The Jury

We sit in numbered seats of the jury box

like culled cards from a deck of 52

whose value, though, is not evident

inside a courtroom in 2026,

A draw of 12 decide the worth of life

and where to fix the blame for its demise

was recklessness or malintent the cause

or did his doings lead to his own end?

The plaintiff and defendant read their hand

assessing do they hold the winning one

the while none could know were we the ace

the king or queen or even the joker be,

But then before the flesh is put to bone

of the case, someone folds; they send us home.

18 July 2026

Sonnet: The Precious Few

My wand'ring often leads to Sacre-Coeur

When Fortune opts to place me in Paris

As if my aim though feckless and mission-free

Should hit the heart of the powdered dome so sure,

The satin ribbon of the Seine's a lure

And starting point for many a sight-see

Where I could rendezvous with french Marie

And maybe linger, kissing, pendant des heures,

Then later, hearts besotted, footsteps make

The well-worn lovers' trek to the wedding cake

On up the concrete stairs that suck the air

We climb onto La Butte from which we stare:

The streets and buildings fold beneath our view

The people, too, that leaves us the precious few.

16 April 2023

Sonnet: Open Cracks The Eye

When open cracks the eye to cloudy gray

 Outside like heaven or inside of sleep

I turn and close an hour more to stay

For dewy dreams to grow and so to reap,

When next I wake the sky is blue and bright

A nudge to imitate the risen sun

To work and sweat until the fall of night

Admits the possibility of fun,

But if sky frames them both, the need to choose

Excites emotion: guilt, ambition, lust

Desire to win and worry not to lose

A cause for action and, if not, disgust.

The Barroom Sage says though, "It's best to wait

To let the gods or nature settle Fate."

23 May 2023

Sonnet: Question

To the woman of the beat-up Subaru
Now absent from its gull-stained parking spot
My hopes and fears must I project on you
Each time I ponder where you are --- and are not,

Long days and nights along Pacific ledge
Whose brew of wind, fog, heat and cold
Distend the many months endured and edge
You near, perhaps, a better place to hold,

Imaginations sometime fail to rise
Above our circumstance, so Legacy
Takes root below the level of our eyes
But could address the higher mystery 
Of who you are; why choose the things you do
And what could change said course and what ensue.

Christmas Day 2023

Sonnet: Pause

Has stopped the music, keeping each in place

And silences of recesses arise

Pastoral past proposing to our eyes

An easeful pause and human kind of pace

Where sun and shadow on the landscape trace

A subtle tempo as our lives revise

To figure what is now a worthy prize

And bear and bobcat challenge center space.

This quiet we uneasily embrace

And dire circumstances temporize

Anticipated outcomes theorize

The while savings dwindling apace,

But hear the hammer pound the nail --- proof

Of life and said serenity goes poof.

Sonnet: Reworked Reality

Coronavirus novel reigning liege

Obscures the memory of former ways

Amid forgetful fog that serves to ease

Dissociation in these present days,

Perspective shrinks to match the changed routine

Confined to area of a too small room

Dictated by some notion of quarantine

And tempered by ability to zoom.

Less burdened by the past we strain to see

Reworked reality as yet opaque

And suffer so of future anxiety

Like waiting on a said-to-come earthquake,

Each moment seizing every partial clue

We push to birth entire worlds anew.

Sonnet: Patience

And stay-at-home the patience game of siege

The predator without, within the prey

Foretelling hours, days and weeks to squeeze

The spirits used to active work and play,

So flip another card to hope it fit

The sequence auguring a quick release

Reshuffling decks that tell more weeks to sit

And crave your favorite pastime rid of disease.

Beware though hidden cards and sleights of hand

Whose easy wins inflate a false bravado

For unbent dangers in the welcome land

Lay slyer snares than common sense could know,

A reckoning draws nearer to the time

Of placing faith and freedom on the line.

Sonnet: Hand

Make cover-cough and washing hands an art
Refining measures overlooked through use
Invest a precious twenty seconds smart
With soap and water smite corona loose,
The hand the master fabricant whose touch
Draws pleasure or sharp pain to sound alarm:
Extremes of ice and fire but nonesuch
Against the minute virus doing harm.
The index, thumb and pinkie, middle, ring
Unheralded translators of the mind
That cut and shape, smooth and finish, bring
Through discipline great bounty to our kind
But guard an errant pinkie trailing skin
On surfaces that tracks contagion in.


May 2020

Sonnet: Six Feet

Six feet, like strangers, must we stand apart
Uncertain if that someone a spreader be
Of disease who untested could be me !
In bar or restaurant, at beach or park
The chance encounter happens in the dark
As voices meaning and contagion carry
Or buses on a strap or handle see
Corona home to your or my apart-
ment; Hi to selfies, bye the peopled pic
And woe to solitude amid the crowd
Where players of the social distance game
Would keep relations at arm's length and stick
To corners of a shot as none too proud
Now six feet doubled drops them out of f r a m
                                                                              e


April 2020

Sonnet: The Viral Bridge

The viral bridge of you-to-me transaction:
The music videos on internet
Restoke remembrance during this inaction
Of jazzy heat aglow off your sextet,
Where once we met and talked you sang, Deluxe
Club's closed and l'amour's interest shuttered down
And expectation of seeing you more bucks
The timeline reopening the town.
I click and watch you strut across a stage
Your resonating voice a youthful peal
Then later throaty blue as lover's sage
The various facets of your appeal.
Upon a time a man and woman met
Reality though cued a different set.


