exploratory surgery
I have a project, and the project is August in Sonnets. One per day. I will post them here, and no doubt I will also post things that are not sonnets, like the death of the British autodidact, but the pertinent thing is that sonnets will happen until 31 August. For all I know the sonnet might be considered obsolete by now, unless you're doing something cute like The Golden Gate—and the confessional sonnet is probably just wince-inducing. This is fine by me. It frees the little beasties of any aspiration to be more than what they are: merely a device to get me through the month alive.
Certain tropes we've all come to expect
from poems of this type: an "I," a "you,"
and all the horrid things those pronouns do.
I'm not yet ready. First, I must collect
the scalpel of my thoughts—then vivisect
a heart too shocked to know it should be blue.
It doesn't see it's run out of O2.
These jokes are easy, still. There's no impact—
not yet. The tiny winery in my brain
that vints the neurotransmitters of woe
hasn't begun in earnest. What I feel,
or think I feel, is prelude to the pain.
So masks and gloves on, please. We've got a real
condition settling in. And far to go.
