Sonnet VI: Invocation

Pray now, defilers; pray there is no Hell;
For as you dredge all Greatness through the mire,
Yet fear your acts deserving of Its Fire,
Pray now, to quell this dread you cannot quell.

Pray now; then jeer and mock the Great to sell
Your squalid lie; equate your filth; conspire;
And crave Them all to die.  With shrill desire,
Pray now; deny this Pit that may untell
Your lie–exact Its Payment for your crime.

And I… will pray Its Fires to be true,
That you, the unredeemable, will rue
Its searing brand–unyielding–as you plead,
Demand discarded Grace to intercede,
And beg… and shriek… and burn… for all of time.

This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:

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Sonnet VIII: Borrowed Foresight

And thou when in that selfsame mirror see.
Wouldst thou when there beholdest mee be pleased?
Thy fear of future or of past; would be
Thy curiosity of all appeased?

And wouldst thou see a life thou hoped to live?
Wouldst thou with eager pride regard thou mee?
And wouldst thou mine and thy mistakes forgive?
Wouldst thou behind me happiness foresee?

And if thou knew as intimate, my life,
Wouldst thou for greater happiness contrive?
And shouldst thou know how great had been my strife,
Wouldst thou with passion greater, passion strive?

Wouldst in this knowledge thou thy fortunes thrive?
Wouldst thou with borrowed foresight come alive?

This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:

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Sonnet: Dust

When all my time on God’s green earth is done,
This unrelenting march shall make me whole.
For dust is but the only worthy goal
For which all mortal men may strive as one.

What Death, what vast poetic end may come
To Thy reluctant servant? Death from gold?
Or from a love as fervent and as old
As Death from flesh, from opium, or rum?

O God Almighty give me pristine dust
That pray, I may obtain my perfect form.
Thy worn, reluctant, sword desires to rust,
And thence return to nature safe and warm.

And though I know that this can never be;
I dream a mortal’s immortality.

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Sonnet: Happy

Newborn, such loneliness should here remain
A silent secret not by choice revealed.
In pride, such bitter pain could be concealed
To hide the habit dark of the insane.

I now would choose to force such better days–
In forcing such, enforce a practice old
Of being happy; so to be consoled
By doubting not the wisdom of my ways.

In life, I pave the road of happiness
To happiness; I cover stones of grief
To see all anguished light through sombred smoke.
And so I go, and smile as I bless
The heart, as I would bless its bitter thief–
An next I die, on too much joy would choke.

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Intro: Thief

More spring than winter
Because it is next of love,
More than first of year.

Every day takes me
In, and out, of everything.
I never doubt it.

And brings a lot more
Than it takes away from me.
It leaves me with love.

Except at the last.
One day, it will either give–
Or take everything.

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