April 2020

Sonnet: Siege

The curtain drops on social interaction
The viral bridge of you-to-me transaction:
Six feet, like strangers, must we stand apart
Make cover-cough and washing hands an art
And stay-at-home the patience game of siege
Coronavirus novel reigning liege
Has stopped the music, keeping each in place
Until its transit frees us from blind space.

Will millions ordered off the jobs that earn
A livelihood regain them on return
Will children frozen mid-term out of school
Reclaim lost time, friends and scholastic rule
Will neighbors yearning for the curtain's rise
Rejoice at the new world that meets their eyes?

Sonnet: Like a Flower

The consciousness awakens like a flower

A blind nub at onset full of trust

The morrow brings the vital sun and shower

So upward to the sky a green stem thrust

Until the red bud blink an open eye

To see the world it's meant to populate

With silken blossom serve to beautify

Unsought, untainted and fused to wry Fate

Might stay the sun behind a fog obscurant

From loves and lovers jealous of the heart

Who dive regardless into Life's swift current

To swim or drown according to their part.

The heavy mists conceal then lifting show

The pagentry for which the red blooms grow.


2020

Sonnet: Sunday October 6

Autumnal chill amid the light today

A leaden sadness weighing down the heart

Which nearer to the ground approaches Art

A growth in shadow separate from the fray

Whose height of summer sun and tumult stay

Imagination, bleaching of the dark

Repository full of fears the start

Of tales that from inky blackness bay.

Aloft ten thousand feet and seeing all

Absorb the view without discerning eye

And level clod and mountain in the earth

No matter their significance or worth

But come the fall, lie lower and espy

The strong the weak the big or truly small.


2019

Sonnet: Sunset of Old Sun

Admit you might have done much more with your day:
sought out that beauty bringing her to wive
along the linear line of progress strive
and clang the bell of success, thereaft array
in splendor time's remainder to convey
an echo memory of thrilling life
recall that vibrates but cannot revive
a dormant spirit old passions would betray.
So dip a foot in the water's edge and think
of days, horizons, drowning or just breathe
the air of regret, you alone until
aware that others on the shoreline spill
unhappy thoughts in hope of cosmic ease
awaiting sunset of old sun to blink.

Sonnet: Rent Control Cage

That lo! a landlord letter these walls shake
the flimsy wood the rent control cage
where in a blink the generations age
then pressure antecedent lives unmake
the piled sand upon the joy and ache
a blend judged right accorded retro sage
insight that hardly shields against the rage
the roiling real estate the money quake
as upstairs in the vacancy current
of air or footprint of a cat or ghost
the shadow doubt of who or what to come
whose onset would evoke relieved welcome
though minutes creak for those affected most
the one who sent the one awaiting rent

Sonnet: Jane Warner Plaza

Jane Warner Plaza glittered in the sun
at Market-Castro where the concrete cove's
red metal tables beckon those on the run
to stop, sit, admire that urban trove
and eat a sandwich, sip some coffee, light
another joint, or bare one, then observe
the passersby who gawk, express delight
as F-line cars rumble round the curve,
but then the city renovated the joy
a meeting spot reclaimed as thoroughfare
a skateboarder's dream absent a chair
nowhere to linger for a girl or boy.
They killed it, said a local in disgust
as litter's lifted high on a foggy gust.

June 2015

Sonnet: Breathless Hour

Comes round again the breathless hour, blindfold
and ties on worshipers of sunny light
now carnal freight through chill unconscious night
and the promises of golden dawn withhold
when crossing mortal checkpoints frightful cold
not knowing whether pass or lie in sight-
less sleep without farewells to set scores right
where memories and moments lapse untold.
But blow a breath and rub your startled eyes
the sleep not deep enough to hold in thrall
this time although in time another test
when sunset of the falling star and rest
those stretching shadows shape a stealthy pall
the fitting end before the grave surprise.

 

Sonnet: Get On Here

The Time bids "Get on", Circumstance nods "Here"
So mounted on the fragmentary floe
Whose steady movements beyond his knowledge go
Man daily strives against the mortal fear,
Meantime the journey launches his career
With heartstings of joy and weary woe
Distracting from accelerated flow
Till death pronounced climbs onto his bier,
But pitched from side to side it's not yet done
Made seasick while bound in wood on land
Awareness dawns of Time's impelling thrust
Which sounds infinities of heat and dust
Cascading mountains grind to grainy sand
Minutest manmotes puff below a sun.

Sonnet: Unmet Time

O unmet Time astray in vast beyond

Bold actuality of breath and blood

The cold ideal stillborn in the pond

Of dreams whose frozen aspect hoards the flood,

As nears the date so real my wish but lost

In broken earth and bridge, in labor fight

Unscented aromatic bloom at cost

To vagabond on pause before his flight,

Through visions in the night and daylong dream

I see you young and surging yet again

Approach our meeting with your passions keen

And close to touch ---- again in vain,

Eternal separation fashions view

Tormenting hope of ever loving you.

Sonnet: Buyer Gratification

Not three days gone since making my decision
for Barnes and Noble's Nook HD the plus
I sit awaiting buyer gratification
now crossing country in truck train or bus,
For five and change it could have been a jet
and playing now or had delivery
same day if in Manhattan yet
still pick up at the B & N near me,
But San Francisco doesn't host a store
so layaway the frantic buy-and-fetch
impulses: anticipation from my door
to Edison New Jersey an awful stretch,
And in that interval ---- should I die
those store-wrought energies arise and sigh.