#24 -- for Rowan on his birthday

if you go out tonight and dig a hole
and dance around it howling like a wolf
perhaps you'll meet an old mysterious mole
unless your parents tell you that's enough

if you grab his sniffling silver nose
and swing the mole around above your head
he'll tell you all the magic words he knows
unless your parents make you go to bed

a voice like twenty bugling baboons
is what you need to make the magic work
just honk the secret words all day in tune
unless your parents stop you with a cork

and if you've done exactly as I say
you'll be a poet just like me someday

#23 -- Exuberance

across the table yet so near to you
I meet your gaze and stoutly brave distraction
for if the love that deep inside me brews
boils over from the warmth of my affection
the rising tide of effervescent froth
might crack the pot and thus unfettered drench
us both I beg you darling hold your breath
a tiny gasp could start an avalanche
of flashing hues and petals' soft caress
a joyful riot of fertility
a flowery grave for cool contentedness
whose fragrance sweet recalls to mind our tea

as one who drowning gladly spies the shore
heart-felt is my relief: it's time to pour
















(This sonnet was written to accompany the pattern for knitting the teacozy pictured. The pattern is available for free download.)

#22 -- for Rowan on his birthday

the tiny spiny lobster clacked in surp
rise to learn the giant clam could fly
propelled aloft by frothy poppling burps
and gazing down with gently swaying eyes
she blew her salty friends a kiss goodbye
the long-nosed gar was not to be outdone
with fluting toots he rose into the sky
the flounder couldn't wait to join the fun
and left the tiny spiny lobster won
dering why his fizzy friends flew off and where
the answer's plain as day to anyone
with ears to hear and nose to sniff the air

in a chorus of gurgling burps they
have come here to sing happy birthday

#21

within my brain a parliament convenes
of divas sailors toddlers politicians
porcupines and alice's red queen
debating with more gusto than decision

amid such chaos how can I maintain
coherent thought for half a moment's time
let alone imagine I might strain
some subtle truth into a verse sublime

what power could force the rabble to forget
their brawl that sweet erato can hold sway
ripest promises and direst threats
will sometimes serve to keep the pack at bay

which observation goes some way to prove
why poets seldom stray from death and love




The Red Queen I was imagining was the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland rather than the Red Queen from Through the Looking Glass, though either one can do the job.

Erato, of course, is my (lately parsimonious) patroness.

Thanks to Melissa Anne for inspiring this one.

For Sarah

(As promised previously, here is my first ever sonnet, written in 2000 for the going-away party of a friend who was leaving to spend a year at the South Pole.)


to give advice is often to offend
I would not try polonius' fate
lest sword in hand you long to perforate
yet still I must give voice to warn my friend

when you step out to view the austral flares
forbear to venture farther than your porch
and cradle in your arms a trusty torch
lest chilling breezes freeze your nostril hairs

if restless dreams and yearnings of the heart
propel you forth to dance upon the snow
but don your woolly pants before you go
or suffer frostbite of the tender parts

I offer up to you this humble poem
to keep and guide you 'til you come back hoem


(There he is, the infant sonneteer. Seeds of greatness? You decide. "Austral flares/nostril hairs" seems pretty seedy.)

#19 and #20

an office left so glaringly unfilled
might tempt someone to think you were remiss
but as a gracious gesture of goodwill
I can forgive your overlooking this

unselfishly I urge that you digest
this letter and appended resume
you then will see that your best interests
are served by hiring me without delay

my references are glowing as though hot
for I would not write any other sort
the compensation I require will not
seem high beside the pricelessness of art

in sum I am completely without peer
to serve as your consulting sonneteer


Curriculum Vitae

I trade upon my talent for invention
employing seasoned skills in fabrication
and though I've held too many jobs to mention
what follows is a brief elaboration

I made my reputation washing hogs
and built a business processing baloney
embroidered yarns I'd spun from shaggy dogs
and pioneered long distance telephoney

in schools of thought I took my education
so lofty that my feet were seldom grounded
upon no rock beyond imagination
was all my abstruse erudition founded

so fertilized by vast experience
my poems epitomize grandiloquence




(I'm still out of work, which is lovely in many ways. One of the things I have time for is trying to figure out what to be when I grow up. Any suggestions will be welcomed gratefully.)

(One of the reasons I haven't been producing sonnets lately is that I start fretting about finding a job as soon as I sit down to write. This takes all the fun out of being unemployed. Here I have found a way to turn that fretting around and use it to fuel a couple of sonnets.)

(I've revised the subtitle of this blog to reflect the reality of the situation. I still intend to write all 50. This gives the muse more time to find bricks to throw at my head.)

#18 -- from Shakespeare's mistress in response to sonnet 130

you dwell so long on things that I am not
I doubt if you have truly seen my face
or if you did you long ago forgot
while inking rhyming figures in my place

I think the sun is rather like my eyes
with jaundice yellow and with fever bright
such are the orbs that you would idolize
crab-fashion with a captious backhand slight

O pot that blacks the kettle how your breath
is falsely sweetened by your honeyed speech
although such artifice may please you best
for my part I'd prefer an honest reek

if love would find true concord with my will
he'll have to watch out where he points his quill



(I've included the text of Shakespeare's sonnet 130 at the end of this post, or you can view it here in facsimile from the 1609 quarto.)

(Sonnets 127 through 152 are all thought to be addressed to Shakespeare's mistress, sometimes referred to as the "dark lady." The identity of the dark lady remains a mystery, despite centuries of wild guesswork on the part of eminent scholars.)

(The double meaning of "will" in the final couplet is a nod to sonnets 135 and 136. Sonnet 135 seems to consist almost entirely of flourishes, to the near exclusion of content -- a style of poetry to which this author can well relate.)

(Yes, your faithful sonneteer is back in the saddle [twaddle?] for the time being. I am between jobs, and have finally realized the need to search for gainful employment. For some time this base consideration has interfered with my sonnetizing, and may continue to slow me down. If you know of any positions available in the doggerel industry, please let me know. I have composed some excellent references for myself.)



130
(from Shake-speare's Sonnets, 1609)

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.