Morning Sonnets

The Professor Finally Tries to Write a Sonnet Every Day and Fails, Then Tries Again on a Later Day, Writing Three in One Day and Then Abandoning the Project, Possibly for Good

1

I planned to write a sonnet every day. It seemed like that would be quite reasonable. I would sit down and have something to say, And I would say it till the form was full. I'd pluck whatever treasures from my dreams I could remember, seek light in new angles As morning breaks. Things look different, it seems, Like dewdrops that turn into sun-bright spangles Casting their haloes as the dark recedes And we wake up the world with our alarms, Warning the planet that the planet bleeds Beneath our thoughtless feet or in our arms. It would be record that the human heart Did not entirely fail to speak its smart.

2

So much for best laid plans. I never started Until already I was daily writing And not just over how I'm broken hearted Which was all I had left, so tired of fighting To do the job that I was hired to do In spite of how impossible it is, In spite of how my colleagues are untrue, And more than just being tired of the biz, I was exhausted in the games of love-Where others have their luck, and they get lucky, I get no action for my cock, my dove-Since you no longer want me, I'm not fucky. And so I couldn't write: You'd never read it, Which meant your garden—I would never seed it.

3

But every day is now a day I write, Or rather, I can always see it so. I think of seeing things from a great height, Of being the one who said it must be so. And this excursion does not make me vain, For I know better than to just believe

What I imagine to escape the pain-I rather stay on earth and learn to grieve. I also learn to laugh, be reassured, At how we through our self-importance suffer, At how they say my own leaves me immured, As if what amplifies could be a be a buffer. We do not move beyond our loves, our fate-Fresh wounds, old scars—they both accumulate.