Fridge Magnet Sonnets
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Except for the punctuation and capitalization, these sonnets were assembled on a refrigerator door entirely within the restrictions imposed by the Basic Magnetic Poetry Kit and the Cerebra Supplemental Kit. Whether the resulting, apparently unavoidable, pastiche of Wallace Stevens was dictated by a propensity in the mind of the author or by the nature of magnetic poetry would be nice to know. If the latter, there must now be refrigerators all over the world that look like the galley proofs of Harmonium.
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I
I ribald sophist, you deft paragon,
Whet in our cloister languid dreams of sweet
Tongue-worship for the storm we cudgel on
With profligate palaver of bare feet.
But fiddle as we may, the shadows fall
Blue, tawdry, obdurate and lachrymose –
A torpid, adolescent caterwaul
Like tumid skin of a morose morass.
‘So what?’ you cry, and quashed I must eschew
Arid alacrity of epithet,
Be cool, austere, brusque, trenchant, true like you,
Not vapid and verbose as I am yet:
From here on in spurn brazen lusciousness,
Fetter my fecund zeal and chant fluff less.
II
Unctuous misanthrope, abscond to life!
Pant in a lather for a peachy breast.
Ascetic gynophobes usurp their lust,
Rip with the tacit rusty temporal knife
Of stultifying pallid acumen
The gorgeous mist of frantic puppy love
And enervate it to the putative.
No affable abeyance can supplant
Hot need, stalwart pariah and miscreant.
Let unrequited priapism, then,
Capriciously lambaste banal repose,
Ache, pound, boil, heave, drool juice and fulminate.
Delirious love is never delicate:
A florid blood-red spring rain shakes the rose.