By Gideon Burton
this SONNET:
this rivering desire
to face
this shivering of fire and ache
this trembling to require
a
blade
a
muddied
scabbed
persistence
of desire
oppresses me
of wanting
haunting me
with buried fire
a darkly embered orange smoke
a choir
and chorus, coarsely chanting sooty fate
I taste
I waste
a prey of praying's grace
unwieldy,
not so wholly holy,
ghost
and knotted
flesh compounding
tears and time
and time again
to groan toward
his face
with
stutttered
broken
breaking hopes
I claw the bread
I claim
blinking
to try to trace
bloodied
it presses me
a shade
the spilling wine
composed 12-4-09