Sonnets

Context – this is about that halo of beautiful, flattering stories you weave about an intriguing stranger when you see him or her at a coffee shop with the light falling on the face just right.

You sit, assailing Schopenhauer. Smoke
twists tender tendril blurred behind tableau
embalming foreground porcelain. Evoke
reaction, tip the scene, speak! She’ll bestow
approval that I’d never known to need:
a smile, tiny rivets round the lips,
a giggle, cheekbone wiggle, hardly greed
against the brutish masculine’s wish: hips.
So small a sign, gargantuan a thought
disheveled pale perfection gifted, by
her very ignorance of how mind’s wrought
in gnarl and knot each place she drifted. Sigh.
To live in love, pretend beauties of youth
equate to godliness. Seek shallow truth.