Sunday, April 16, 2017

SONNET (FOR BOOTBLACK ECHOES)



The gloomy liberal and the crabby liberal pursue severe doctrine.
Both suckle a cage-free, pasture-raised hoompty doompty.
Allow the word “haunt.” It’s a looker’s word.
Allow, allow, allow, allow, allow.
The sun bulges through a puncture.
Body temperature climbs another tenth, enjoyable.
Once again, condensation overcomes the hierarchies of disorientation.
The gutters of mysterious syllables muddle
the bootblack echoes of central thoroughfare. [Consider:
moments de-installed from servitude, untethered
mechanisms that meter (1) inference or
(2) deduction.] As to the affiliations of reanimated cruelty?
A bullet can rend the corners of a woman’s impoverished overcoat
the gray corners of her mouth an “O” of perpetual outrage.


2 comments:

hthr said...

Nice one, grtstn. The imperative impulse of "allow" invites openness to unexpected generosity, graciousness. Its repetition invites imaginings of inflection. Are poets slave to inference in the way scientists are to deduction? So much, ever, culminates in "O."

DAN / DANIEL GUTSTEIN said...

Thanks, Hthr. The "O" of perpetual outrage derives from some hallucination -- of mine -- about a relative lost in the second world war.

Allow, allow, allow, allow, allow -- in my book, a perfectly iambic line. I would like to think that there's no disagreement about said scansion!

Hthr, Hthr, Hthr, Hthr, Hthr, on the other hand, would be a perfectly trochaic line!

---------grtstn