NEW ARCADIAN SONNETS

 

NEW ARCADIAN SONNETS
1

Downtown, parking lots spread out as fields
Where Chevies graze on tar.  Attendants yawn
And off-key hum in booths, their jackpots healed
Forgotten else, by crackling pure-gold songs.

The city planners planted also willows,
Drooping, awkward, in rows behind the benches,
And locusts small.  But Pamela can't borrow
(Can't buy) some shade or any tune that drenches

Craziness.  And I'm broke.  We stroll tonight
And lie how gardens sprout on balconies,
And fortune damn that we can't buy on credit,

Unknown as we are (noble, though).  So please
The cops, the moon, or men who hum in light
Someone for unnamed madness could sell identities.


2

Drive-in, or movie, or rustic pleasure house,
Where palms (or cypress), plastic, lean in pots,
Of course undying... easy place to get lost.
Moreover, dear, there's never an antidote,

Such as a map.  But on the wall are pictures,
Legends, they say, in color, breathing.  Laugh
You don't, though rude men fixed on loco desire
Buzz their songs.  I don't know what to ask.

Contrite or charged, such odd and flickering shows
To watch with you, like kaleidoscope books of romance
(For instance, the voyeur hunter his dogs dispose

Of teachingly) make it hard for me to convince
You, Pamela (supposed) or else Jane Doe,
That I'm no counterfeit boy, that I'm your negotiable prince.


3

Maybe willows whine like insomniac lovers;
Who can tell?  Or if the cedars are worried,
Or laurels eavesdrop?  Mainly, they stand for cover,
So that, along their lanes can walk with pride

The lovely.  Or the strange, who aren't exactly,
In this forest, quaint or marvelous.
And though, Beloved, we know the names of trees,
We'll safer walk disguised, anonymous.

Because (whichever) Pamela or my dear,
While boughs enclose our heads like paper bags,
The crescent moon, lecher or psycho, leers.

From his grin hidden, you start your crying jag--
But trees and Arcadians maintain their costumed careers:
Along the boulevard, other princes dress in drag.


4

The groves, perhaps, have kept it, where leaves shake
As shake your hands, frustrated, reaching to handle
What's lost: your daytime self.  And what's at stake?
The night-birds ask.  The quest is more than a gamble,

When winds are confused, when planets are ill-humored,
To look too close nightlong for this-- your name
Or True Love.  It's the bogged-down folly rumored
Of The Man-in-the-Moon, who actually lost his home.

But Pamela (is it?) we're in town under stark
And lovely trees stained silver from above
(By his skewed love.) Admit we can't turn back,

Admit from legends we are far removed,
Such as the lanterned moon.  We're in the park-
Ing lot to lose, anonymous, our lust as we drive.


5

A good bet everybody's tired and sick
Too much, to hear this update on Pan's death.
Yet rambles on Arcadian news, prolix
As romance in pastures, till someone catches breath

Or else forgets a note.  And only Silenus
Somewhere drowses, choosing muscatel
Above bad news.  On our corners, singers, nervous,
Will twitter, lisp the climax in detail,

Since much it explains: as, how the moon is modern,
And the trees, and breezes lapse laconic,
How new-enameled fields become unlearned,

And how the nymphs and satyrs speak elliptic-
Ly only, goat-god having missed the turn
To wreck, as I and Pamela, in newfangled panic...


6

Pamela, safe from nasty moon and goats
You'll never be again-- and ditto willows.
Arcadia pulls the curtains, flicks the lights,
And waits for hypnogogia on pillows,

Twiddling collective thumbs or counting sheep.
By law its lullabies are flip, obscene,
And when cock robin's mentioned, he never cheeps
Or bobs.  However, the moon knows what he means.

If therefore, we went flying, as in birds,
Beyond the law, the moon keeps up his watch,
Our secrets cypress tell.  To say the words,

The True Love or Who are you is the catch,
The inescapable ditty, to be unsure
That we were nameless mortals lured to dreams and snatched.


7


There was a country clever at disguise,
Where people knew to hide and dressed in yellow
Where unbelievable, in a minor reprise,
The moon had eyes, the poplars in imbroglios

Of tavern songs danced widdershins, a wish
To night-winds passion-tossed came true in spades.
Where something fades.  A black-and-white, a bookish
Country, wherein swish crepe and masquerades.

For her there, flowers I picked, a black bouquet,
Crazy for day, like flowers in hospitals, ah,
When night-shifts patrol.  Lacking romantic haze,

In starkness it makes-up.  And Aurora
There bolts doors.  She steals, nonetheless, away,
My dissembled love, from stolen dreams named Pamela.

Jack Hayes
© 2010