A Good Friend

You are a good friend, and my gratitude
Is overflowing this fine afternoon
When you have generously shown the moon
To this skywatcher, at a latitude
Just in my line of sight. Your buttocks, nude,
White as fresh snowfall, were a lovely boon
For my attention, each a shining spoon,
A convex brightness. Lewd? No, never lewd!

I had been thinking of your heart, and lips,
But when I saw you reach downward, and bend,
I was entranced. I hoped it was the end,
The truth, the blinding light between your hips;
The graceful passage of your fingertips
Were my surest delight. Thank you, my friend.

Ode to Dreams

I dreamed a severed head was in the road;
You chided me for stopping suddenly,
But when I woke with you right next to me
And sleeping very hard, your heart rate slowed,
Your eyelids fluttering in clear Morse Code
(“Do not wake me!”), I felt entirely free
To dream again, discovering the key
To all this gummed-up nonsense. Here’s an ode:

Our minds are stopped up with divided claims,
Our damaged psyches blocking up our pores.
The childhood traumas that the mid-brain stores
Disjoin us from our present selves and names,
While I’m much too severe, and you play games.
I understand my dreams now, though not yours.

My Defence

In my defence, my mother wasn’t there
Admonishing me, that maternal tone
So certain and effective (now I’m grown
It still has power), coupled with her glare
That threatened everything. I was aware
Of something wrong, what I should leave alone,
But no voice stopped me, so that heaving moan
Encouraged me, pushed me to be unfair.

Apologies won’t help you, or save me,
So I will only say, “It’s understood
That I refrained from doing what I could
To make things right, as anyone can see.”
Defence like this is no apology:
My heart is not contrite; I’m not much good.

Aligned Right

As for this sonnet, I am aligned right.
Things lined up wrong, two or three days ago,
But I have set things right now. I ate crow,
Drank one too many beers, sat up all night
Afraid to see how, in the stark moonlight,
I left behind love, found despair below
And delved and dived for more. What did I know?
Unquenched thirst and insatiable appetite.

I am adroit, sure of my rectitude,
As clever as I am deranged, ill-starred
And gauche; I am as sinister, as scarred,
As untrue to myself, as strange and lewd
As pictures of dark matter in the nude.
I’m all right now. This isn’t even hard.