Doubting Sonnets
I.
Fixing to feel the winds of your eyes
Or fetching the snapped lures in the bay,
A harbor full of clanking masts point
Skyward to the war gods' red dominion.
A manifest denouncement of the hue
Comes solely with eyes closed and on
One's knees. But, Giles pronounces a new
And unmoored faith in Jesus. We look
Out on the gables discussing Hutchinson's
Acts, the Puritans, and later periods pinnacles.
You sleep above the filigree and pitched roofs.
Some tell me that they see you in
The quatrefoil, but can freedom be
In a granite clover? An antinomian
Allegiance fills engravures about Hell's Gate
As the dredging begins in the feeders. We're
Searching for all the fishing wire and rotting
Cut bait before the tides fill in the cape. We're
Tardy for the blues. The schooner's spinnakers
Rip in the blusters while we count lost hooks.
II.
The tinted linings of negative strips
The sleep projects can fire about the lost
To the tenth degree. Carry me to Galilee
And cut down that tree. Plane off burly tips
For straightening that comes easily only to those
Devoted to the line, to the angles, to Euclid's
Farthest points exploding in a dark matter requiring
A simple proof to pave the way. A water's ore
Falling heavily. Too discrete to watch disperse
Like a lost Israelite on a clear Sea of Chaldea.
Fire up the oranges. In peace we kill. Drop the bough.
Send epistles, and line up the troughs. The palette
Of hunger breeds more gloomy lines. Tick tock
About the thumb. There's so much crying from
Where that came from. In the bricks in the mortar
Our bodies turn to water. Into the celluloid air
The forgetting resides. Within a body for survival
And survivors try to conjure up the holes
That have burned away. The sun rises soon
And the feet will drop down one way or another.
III.
Vedet ch'i' son un che vo piagendo
From tree canopies rise the invisible mists
Syringed by root, water. To hydrate skies append
Azure hews with colorless and transparent drifts,
A geothermal reservoir told by a raconteuse.
Return the vapors do wholly knowing the venal
Passage querying nothing en route to soil and aquifer.
Do you doubt the rain? Surfers glide about the Gulf
Skimming on Tlaloc's back. Hurricane gloves
Hang up on a hook in the Great North. His fury
Uncontained by leather. In Bangalore, vermilion,
Turmeric, and sandal-paste anoint the asses
To please Indra. Perhaps, a wedding will arrive.
See the unclothed ploughing in the dark fields. Arid
Earth waters desperation. Grow little hands. Even the wind
And sea may obey devotion. Logic fails above clouds
Ceding little to minds. Chalk it up to quick-lime.
The caustic surface under a bright heaven blinds
Forgiving Reason's tears. Only our brows
Need a trim to whist a steamy emanation.
I let my rains think for me revelating rapids.
As you can see, I'm the one who weeps.—Cavalcanti
IV.
What Country Is This?
The color blue, a Utah sky, paints off the top
from where we sit and see the valley as it drops
down past the heights of buildings built to rise
above the Uranus manifest. The white buildings
rise in an honor. Relinquish a facade of earnest
mimetic effort as a triumph of some engineering feat.
To be human is to believe it something greater or
lesser than. Anthropomorphosis. Kafka's got nothing
on us. Step right up to the microphone. Tell the world
your story. We all we want to hear it. Enunciate.
At least that's what you want to believe. Shot through
a heaven, the orange blast of artillery in honor
of another God that you believe is lesser than.
