyright \u00a9 1991 Published by BLAST PRESS Jonathan Miller, U.S.M. “It is night. Date-palms are rocking on the leash Of Time, the hurricane, that straddles our defeat With two-legged winds, and stalks the dusty town With a sheriff’s clinkered heels until […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1766],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-xxx-sonnets","category-1766-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7347,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6766\/revisions\/7347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}