Update: I thought that if I really bore down, I could maybe maintain this one-sonnet-a-week pace for a year, but having barely made it to the 6 month mark, it’s looking like I’ve got to scale back. From here on out, one-sonnet-a-week will become I’ll-post-when-I’ve-got-something-so-check-back-periodically (nothing this week).

"I just need to know: Does the dead wasp mean

no anything, anywhere, anymore?"

"Yes and no. Failed and failed, we always won;

still - the dead wasp stands on the windowsill.

Read this several times, but read it quickly:

I saw you downtown; it was someone else.

No place smiles like you do. Your kindness 

is up early, prepping allowances

like breakfast pancakes. Sometimes I wake too

in the predawn, trace our sweet signature

down stairs to humble beginnings, kind words

from an asshole ex-boyfriend, ripe bromides:

You need to need to, and know you need to

and you'll change, like me, majestically."

Fate fixed as follows catastrophic bris;

a bridge uncrossed, but ever crossed in thought

now rained my Saturdays. White covers taut

obscured the sex-bed's sere obscenities.

What unattended candle, what hubris

compromised the value of our home as

the promise of an indiscreet letter

discreetly flowers in an ash pile?

All's pyre, all's been digested in the blaze,

gobbled and shat; a new favorite sweater

lies around the corner yet. Trust the maze.

I threw up then laid down in my bed, while

with the staid sufferance of stabled horses

I waited the first wave of divorces.

It’s all too much, but not enough; Ry, I'm

over here crying for unlimited 

wishes, the spilt days of open-ended  

influence, when a rotten dad was mine, 

not me, and that same dad not elderly.

I miss it all so bad, the could-be friends,   

all those good times I never had; homesick

for your old haunts, I've relapsed, squandering

promise every weekend. Where’ve you been?

I could've used your help as my half life 

elapsed. Friends till the end, I thought, but wounds 

deepened in excavating undissolved

stitches ask, finally, Ry, friends till the 

end of what? I'm over here wondering.

Out past the threatening blackness, tangle

of meaning and sound that is the ocean 

at night. Smooth pink and purple stones, markers 

and pens quiet distinctions, the weekend’s

loose kimono. What's left unsaid misplaced 

and the bare horizon a single line 

from an unopened book. Anchored tankers

spell these cold-water flashbacks. Moored lightning 

is cursive neon lighting; adventure,

a backlit mood piece, lost, overstepping 

phantom crabs, fragmented badness. I see

your pining, toes huddled beneath damp sand

as a beer can warmer than blunt air stays

your laced hands’ trembling, but not your face. 

I’d been green, a thrifter, no twisted sleeve,

trod leaden arches, crumbled, bridged pitted

malls in disbelief; clenched while morning burned 

outside my soiled underpass. I smelt 

the forlorn shore, so familiar for 

so long away, distend my trap rock floor;

empty beers roar marine, held to my ears. 

Something’s hard between the ground and me: I

tossed stones at the gulls circling their plights. Thrift 

had had none but its own late reward. Why?

I'd been a wet book, a cheap date; I'd left

a trail of breadcrumbs up to heaven’s gate,

of apple seedlings back east receding,

and of all the novels I’d quit reading.

Nothing goes wrong where red is green, stop go;

even so, darkness domestic for light begs:

With love's key - mutuality - debased,

the embraced closer to the embracer

than the embracer close to the embraced,

and reluctant gifts granted, she'd become

veteran, grim, (her sacrifice's sum:

superiority) beyond reproach;

each round fired seeming some false tracer.

So the soil flew its own paucity

and like pollywog between egg and legs

stunted, in windowsill jelly-jar glow

fool roots, as the cutting's fate is to broach

only retardation's opacity.

Lonely while, on the appealing other

hand or side of the same coin, enjoying

the lack of all sense of obligation,

I vainly wait for real consolation                   

or reasonably wait for the merely –

what? Wet drink, to indulge an empty glass?

An ardent partner, whom I won’t much like

and who won’t much like me, for just one night?

Well I don’t drink wine and anyway she

had none (the empty glass clumsy and slight

as some inapt metaphor), just Pepsi.

Needy as I was, I reached out for her

to map the measure of my precedent

waiting-for; limn its limited content.

