Archive for sonnet

Blankness of a Clock Face

Posted in poetry, sonnet with tags , , on August 30, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle

Your stride faltered in hesitation as
The young man held the door to let you pass
His face eclipsed by yours – a brief reflection
His eyes stalled by yours within the glass

I’d hoped to catch this moment in the mirror
Rising from the lines upon my face
But read the time less from standing figures
Than from the way you spanned the empty space

This morning’s spectre of your fragrant heat
Attendant to your body’s pooling shadow
Trickles through the reef of cotton sheet as
A frigid breeze rattles the open window

I kiss your neck, then disappear from sight
You turn to face the weeping winter light

Jocko Willink and David Goggins versus Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway and Hayden Carruth

Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Real Men with tags , , , , , , , , on July 10, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle

Hadji-Mural_by_Lanceray.jpg

2.

There are some novels you read that make you think, ‘Why can’t all books be like this one?’ Continue reading

Shades of Lust and Hate, and Fear, and Love, and Grief

Posted in poetry, sonnet with tags on June 8, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle

 

204143250-352-k920542

I woke beneath a wringing sheet last night

To phantom figures cast on midnight screens

They rose in opalescent sheets of light

Their trains were wet with rot from loathsome dreams

 

Morbid lights crept over the planes of flesh

That spun across those shifting, spectral screens

Sharp white incisors rhymed with stark white eyes

As invective rose like bile behind my teeth

 

Hopes and promises turned to screams and cries

Violence sticky with the shame beneath  

Powerless I lay to efface those shades

Of lust and hate, and fear, and love, and grief

 

Sunrise finds me bound with the shameful tie

That I can neither break nor can deny.

(I think) She Might Be Crying

Posted in poetry, sonnet with tags , on April 28, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle

DrcACosUUAExLUH.jpg

 

The floor to ceiling hotel window is

A lidless, depthless, staring midnight eye

The bed’s reflection breaks along its gaze

Sheets rolling in a long, disordered line

 

Face down, the weave of hair conceals her face

As tattered heart’s words tumble to the carpet

I am complicit: dumb, and blunt and hard

Plumbing a womb of shit and barren darkness

 

Later: scrutinised by bathroom light

Sitting naked with my head in hands

Marooned in a field of arid, empty white

Revealed to be the object that I am

 

Next door: drooling, drunk and stoned and slurring

Maybe, words (I think) she might be crying

Choke (2)

Posted in poetry, sonnet, violence against women with tags , , , on February 2, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
Choke 2.jpg

The sting in my hand from where I’ve struck her

The welt that’s swiftly rising on her thigh

The mark glaring through its suntanned lustre

The bolt of pain that taints her almond eye

The sweat that gathers in her dusky creases

The body that’s knotted like a rope

The sigh that’s strangled and abruptly ceases

The chin slick with saliva as she chokes

Blinking eyes that swim with sweat that’s searing

Relentless, I drive past lips, teeth and tongue

Her eyes bulge, mascara-smeared and teary

I feel the edge of teeth before I come

Gagging, she spits and tears a breath of air

Spent, sated and slaked, I can hardly care.

Choke (1)

Posted in poetry, sonnet, violence against women with tags , , , on January 23, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle

85aa5a9d68c4c5f1108b8b4250855207.jpg

The sting in my hand from where I’ve struck her 

The welt that’s swiftly rising on her thigh 

The mark that’s glaring through its suntanned lustre 

The bolt of pain that taints her almond eye 

 

The sweat that gathers in dusky creases of 

The body that’s knotted like a rope 

The sigh that’s strangled and abruptly ceases 

The chin slick with saliva as she chokes 

 

Supine, the curtains of her belly part 

And she’s inhaling sharply through her nose 

Relentless, I drive up towards her heart 

While turning like a dragon’s embryo 

 

She gasps, and groans, ‘I feel you everywhere’

So I take hold and pull her silky hair. 

Your Voice is a Caress Most Definite

Posted in Love letters, poetry, sonnet with tags , on October 3, 2019 by Jarrod Boyle
1_c-G4BkGsAiwg5UB01LNLag.jpg

Your voice is a caress most definite

On velvet footfalls your words descend

The vertiginous staircase within my head

To take up mysterious residence

Modelling from the darkness a bower

Where meaning is resonant temperature

That blossoms across my eyelids into colour

A verdure of mysterious flowers

These flowers turn their faces narcotic

Toward the distant sun of where you are

With a febrile yearning in their motion

Reaching toward that place exotic

Whose voice describes a sunset-coloured shore

Whose windswept weave is salted with its ocean.

Twisted Valentine

Posted in Love letters, poetry, sonnet with tags , , , , on February 14, 2019 by Jarrod Boyle
nipple

Tattoos and piercings lodged in the weave of her becoming

A pale flame that undulates from my hips towards the ceiling

She feels like mine but is held within the darkness’ grip

Its heavy fingers printed in the slats between her ribs

I want to reach up inside and touch her deep as she can take

But the one who came before me is coiled there like a snake

Suddenly cruel, I insinuate the word ‘love’ into her ear

It is the single weapon I have that will cut into her

At the impact of my cruelty her groan shatters into a cry

And I see the truth congealed upon the mirror of her eye

Satisfied, I watch the tracking of a single salty tear

As it snakes along her cheek to hide in the hair below her ear

I apologize in a voice almost innocent of the lie

But if I couldn’t make her love me then at least I made her cry.

%d bloggers like this: