Sonnets

Context — It’s been eight months since I wrote… that should not happen again.

The walk was light, as if the light too strolled
through air just warm enough to not exist.
It stopped, like me, when wrapping aureole
round house that styled itself as narcissist.
Victorian in mold, its excess dripped
anachronistically to fairytales
where tophat gentlemen with rabbits quipped,
umbrellas up through chimneys float females.
I shrank, my inattention ebbing age,
the haloed home mushrooming in my mind
as every fancy adulthood encaged
was disentombed by accidental shrine.
In instant salaried me turned covetous–
and reverie soured sepia to pus.

Context — Yep, I am here remembering the glee: // iambic rhyming social comment’ry. Rapid progress.

50.
Their luggage cinched upon the no-rack roof,
in plaid two-handed plastic bags well known.
For prevalence in region was clear proof
that cheapest way to transport stuff was clone
the one-use bag, then double thickness, and
add zipper strong enough to hold in roots.
That morning, as was typical, the land’s
tremendous produce sat in sacks, the shoots
extending out of twine-rope ties and zips.
The women riding prior to dawn had reaped
what sat in sack to sell. Their roles eclipsed
descriptions statisticians tried to keep
of what is formal work for GDP
and what is household informality.

Context — Annals of the Afroasiatic Pioneers Vol 1 is undergoing illustration. (!) (!!) Annals Volume 2 is being written. Proof excerpt, involving climate change and the youth bulge in east Africa:

23.
The swirling talk was anxious, voiced in haste
by heads perturbed by change the world brought
to them unwelcomed, carbons unreplaced
forced weather patterns locally unsought.
A hundred thousand duplicates–or more–
had had, were having, or would soon have this
fraught conversation of what heretofore
was land without a mass indebtedness.
These echoes nationwide came oft from youth,
whose prevalence was at historic highs,
whose futures would be shaped by said crime’s truth
while villains everywhere such blame disguised.
Such problems of the commons, common are.
But new was their effect so felt afar.