The job is not the pay: What she felt was

seasonal gloom was a plain old work day’s

ripe bouquet, futile parfum. Lateness

wreaths, compounds; might keep for a thousand years 

like poison ivy or honey deep in

Pharaoh’s tomb. Prompt payment was a virtue

on a wobbly barstool like an egg 

webbed with cracks but whole. Hard boiled or no,

a criminal’s no stronger than she. He

bides his untallied captivity on

a display of weakness. Drop your trousers

at the urinal and come to missing teeth,

wake on the train to find the only trace 

of your nameplate necklace is a tan line.

“Ken! Long time, no see! What’s up, man? What’s new?”

“Back pain is back, old habit, and reckons

the end of the sex need, the beginning

of such apathies as enlightenment.

Middle age: the open window beckons.

In that empty space, beyond my braying

reflection: my calm senescence, winning.

While burning steps give in towers swaying,

burdened yearns the mummy wrapped up in chain.

Man’s first small step through a revolving door…

Surprise! The same lightless, barren moon. Or

is someone there? Hello? Is this the end

of excuses, explanations, back pain?

Tim, who can say? Anyway, how are you?”

Could I have had the sex I didn't? Would

who I kissed in jest I not? Why wash my

hands only to pick my nose? Meaningless

grins puzzle strangers dancing; imbalance

is exposed, flooding last night’s turgid span.

Wry vomit rose: To never see someone 

again, never especially to know 

someone really or to hug whenever 

saying goodbye. At least I scored. We'd tried 

again but felt it foreign as early

inebriation explored... Nostalgia

is a heavy vest, a failure of touch: 

   Tests of human friendship are the domain

   of tomorrow but today, not so much.

Somewhere not very far away at all,

lone tree not frightened; autumn’s calligraphed

display wrings proscriptive wrongs, treats Mommy’s

clotted mood to orchard’s upstate witchcraft,

story of woodsmoke on the breeze. Putt-putt 

city shunned, rows of rain-cloud rentals dealt

for those of Baby’s toes and braided trees. 

Sure beats Daddy’s big idea, to’ve spent

his day off indoors, pickled, slapping “snooze”.

One does choose but doesn't so much pick one

as twist it. Apple choosing. Fill prepaid

bag to splitting seam then stop for ice cream 

and head home; sun sags, stem’s twisting. Backseat,

Daughter’s listing, eyes shut but’s listening.

Right the rowboat; the torpid hoptoad gloats 

   unseen, her hair combed only not to be 

in plain sight, pondside, by the boathouse porch.

   Uncombed, as the old grey mare goes boneless,

snapping tortoise drifts the yellow calm, clouds

   awkwardness in untimely silence. Self

shallows; the quorum of the upturned palms,  

   appointed in manifold sun blindness,

lies frogless. Hard droppings dot, dock and yard

   conjoined, in the could-be-worse nursing home;

flock’s short one goose left to toddle and squawk.

   These glasses magnify grandma’s eyes, stack

faded life vests in the haunted boathouse,  

   reflections on the iris. These vignettes

float, save me from one and only visit.

He is blue sidewalk gum lately; sole-pressed

waffle and, charged like a great dangling breast

she looks down on him. He pines beholden 

to her scorn, who from her window golden

not one glance (down). Why should the scale's slant vex?

Far less chalkboard wrapping wall of theorem

than it's simplest arithmetic: can'ts

distilled of cans, reduction toward serum

blue as pine-lush mountainside far distant.

Lamplight backlit, fickle and insistent

proteins watch now sorry serenader's

into-night shuffle, lute dragging. His ex

in thrall to microscopic horse-traders

couldn't care less that she's lost her last chance.

Morning’s spent remembering nights before

when passion was in the surprise getting,

not the steady having of, and letting,

and success was somewhere in the surprise

finding beauty still beauty come sunrise...

Infrequent then as it’s vivid now, more

often in, alone, than out there scoring.

Could New York be so lonely and boring?

You’d be surprised; it eats me where I shit,

that fearful tickle, like I’m late for class,

lost, in long, empty halls with no hall-pass,

walking faster now, now jogging a bit,

   still. Memories don’t, always; either gone

   by day, or neon even now, years on.