Monosonnet with Parenthetical

When
Holland
Taylor
Slapped
My
Mother
I
Thought

(or perhaps realized, for the first time, that I'd always wanted to do that myself, but I was so small and she was my model for God, authority, and the nature of what I should become, and the fact that a child had slapped this mountain this monarch over something so trivial when I had good reason but had always held back shook basements of thinking, made me quake in my small jelly sandals, planted some kind of seed in my guts until finally the day came when I no longer had any buttons left unpushed and the world went grave-dark and silent and when it came back there stood the woman who was my first home but her face had been punched and my fist was singing its loudest, highest notes, and all i could think was how neither of us had told the other "i love you" in years)

I
Should
Have
Done
That
First.

1/30: Telling jokes with the moon

If you want to tell jokes to the moon, you must
abandon all your old tricks.  She's heard them.  Knows
the one-two-jab, the dance and punch, knows
them all.  You'll have to be clever, but not quick;
the moon does not like sudden.  Her changes
come on slow and heavy.  She is an expert
on fear and patience.  Tell her a joke
that is mostly sad.  Start with sorrow
before you move in for the laugh.  Finish
with something sparkling and she'll love you
forever, call you her favorite, promise never
to turn her face from you, and her laughter
will ripple like the waves she's always moving
and she will never let you drown.

day 14: the science of it

she loves him hardest
on the nights when he's maddest,
when his anger approaches sacrilege,
when his raised fist becomes a feather of flame,
his entire body an iron jet,
each wicked glacial tooth cutting slow
across the flatlands of her skin,
each wave of rage revealing
a new coiled tempest in his chest.
on those humid evenings
when he tells her he loves her,
she can look him fully in the face,
and see the bald truth of it in his eyes,
the academic sincerity, the silver exact science.

April 30/30 Challenge: Day 1

There is another world in which,
when he told you he wanted you
all to himself, you (so like the night sky)
threw back your head and laughed an
aurora borealis in his face. You didn't mean
to be rude. When you came to me later,
(you, so like the ocean, making waves
all through my house) and told me about it,

we marveled at the impossibility of you
belonging to one person as we pictured the poor boy
standing on the beach trying frantically to scoop
all of its sand into his arms. Then we kissed,
soft like breezing, and you tied one of your shells
into my hair. And dusk fell. And the tide came in.

Thinking and Reading on Love...

My dear friend Christopher took me to a bookstore. Not just any bookstore - the Strand, with eight miles of books, mostly secondhand. If you know me well, you can imagine how much time I spent just drooling over shelf after shelf...

I've been fascinated with the Napoleonic era and its mindset for a while, and I've recently developed a celebrity crush on poet Edna St Vincent Millay. So I found two books, one with quotes of Napoleon and one with poems of Edna's. Here is what I want to share, and it's been helping this denying-lovesick poet these past few days.

"I do not ask you for the definition of love. I was in love once, and I remember it well enough not to require those metaphysical definitions that merely confuse matters. I do more than deny its existence. I believe it to be harmful to society, to individual happiness - in short, I believe that... it would be the merciful deed of a protective divinity to rid us of love and to liberate the world from it." -N. Bonaparte

"What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more."
-E. StV. Millay

Then Marty McConnel, a poet who regularly gives me Explody of the Brain, wrote a poem containing this line... "the ones who sing you love songs/ are never the ones who stay."

I'm just meditating and reading and wanted to share this with you all.

Day 27: Why the Queen of Sheba uses disposable dishes.

This is in the right format to become a sonnet... but I wonder if instead it will become a... sestina? vilanelle? slam piece? Anyway, the idea has started like this.

----------------

Makeda spat in the dishwater; swore never again.
It was the water, you see, that started it all:
When she woke in the night with a desert-sized thirst
and reached for the pitcher there beside her bed.

And then, there he stood to make good on his threats.
Said if she'd broken her vow not to steal from his house
then he could break his not to take her by force.
Jerusalem hadn't enough water to wash off his crime.

Makeda took to bathing with oil.
She would not swim or tavel by boat and when
the yearly rains came, she stayed inside until
Ethiopia's golden sun dried it all up.

Her solace was knowing her son would be king,
did not know Solomon's son would be called a god.

day 13 bonus sonnet draft: don't take it personal.

i am not proud of the time i spent with you
but refuse to bear for you the power conceived
by regret. if i had known her flavor infused
your kisses i would have made you leave,
called you back and made you leave again.
i would have laughed in your face and called you
ugly names usually reserved for teenaged janes
whose only crime lies in that they had the gall to
blossom first. i'd have become a voodoo queen
and painted chicken blood across your door
in the shape of her name. if i had known her unseen
fingerprints were mapping highways out on your
skin i'd have cut it off to make a lampshade
and never lit it up, never let it be displayed.

shakespearean sonnet still under construction

my heart has never fit well in a box,
and so i can't believe that you would try
to put it within walls and behind locks,
to chain it down so that it cannot fly.

i cannot bring myself to love halfway:
if you step back i'll only step back more
and take back all those things you made me say
and run and not stop til i'm past the door.

a love with rules is not a love at all;
the heart that holds back only speaks in lies.
you've spun your sugar to keep me enthralled,
but everywhere i turn there now are flies.

and then you say you'd like to still be friends.
do i seem like a girl who can pretend?

this sonnet still under construction no longer under construction

if you're really going to leave me, give back that night
that we spent on top of the old hotel exploring.
give back that rush in my heart from the running
when we saw those men coming with flashlights.
give back my kisses, give back the bright
stars i plucked from my eyes and made to run rings
around your heart. don't you dare tell me things
in a week or two will all be alright.
i still have to live here. i'll still be here
tomorrow when i still have no job
a sink still full of dishes, still have to pay
rent in two weeks. you're not worth my sobs,
but still i will weep over your jealous fears
and the love i'd been planting to grow, now decayed.

italian sonnet to nameless

i have been caught collecting coffee spoons
trying to slurp the drips before they dry
while i could spend entire afternoons
drinking in the oceans in your eyes.

i'm known to go out humming battle tunes
prepared for war with no real reason why
but your sweet kisses cancel out all wounds
and in your arms i have no cause to cry.

going through motions of living my life
i play games instead of doing what's real.
i know you know my doubts that love is true.
i want to love but fear to take a dive.
this favor i'm asking might seem surreal:
but would you let me practice loving you?

italian sonnet to self

O Self! Just know that I have loved you all
the while. And though I know at times it seems
that I should bust apart at all my seams
my love for you, my self, helps me stand tall.

One finds, in life, one lacks the wherewithall
sometimes to hold on tight to one's own dreams
But I have found that love for self redeems
oneself, emboldening one through the squalls.

Now some might like for us to live in doubt.
Negate self-worth, rely on them alone
and their approval for our happiness.
I say to you: Naysayers? Cast them out
Know that your heart has always been your own
Call up the love that's always been your best.