As a ploy to prod productivity, I often write with a different “theme” or “genre” for every day of the week. Today is “Sonnet Sunday.” The basic idea is to write a sonnet every Sunday. Lately, in light of the Extreme Court ruling that states cannot enact laws that abridge the rights of guns but they are free to enact laws to abridge the rights of women, I decided that instead of the traditional five feet in every line of the sonnet, I would put an extra foot everywhere it doesn’t belong — just like the Extreme Court. So, instead of writing in iambic pentameter, I’m going for iambic hexameter.
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Fertilized human egg above. Having trouble seeing it? Look more carefully! It’s a person, a person with more rights than you have. Unless, you’re a guy, of course.
You ever see Alito’s photograph with egg?
I speak of human egg of course: unscrambled dot.
Or, even posed with toddler twins who peed his leg?
Silver buttons, golden boughs, ornately jeweled fingers.
Adorning ditches alongside random tires and used syringes.
So much depends upon a little red gully
Filled with muddy, bloody, rain-water.
“There is always light if … ” – Amanda Gorman
The demagogue was not a demigod after all.
Dictatorship turned out not to be so much fun after all.
And after all, after all the joy of wanton cruelty faded
Survivors just got jaded and all the joy faded.
After all the promises unkept and all the lies exposed,
After all the hypocrisy grew like hairy poison vines
And after all the trees were felled, life itself rebelled.
After all the hate replaced each and every seed and every need.
It wasn’t so much fun after all. Not to die nor even to bleed.
“There is always light if we are brave enough…” Amanda Gorman
They shoot horses don’t they?
Yes — Buttheyshootdogsandcats and anythingtheycan. Food is scarce, for sure. But it isn’t just for food. It used to be for fun.
But now it’s just another humdrum way to fight boredom
Laced with randomness and ruin and rum.
“There is always light if we are brave enough to see it.” Amanda Gorman
Even the scab-faced Bannonites. And the golden calves of sanctimonium, Radioactive to the core,
As is the mango pit they still adore, Even they who wanted check and slay,
All are nothing more than shadows on the dead and empty warscape.
Killing off the ecosphere had all the “inconvenience” of a rape.
“There is always light if we are brave enough to see it. There is always light…” Amanda Gorman
This was the summer of our discontent.
Too hot to live, the grid had nothing more to give.
Lack of AC proved a prize for everyone!
Not just those too poor. Surprise!
The greed, after all, charged its own lightning fast steed
Of the apocalypse.
After all the trials and after all the errors, After all the pilgrims and their progress. After all the pillage and the patriots No-one was saved, after all.
There was only the infinite regress —
Not to the mythical fifties,
Not to flags Confederate,
Not to ages medieval
Nor even to Empires Latinate
After all, after all the shattered dreams of millions,
Just aching to be free,
We let it all slip away;
Pretending not to know our history,
Pretending that there is no devil to pay
When we cheat each other day after day after day after day.
“There is always light if we are brave enough to see it. There is always light if we are brave enough…” Amanda Gorman
It doesn’t make anything great, after all.
It doesn’t make anything better, after all.
Being a baby that fusses and musses
Isn’t so wise after all
When there are no adults left to clean up the messes.
“There is always light if we are brave enough to see it. There is always light if we are brave enough to be it.” — Amanda Gorman
(For a time, Sunday’s are for sonnets. We begin with free, chaotic verse that coalesces into a sonnet, but with ABBA stanzas, rather than the more traditional ABAB of Shakespearian sonnets).
PREAMBLE:
A loser.
More than anything. A loser.
Love: A loser.
Business: A loser. Bravery: A loser.
Elections: A loser.
No creator, just a hater. A waiter for the Putinate.
The dawn upon the lawn
Shows the blood of many innocents.
Not a teacher, not a preacher. If he can, he’ll try to reach her, Stick his sickly sticky stubby hands
Beneath her bands. It’s his closest approach to broach
The subject of true love. Lady Liberty he’d gladly grope