A Cautionary Sonnet: I was biologically programmed to take advantage pretty girls, but its not my fault

that when I see her there--the place she goes when everyone is sleeping,
that she wishes for more than five dollars in her pocket,
tears slide down cheeks like grain for the reaping.
It’s like she begs for a picture to fill her locket.

I lend her mine. Follow the road that meets
the road that leads to my house.
“I love you,” she greets
me. No response-- I pull her blouse

down and lick her tears--the fall harvest.
She rains clothes on my floor--water for fields
of grain--Still, I’m the farthest
from a farmer or a picture for her locket-- but I heal

a ruined crop that left her poor, by taking her-- dirt cheap.
It’s how I tend to the fields, choosing to build her up when others asleep.

I’d rather leave a question

In final declaration, I’m leaving
but who finally declares a leaving
or leaves a final declaration

I’d rather leave a question

or better yet an inflection
a slight raising of the voice
a crescendo of noise
a last-word invoice
to a bill quite unpaid
which the collectors pre-made

for me

and after necessary check be writ
I’ll make my split
gone from the on-and-on
the great knowledge that made me yawn

knowledge you kept in a safe
dumbed down and made not to chafe
to be absorbed under a pretext of importance

significant, I think not
my hours spent in brain-rot
bowed down at your alter of wisdom

thought divorced from skill-will
poured down from atop of a hill
“and such and such” by your quill
as hazardous as a landfill
to my mind-time

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Author / Eric Cornell

I watched the sun setting

I watched the sun setting in averted vision
and saw the buildings
it was silhouetting
and I saw the moon in nighttime city-haze
and with its pail lack-light
the buildings raze

and they were no more
save for their window-lights

and in the blurred eyes of dry sight
my vision comes aright
cause in blurred vision
you’re forced to look in
a sort of still-lake reflection

through the boiling evening clouds
and the swirling storms, I bowed.
and I wish spring brought green
to more than just the earth

but my thought trees be burnt up by forest fires
caused by lightning strikes
and then the broken dykes
let loose floods to new (knew) heights

but hey, I’m alright

though now I bare this blight
from the storm’s lack-light
a kind of gray-skyburn.

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Author / Eric Cornell