Self-Jeremiad Sonnet

I wish I could be a better person
& live up to more of my high standards
For then I’d be of myself, more sure then
(Poems aren’t the place to be candid!)

I imagine I could be happier
Living up to my grand aspirations
I might even dress myself snappier
(It might involve some preparations!)

The “perfect me” is a troublesome man
Ideals purely theoretical
Through a contrived obstacle course he’s ran
(To humanity antithetical!)

Fantasy me, like Frankenstein’s monster,
Of intentions built, will be abhorred

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Reality Sonnet From Photo

All the realities that we enjoy
Are merely some thin projections’ shadow:
What’s seen by us are visions we deploy
From the base existences that we know

The concrete reality that we see
From gentle breezes to birds & buildings
Are things that are & things we just believe
Existence is consciousnesses’ gildings

While it is painfully obvious that

There is an external reality

Within which we are all totally trapped

Without beliefs is falls to frailty

Here I have spent some time meditating

On the nature of truth: start berating

Lost Sonnet Sonnet

I wrote a sonnet on an envelope

About the scope of my students writing

I’d just read an exploration of Hope

In beginner’s rough English challenging

The essay before that one was superb

Exploring determinism using

A Kurt Vonnegut book absurd

In these papers was the range of learning

Alas, I stuffed envelope unopened

Into the pocket of my cargo shorts

It had my membership card that they send

When you donate MoMA ǝʞıן a sport

Those fourteen lines about my students’ work

Are lost forever, I feel like a jerk

Headline Sonnet on Suicide

“[A] Body [Was] Spotted in Brooklyn Park

Just minutes after corpse found hanging

In [A] Waterfront Building[: A Sad Arc

This future’s possibility’s waning]”

The Daily News, who bothered to report

Said “The incidents are unrelated.”

But I want to dissent: sadness exhort

By depression they were both fellated

I feel the eddies that pulled them under:

A world of endless possibilities

With some chosen able to make thunder

Out of the reach of mere humanity

We are paying for the celebration

Of venal riches’ accumulation

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-metro-brooklyn-police-hanging-park-20180607-story.html

Social Media Sonnet

I ponder the bourgeois propriety
That the screens of social media sing
Not those of bland polite society
Of a thousand classes their norms it brings

Creating the human anxiety
That capitalist technology brings
Through each tronch’s norms’ superfluity
Making ev’ryone feel like they are the Kings

We rent important technology
From our corp’rate overlords & masters
The cost is both money & dignity
Our pharaohs want more than our piasters

The new environment for our species
Is littered with avarice’s feces

Brown Paper Bag Test Sonnet

They don’t remember the brown paper bag

The mythical color test Blacks imposed

It may have been an apocryphal tag

But Blacks themselves, white supremacy abused

Black Racism’s simultaneously

Both a heroic & tragic outcome

Tragic: copying vicariously

Heroic: ‘cause it’s clear we’re human

(Some will see this as a bold admission

That The Subaltern is also guilty

But that would be a crime of revision

Used by dominant underclass shabby)

For the adoption of racist actions

Is used naïvely to get more rations

Pondering Today Sonnet

How do I feel about this morning?
Am I excited to face challenges?
Or do I fear life’s absence of meaning?
(In today’s maelstrom: look for balance!)

As I finish the work-day’s obstacles
Reflecting on lessons learned & unlearned
I feel a little less vulnerable
Because a day’s compensation I’ve earned

Later I will lay my head down to rest,
&, for a few moments, on life reflect
Think of what I did better, worse, or best
Knowing that once done, nothing I reject

The day has unfolded just as it did
I’m glad I was here, (hope that’s not too glib?)