sonnet to disc golf

I’m broke as fuck. Ten bucks in the fucking bank.
So I go play disc golf because it’s free
and in all ways superior (for my class) to golf.
Golf retains the center, golf earned it
by thinking of the format first. But disc
has taken golf’s passion, golf’s beauty, and discarded
nearly all of golf’s bourgeois decorum: “Fuck!”
call the huckers of pond-bound discs,
who, having effectively sunk a ten-spot,
must choose: ditch the sports only equipment,
or venture into the pond to retrieve it?
Many brave the squelch and suck of knee-
deep goose shit, leeches, sharp rocks,
glass bottles, and used needles for their plastic.

sonnet to august five

And on the seventh day, I rested,
failing my covenant to the great pit.
But I woke to an electrical storm
and maligned the sonnet once more.

Because the universe always laps back
on itself, I'll wreck two flapping
days with this fourteen layer rock.
Such is efficient love-making.

Gnarl in the shoot, knot in new line, you are
a doubling back, the contemplation of fault,
tangle of creation and lack thereof, you bare
me by absence. The silence reveals the vault

of my dysfunctions. And so the project remains.
As with love, failures can be gains.

sonnet to a thunderstorm

Spearing the solution between cloud-mass and earth,
the afternoon lightning is a white heron.
Tall weeds flail like sperm in the storm.
Iridescent flies congregate and groom, birthed

in dog shit, nonetheless pragmatically hygienic.
If I could hold thoughts as efficiently as
the cottonwood does leaves, I’d be a tree.
shKaBAMN! Jolted, I spill my drink all over
myself and notebook—the bolt flooded
my capacity to observe. Now hail plinking,
arm hair at attention, I scramble back inside.
Cross-legged in front of the sliding glass door,
poetry in my lap, I am in love with now.
As I realize beyond this, I want more lightning.

sonnet to drosophila melanogaster

Come all females to the glass of vinegar
I have prepared for you. The sour scents
compel your tiny wills. A drop of detergent
breaks the surface tension. Oh come and mar

the pure red wine gone bad.
Anoint your six legs with ruby amber,
and be still in redness closed around red
eyes. Look how her meticulously groomed wings stir

the trap while she drowns. She dies and has no brood.
If she and hers were left for a year, they could
breed a ball of flies to fill the gulf
between the earth and sun. Daughters of filth,

I love your fecund beauty, your delicate intractability.
But roost in my home and I will slaughter you in humility.

sonnet to fruit flies and hotdog burritos

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies
like a banana. Carolyn kills both
by slapping them between her ruthless hands.
I lunch on a hotdog burrito, ignoring what dies
while I eat. The mechanically separated path
of nameless chickens’ and pigs’ flesh can
disquiet my enjoyment upon contemplation.
I can’t afford to feed myself sans mutilation.

By the flea’s argument, Drosophila melanogaster
marries old peaches and pears. In our case,
merely batches of beer. Within last dribbles,
in cans waiting to be recycled, they fester.
Trying to sleep, she’s sure they’re on her face.
To lull her off, my passes, buzzing, and nibbles.

hungover from a wedding sonnet

Stuffed mushrooms and bruschetta lack
the substance of a meal on which to drink.
To make a good impression, I danced with Aunt Pat.
Needfully I paced my first round of wine at a sprint.

Today is a headache of withdrawal. So much
social behavior has abraded my eye tentacles.
We sleep until the sun abates his punch
upon our lids, preferring night's pentacles.

All fuzziness and callouses, we cook
penne alfredo with garlic shrimp for dinner.
A sated belly, a come-hither look
obscure all other pains. Whether sinners

or not, we bask in love and new-moon starlight,
a happy pair of pagans, warm in the night.

a wedding sonnet

Today, we go to the wedding of Carolyn’s cousin.
Carolyn is singing so she will go to the country-club
early to rehearse. I will meet her there, among
her extended family, most of whom describe
our arrangement to any who ask as “living in sin.”
Contrarily, I suppose they mean, to how they live.
Her grandma canes any aunts who dare indulge us.
I wear my decent shoes, but didn’t get a haircut.

Everyone drinks in the face of so much ceremony.
I will not marry in a temple to golf. Or in any
other building. Nor will I wear shoes.
Carolyn and I held hands and observed the homily.
When she sang, people cried. The couple's candle flamed blue.
The driving range at sunset, a bride at the booze.

sonnet to the lusts of animals

Dozens of casual hikers huddle beneath
a bus-stop shelter in Rocky Mountain
National Park. They have pulled peaks
and streams through their lifted and lowered eyes,
inhaled what they could, descended with rain on their hats.
Now crowded together, eyes enforce the shuttle line.

In a mediocre pub on Market in downtown drudgery,
the young and drunk prove their age. Still raining.
Those who must, drink and dance. Those
who can’t, drink and talk. A conversation:
“A man in South Carolina was arrested for buggery.”
“What’s buggery?” “A camera caught him penetrating
a caramel pony with a blond-mane named Rose.
Rose’s owner had noticed ‘suspicious infections’.”