'Authority'

The final crown is now complete! And the first lines of each of the sonnets numbered fifteen to twenty-eight come together to form our second sonnet wreath. This one is aptly named 'Authority'.

Power: it’s all about the clout of wealth.
I want to make your choice and I can pay
for healing all my wounds, but not myself -
forgetting what the hell I tried to say
concerning subjugation by the state,
the apparatus of coercive law.
If we were richer, we could emigrate
and listen to rare starlings on the shore -
a chattering of hubris and conceit.
Below the doleful hum of coconuts
I reassess my errors and defeats.
My poetry is clearly going nuts!
What is a metre? Whereof do we speak?
Like mice on picket lines, I have a squeak.

# 28 - The elasticity of logic

Like mice on picket lines, I have a squeak:
A grievance built on blood and circumstance.
And though I'm blessed with quite the coward's streak
I'll raise my voice and praise each small advance.

For bridges are not built now by the weak
(I hear they're funded by Arts Council Grants)
And though you fear the mischief we may wreak
I think you should give poetry a chance.

There's nothing we can do to change your mind
Unless we write a sonnet or sestina.
Verbosity's the only way to find
The truth in each political arena.

When we say, “Politician, heal thyself!”
Power: it’s all about the clout of wealth.

LM

# 27 - like mice on picket lines I have a squeak

What is a metre? Whereof do we speak?

Well, metre comes from France’s revolution

to make all poems rational and neat.

Any vers libre led to execution.

An army marches on iambic feet,

at least according to Napoleon,

and sprightly rhymes revive like bread and meat.

Rebels downed their pints at The Holy Inn.

But, liberally, this form allows dissent

and though the army marches on and on

there is a place here for my discontent

before the closure of the denouement

when a trim couplet makes my thought complete:

like mice on picket lines I have a squeak.

AW

# 26 - the geometry of the vietcong

my poetry is clearly going nuts

my mathematics is out of control

my politics admits no ifs or buts

my melodies remodel rock 'n' roll

my choruses dissemble and cajole

my balladry defoliates and bleeds

my calculus kneels on a grassy knoll

my banditry plants vines amongst the weeds

my domination dances in the reeds

my assonance approximates the rhyme

my doggerel will sing of fictive deeds

my algebra will break the back of time

the Devil cannot silence Grothendieck

what is a metre? whereof do we speak?

RJT

# 25 - Fourteen Caveats

I reassess my errors and defeats

I redefine parameters each day

I gerrymander politics my way

I reinvent the darkly cobbled streets

I metamorphose ’til I have no feet

I recross every line of braided spray

I counter-ruck the palace’s array

I automagically endure retreats

My prudence lies behind me, pale and numbed

My common sense is on the shelf, well-thumbed

My acumen subsists in tea-stained mugs

My marbles clack and spit across the rug

My laws are filled with hinky “ifs” and “buts”

My poetry is clearly going nuts

AB

# 24 - dust and ambergris

Below the doleful hum of coconuts,

the salamanders sing their ancient song.

While some stars burst and others simply shut,

I wonder if I've been here for too long.

All covered, now, in dust and ambergris,

I listen for the screeching butterflies

but only hear the shouting of the bees

and see the hedgehogs making their goodbyes.

The wailing worms are mourning spade-slain friends,

the spiders bark and growl at passing cars,

and so, tonight, my sanity depends

on trying not to burst, like all those stars.

And, like a song forever on repeat,

I reassess my errors and defeats. 

LM

# 23 - in the nook of sounds of wooing

a chattering of hubris and conceit

a factory of simile and lust

a flattering of vanity and poesy

to win a kiss from my fair love

a platypus of hubris and arousal

a beautiful of crocuses and rust

a dumbledore of whispering and sighs

to win a kiss from my fair love

without her love i’m banished from myself

and stuck upon an island hot and haughty

between the mournful midges in the dusk

an exile in the nook of sounds of wooing

and stuck upon a love that’s not my own

below the doleful hum of coconuts 

AW