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10 Word Mercurial Sonnets

I read at the Friday night open mic poetry reading at the Mercury Cafe in Denver (http://mercurycafe.com). A popular bit of shtick I came up with to try and excite the crowd about sonnets and my poetry in general is to take ten words from the audience and write a sonnet using those ten words which I read at the following weeks reading. I'm going to self-publish a book of the first 32 weeks in the coming months.

Week 42: suicide, molasses, magnanimous, potassium, brain seizure, puritanical, watermelon, spork, pas de deux, borderline

Mind forks the vines of might as bodies spoon
the watermelon world. Their pas de deux
no spork of borderline utensive two
made less than one. But polished silver soons
tarnish on puritanical shins. Moons
are not magnanimous
. Planets can't do
what makes their soil alive. Life raws the goo
of tides, sun and potassium. It Junes
because Earth Juned for green to follow. Some
molasses maybes rummed. Spirits distilled
to active stabs of brain seizure. The done
became undone in minds that could become
an expectation. Suicide goals killed
the body that remembered more than one.

Week 41: poodle, paragon, pirates, individual, lengthy preamble, reconstituted, regurgitate, crap, kangaroo, premonition

Lengthy preamble words apologize
for being late -- reconstituted should
have dones, amended thought you understoods
regurgitate from anywhere else eyes:
her undecided paragon. The guy's
all right she guesses. He's the almost good
an indistinguished individual could
become. She knows it won't work out but tries
to openmind despite premeditated
premonition. She will kangaroo
the days by pouching all his crap beneath
her skin and poodle shave the nights awaiting
weevilless dream pirates. She excuses
him, grinding her unforgiven teeth.

Week 40: Billingsgate, exile, punk, rococo, Machiavellian, extroverted, conflating, infertile, paramecium, recidivism

Shakespeare would write tearjerker films about
a Billingsgate fishmonger coming (music swells)
to love his exile son: a mohawked punk.
Bach would compose the soundtrack with funk
rococo fusion. Means, Machiavellian
end seekers justified, sell out.
The extroverted artist making money
making art sells outburst genius -- skill
conflating public needs with public lusts
the struggling artist thinks infertile. Masters
paramecium fit-focus-fill-
adapt collective wash without a conflict
or recidivism of the ego.
Greatness lies in everything they see.

Week 39: o-ring, cockalorum, incognito, Promethean, cobble, pink, condiment, saucy, cyrillic

The morning after, cockalorum crows
awoke me from alone to next to her.
More than a sparkle dawn uncovered stirred
beside inside. An artist must arose
to brush her hiragana hair -- impose
an image on cyrillic hips -- to word
her incognito might in is. Lips were
neither Promethean nor pink. They were close
They were kiss. No less. More than a noun of fuck
and fecal o-rings. More than a saucy adjective
to condiment her eyes. She verbs. My talk
about without her realones me -- stuck
on narrowing paths paved by the know-mad-active
men who confused the cobble with the walk.

Week 38: masticates, zither, perambulatory, jurisdiction, sex, libido, refrigerator, Mentholatum, petrifacient, botox

Beyond Hyperborean mists, the wind
masticates stone to dust. Shaggy men
once plucked the zither hair of nymphs to soothe
our howls. Once perambulatory quests
for praise surpassed the jurisdiction ruthlessness
of kings. Once you said we were born
too ugly to miss sex. That we were blessed
libido never known. Medusa, when
you died the world still feared us. Now they fear
buying the wrong refrigerator or
wrong kind of Mentholatum more than brazen
claws. Our petrifacient curse is sought
by botox statues. Having frays the not,
and you are blessed to never know such days.


Week 37: regret, apostasy, emasculation, valetudinarian, cat, cavort, corrugated, perhaps, potty, covert

 Savages. They’ll regret their vile apostasy
soon. First emasculation, now
annoyance. Worse than when their valetudinarian
friend used to visit. Tossed
in a dark room because cat dander caused
him hives. Expected to cavort with claw
splintering scraps of rug and feathers glued
on corrugated cardboard for a frosty
pat, a coochie coo perhaps. No more.
Not since they brought that thing of drool and dirt.
It took them three years of unburied crap
to potty train the beast. Must I ignore
it’s tail defiling hands? Must I covert
in shadows? I’ll show them…after my nap.


Week 36: beehive, bulbous, flange, bouffant, pigeons, lugubrious, somnambulist, onomatopoeia, colonoscopy, onomatopoeic

 Some beings buzz around a beehive sun
born once upon  a never mind. Their grunts
mud splatter bulbous toes. Flange tongues bull hunt
dark lairs. Bouffant lips puffblow fire wide. Run
fasters unstooped — war shepherds looming, spin
dyed babble. Eagles aerie. Pigeons coop.
Buffalo shagstomp. Oxen musk. Swarm groups
city themselves in sounds within their un
attached lugubrious mouths. Dream heard saids
somnambulist bump language where it’s data/
glossary onomatopoeia. Speech
becomes colonoscopy onomatopoeic
and redundant. Talking heads —
semantics of the earth beyond their reach.


Week 35: sphinx, zeitgeist, hypotenuse, pedantic, plagiarism, shirt, gumbo, anthropomorphism, tantric, triskaidekaphobia
 
A sphinx-lipped zeitgeist haunts Attic stares
hung by a chewed hypotenuse. Pedantic
scribbles marble gaze wrecked angle squares
in columned journals. Plagiarism can’t
acropolis the smell, the wind, the heat
in lines. A tour guide wears a “Hades” T-shirt.

Gumbo is the Bantu word for okra."
he says.

"Really?” I ask.

                                           “Technically
it’s ngumbo. The n's unheard in spoken
English.”

                 “So your shirt,” I say, “is that
anthropomorphism or some tantric thing?”

 He smiles. “Triskaidecaphobia
made Zeus limit the gods to twelve. All laws
and words and gods change. Spring is always spring.”


Week 34: rococo, mandolin, ratchet, howl, Mandarin, stupefies, towel, effluvium, parapraxis, emasculation.

 Rococo temples. Byzantine streets. Foul
mandolin headed robot armies flash
pulsing explode. Ratchet winged fighters crash
bug windshield splattered fire against wedge hull
destroyers. Tall bipedal lapdogs howl.
Mandarin intonated droids boop beep
in galaxies far, far away. The creep
of excess stupefies and mists a towel
snapped plot. Effluvium of digital
so what. The dialogic parapraxis
hacks storylines — emasculation forced
on koan words. Mu-vied. Samurai skills
speak peasant tongued good/evil light/dark axis
apparent truths that leave the whole divorced.


Week 33: ribbon, flaccid, serotonin, Viagra, corn chip, stagnates, useless, ladybugs, Elmo, immodulation.

 The he of mind wanted a towering cock
mast high unfurled and blazing fire on loan
from St. Elmo. Not a useless groan
of flaccid ribbon flesh he couldn’t wrap
around the present. Drugs helped. Serotonin
boosters and Viagra got it up
or made it hardly matter. His corn chip
snacking too busy crunched away his clockwork
life’s immodulation into death.

 The he of body wanted to die. Told
him ever since he started aiming for
the ladybugs while mowing grass. Ignoring,
mind stagnates proud — refusing to lose hold
and let the he of body take his final breath.

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