Summer Sonnet 3: Touch in a Crowd

He is a delightful distraction
from theatric intellectualism
piano thin fingers play the action
as our entwined bodies bridge the schism.

He rubs my chest and kisses my sleeve
as the play continues dreary gambol.
His soft nuzzling allows me leave
of this Saturday matinee ramble.

Our affection makes us invisible
to polite audiences bored to sigh
his magician hands makes me risible
to the gray hairs' yawning cries.

We occupy ourselves with touch/teasing
this dead art with something far more pleasing.

-By Aurin Squire

Summer Sonnet 2: The Field

The scent of the night was crisp and fleeting,
the wind does bend an oak unlikely though;
its persistent blows without retreating,
will ultimately force the oak to bow.

The night's biting wind will keep repeating,
O'er an empty field with none to sow,
Grim like death waiting patiently pleading,
for any semblance of rural to show.

Lo! The oak is red and changing slowly,
Quite impossible for the blind to know.
A ring, luminous, like a pale nimbus,
Upon this field is an abandoned glow.

The sounds of darkness, the nighttime symphony
will always be my desired company.

-By Donavue

Summer Sonnet 1: Summer Apertif

"Apertif something light to get you, sir?"
the waiter encouraged my limp frame
 flung in a chair I weakly concur
but the heat makes it all the same.

At these times my appetite is shot. Through
blazing summer days stunt lusty cravings
my phoenix desires die and born anew
restoring credit to my carnal savings.

Summer menu of tapas suffice
nothing too heavy, thick of pungence
when all I need is cold slivers of ice
stomach heaves at rich Italian scents.

"I'll have ice water and a cold compress,
the more I see, confirms more is less. 

-By Aurin Squire

Spring Sonnet 8: HMS Mandrake

Dead dead dead as a nickel head, my feet
clop round the marina's green sulfur lake.
Winding past the anchored sailing fleet
my eyes fall on the HMS Mandrake.

Mandrake's sails billowed pouting silver lips
that whisper prayers to the pitiless sun.
Tentacled  wild ropes dance the devil whip
as I continue on my banal morning run.

Gurgle gutturals froth and bubble
from the bow to the brind-beaten baft.
Mandrake's deck covered in seaweed rubble,
on this monstrously mottled sailing craft.

Sweat stung my eyes as my path moved on
blinked at the shimmer and Mandrake was gone.

-By Aurin Squire

Spring Sonnet 7: Nosebleeds

Nosebleeds soak my pillow as I dream

lustful wars and pillaging napalm

scarlet colors soaks the covers to seam

battles rage inside the sonorous calm.

When I was young I would have these night visions

 attacked by violent masked invaders

bullets and grenades flung with precision

walls blasted into smoldering crater

Never decoded these nightmares secrets

I just hoped it wasn't foreshadowing

buried resentment at my father's precepts

warning me of what my rebellion would bring. 

And the only ones who ever knew

were me, my pillows, my bed, and now you. 

-By Aurin Squire

Spring Sonnet 6: A Burning Sky

A burning sky shows an enkindled earth
to illuminate veiled atrocities.
Like the smoking embers under the hearth.
The gasp for air in their attempt to breathe.

When the planet becomes dark and distant,
the formal order is lost for a time.
Yes - Heaven's lid loses its ginger tint
to try and paralyze the tongues that rhyme.

But there is strength that keeps those tongues loose.
A light which no affliction can diffuse.
The propensity to tell the whole truth
is one which The Poets will never lose.

Keep your pens and disregard the allure
of swords. Words will remain the only cure.

-by Donavue

Spring Sonnet 5: Cuckoo's Song

"Kommen und Gehen" my first German verse,
which, like the English 'coming and going,'
to me suggested a hypnotic curse
dooming us to endless to and froing.

Cuz I already sit on the pendulum
base, sweeping through space til some grand hand
drages me from my imagined path to rehash doldrums
of before. What's mine not in my command

Travelling on an amputated track
No destination. "Kommen und Gehen."
Caught in the machine. Pitched forward, flung back
Stymied in the refrain. I'm just sayin':

What if I jump? Which is more appalling?
Free falling or standing up and walking.

-By Abigail Ramsay