Outer and Inner Space (A Spenserian Sonnet)

Waiting for dawn I looked to outer space
beyond the moon past where our bold kind
has gone—nowhere—where winks no human face
and astronauts who sail there with their mind

They see the world below their feet designed
Some awesome power must that small globe protect
Yet no mad fool that power in his closed mind
can hold, but power such as that deserves respect

While to our eyes light’s course is so direct
Each mind unlike another has its train
What one sees another can’t detect
and, vision absent, argument is vain.

One eye will try to make another see
But mortal mind cannot tell mystery.

From Psalm 3 with Emily Dickinson # 141

The daylight’s gone
and somethings' wrong
The crickets start now one by one
They swarm with drum and song.

Old troubles settle with the dew
While visions march as soldiers do
I’m all alone except for you
So linger, do not go.

I did not ask for wine or grain.
Show not your face or give your name.
That you are here lights up this home,
and sleep comes like a train.

Is science wrong?
About the sun?
Two stars stay up, but one is gone.
I’ll dream until the dawn.

My adversary with his crew
with broken teeth all rotting through
Runs in retreat for fear of you
So linger, do not go.

The roof will hold, you will sustain.
You went down and up you came.
Some nights I shiver to the bone
In anger or with shame.

When rain is none I gather dew
And squeeze the earth as oak-trees do.
Your offer stands, your word is true.
The time will come to go.

My ticket’s come
and one by one
My bags are packed and work is done
The time it soon will come.

Double Sonnet on Psalm 2

When I consider all the laughing kings
the conspiracies they cover up and make
their chains and fetters, treaties that they break
their guarded borders are such fragile things.

Who see insult where injury is none
who grind and kill and torment without fear
whose flattering dwarfs say what they want to hear
their downcast dogs will live to see them hung.

And Iron will crush those kings, they're only clay
Porcelain dropped so careless on a floor
when Someone Big comes strolling in the door
They took and took and now they'll have to pay

From atop the stairs they hear a merry laugh
They piss their pants in the presence of His wrath

What awful shock came when He read the will;
the lines and markers he switched them all around
the Youngest Son’s the Only One in town
They hold their tongues and take their bitter pill

One city under water black with mold
While miles away we see another fall
In this confusion you can’t place a call
Beware, my dear, false stories will be told

They judge the man who stammers when he talks
They speak so sleekly calumny and scorn,
call evil pretty to glorify their porn,
They suck and siphon but they never walk.

Their glasses drop—they hear that merry laugh
And soil themselves in the shadow of his wrath.