Sonnets From Other Lives: Reuben

It’s the Arab world’s 1968
& we all know how that one worked out.
All the kids will man the barricades.
They’ll sacrifice themselves then get sold out
by their elders, us, or else themselves.
I’ve been here before. I know the story:
Chicago, Prague or Paris--you might tell
yourself you’re making history. It’s boring
because in the end the end is tragic-comic.
History played out one more time as farce.
Will aging middle class farts in the Islamic
world wax nostalgic on the part
they played in their long lost revolution?
I’ll take cynicism over absolution.

Sonnets From Other Lives: Cecil

Eventually it all became white noise--
the music, TV, family conversation.
Over time I grew less annoyed
by our nattering culture. My relations
resented the remoteness--the abstraction.
As the dinner table buzzed with trivia
& the daughters dropped bombs--hoped for a reaction.
They were disappointed. I’d be giving the
nod & smile response to provocations
that should by all rights set the room aflame
for I’d become immune to perturbation.
I’m within my self now. Nothing else remains.
Silence becomes me, so I will be dumb
in my own Zen equilibrium.

Sonnets From Other Lives: Joey

This is it. Enough. It stops tonight.
The bitch is gone. Looks like she got away.
She knew when I woke up there’d be a fight.
I’m going out. There will be hell to pay.
The world is bullshit--just a broken promise.
Everything they told me was a lie.
I tried--God help me. They can suck on this.
This is a good & fucked up day to die
but they’re all fucked up now so there it is.
Only way I know to make it stop--
Hit the road with Jose Cuervo & get pissed.
What they call it? Suicide by cop?
When in the end I’m sprawled out on the road. It
won’t matter that the pistol isn’t loaded.

ellipses

dreams of dreaming these gasoline dreams…
sentenced to life before busting out…
swimming like a salmon up mainstream…
hidden deep in these shadows of doubt…
so many strings of possibility…
algorithms replicate & loop…
Moments multiply reflexively…
changes calculate--divide--regroup…
now that you have set your head on fire…
now that the universes are synchronic…
now that both hands found & grasped the wires…
now that even chaos is ironic…
… party in the bars of purgatory.
…draft new permutations of the story.

Sonnets From Other Lives: Margie

We were still in that goofy swoony phase
where everything was all about each other.
He’d come home at the end of his day
& we’d make love. We loved one another
more that anything we could imagine.
This was in those days after the war--
we all wanted a normal life again.
When I first saw him in his uniform—
looking lost there at the USO—
I walked right up & introduced myself.
Somehow—can’t say how—a girl just knows.
He seemed helpless. I wanted to help.
It wasn’t until later with the kids
that all those ghosts emerged that he'd kept hid.

Sonnets From Other Lives: Krista

Krista pulls off at a viewpoint &
climbs out of her aging Subaru.
She watches as the sea assaults the land
& considers whether she is going through
some weird phase where she is out of phase
with everything & everyone she knows.
It feels as though she’s spent the last few days
awash in uncertainty & so
she packed a bag & headed down the coast.
The air is cold and fine. A band of fog
is slowly drifting in now & the ghost-
like trees have entered in a dialogue
with a pair of spectral ravens & the wind.
She shivers & climbs in her car again.

Sonnets From Other Lives: Evan

Our public schools are a pons assinorum--
a systematic weeding out of fools
& weaklings too susceptible to boredom
to function as effective corporate tools.
Evan’s in full bloviation mode.
He’s lost himself completely in his rant.
Escapes are made by those well in the know.
The less informed pretend to be entranced.
Land of the free? Hell everybody pays.
Everybody owes somebody something.
Do the math. We’re all somebody’s slave.
Someone’s clapping. Someone else is jumping.
In his mind he’s here to make us think
but really we just want another drink.

Sonnets From Other Lives: Paul

He keeps her with him--always on his mind.
She is though an imaginary figment.
The one who would be were the world more kind
to those dreamers who would paint the world in pigments
mixed more to their liking than the real
though messy hues that life is wont to daub.
Her malleability is her appeal.
She adapts well to his mood swings --for her job
is to provide for him when called upon
a reassuring non-judgmental audience.
His habit now is to bring her along
with him to make the world make sense.
He is the artist. She is the creation—
a masterpiece of love and desperation

Sonnets From Other Lives: Zeke

the Ave broke out in music yesternight
all those little phones became trombones
people look down at their hands & think alRIGHT
& they altogether lift their horns & blow
& DANG they good ! now EVERYBODY ‘S dancing!
cops don’t do a thing--they INto it
people start to notice they can sing
the same song at the same time & they DO it
the street is ROCKIN now the place goes SEISMIC…

what was that song? & why can’t I remember?
where is that feeling? & how can I find it?
how did the thread that led there fray so slender?
sometimes it’s real & then--O SNAP--it’s gone
on a good day I can almost sing along

Sonnets From Other Lives: Lindi

You know that guy that came from marketing?
The new guy with the piercing in his ear?
Notice how when he’s working he will sing
along with his headphones? Know what I hear?
He used to date his supervisor? You know Colleen?
Gawd--she has to be what? 35?
Like nobody noticed? Know what I mean?
You think that’s why he transferred? You think I
should chat him up? Worm out the scoop?
It isn’t like I’m nosy? It’s just I think
that he might be the kind of little poop
who’s love life makes the whole department stink?
(Barbara’s yearning to make a connection
ends every sentence with rising inflection)

Sonnets From Other Lives: Valeria

She knew that soon the Ghost & the Machine
would reach a final parting of their ways.
She would cross a threshold & eternity
would have her.
Now she spends her days
holding Time up to examination.
The past & photographs perused at length--
the present given over to creation
of things. While she has the strength
to stand she will continue painting.
The canvas these days called up memories--
vestiges & images remaining
with her still--her children by the sea--
the highways of her honeymoon--
so many things she would be leaving soon.

Sonnets From Other Lives: Banks

He took shelter underneath a cedar--
took welcome respite from the pouring rain
just to rest a moment--take a breather--
before venturing into the storm again.
He thought that he might have at least an hour
or so before someone raised an alarm
& every cop in Whatcom county came to scour
the dark forest that stretched out from his farm
clear up to the treeline of the Cascades
for him. He stood and stretched his back.
Cross the border & he’d have it made.
He bent down and hefted up his pack.
Time the face the storm--he ventured forth.
Two hours east or so & he’d cut north.

Sonnets From Other Lives: Mitchell

--When everything’s reduced to ones & zeros
everybody can have anything.
Mitchell takes a long pull from his beer. --So
wanna hear Maria Callas sing?
Just push play--she’s right there in your head.
We all can play the digital flaneur.
The jukebox locks onto The Grateful Dead.
He signals to the waitress--two more beers.
--We got million Libraries of Alexandria
right here in our pocket with our phone.
How many hundreds of binary friends?
So how’d we get so alienated & alone?
Reach out your hand if your cup be empty.
It’s all good mate ‘cos this round’s on me.

Sonnets From Other Lives: Alvy

I think I’m coming down with anhedonia.
It feels like my soul is going numb.
I thought it was just Southern California
but then I find that nearly everyone
I know’s been struck with the same malady--
that everything we loved has gotten old.
Could it be our cultural neoteny
has left us rootless & out in the cold
existential wasteland of our lives
unattached & so above it all?
I think something’s the matter with my eyes.
I think I might be headed for a fall.
Maybe what I need is a vacation--
or maybe I should change my medication.