Intimacy
We move at nights as if through sliding sands,
hands cupped. They’re true sands of a sort–time’s grains,
brain’s siftings–what shifts down from the dreams we man,
woman. We’re close, yet sleep’s a lonely lane,
feigns, only, a residing populace.
You kiss me back, when I kiss you, surfacing,
pacing contact like swimmers pace the turn,
churn, of head, the breaths in crawl’s spacing,
hastening–but slowly (for in these dunes,
moon’s dominions, all snails glue-footed)–to sink,
unthink, unlink, ourselves, slipping down,
‘round, into, oblivion’s sole skin.
Gingerly, we reach–when self once more floats up
cup-palmed–to catch, to hold–but soft– but softly–touch.
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Here’s a sort of sonnet, inspired originally by the wonderful chained-rhyme Scrimshaw Sonnet, of Hedgewitch, Joy Anne Jones. I am posting it also for dVerse Poets Pub Prompt, by the inimitable Brian Miller (!), called “breaking and entering” about using a form but also breaking the form. In this case, I’ve used very poor slant rhyme at times, and there’s at least an extra foot or two in the last line! Plus I’ve broken up the sonnet in an odd place–after the fifth line, rather than sixth or eighth.
This poem has gone through vastly different iterations. The places that rhyme leads you are always quite surprising to me–and a few changes of words can and did lead to extremely different poems. I’m not sure any of them quite say what I wanted! Still, I rather enjoy following rhyme’s lead–it releases the mind from certain types of decision-making in a way that is quite freeing.
I am actually posting this from an airplane–a long flight–so I am way too cramped to make a new drawing and re-did this pic I had saved. I am not sure that the above really works–it’s supposed to be a couple lying down in bed! (Perhaps moving through sand?)
ManicDDaily 
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