“sonnet that resembles a sonnet except when it doesn’t”

 

sonnet that resembles a sonnet except when it doesn’t

a Thai take-out menu, maize yellow,

and resembling ever so slightly a roadmap if you squint

and resembling more or less the full moon

assuming the full moon looked more like a stick of butter

and less like a barn owl’s implacable face

a 16 lb. Brunswick bowling ball, slate gray,

and in the abstract much like a flagstone breezeway

in Vermont, and if not that then a Mercator map,

assuming the bowling ball has fallen inside a black hole

where it changes into a clock radio with hands

where elephants go waltzing trunk to tail

where the Sunday funnies erupt into lilium longiflorum

where the full moon is feeling no pain

where mon semblable in a black sport coat speaks to his cell phone

 

 

A.K. Barkley

© 2012

 

 

Image links to its source

Elephant and flowers. State 2.  Wenzel Hollar (1607–1677) - Wiki Commons; public domain

"epithalamion with scrabble tiles"

epithalamion with scrabble tiles

a unicycle shining burnished on burnside ave
black sun, solarized photo
and this autumn the constellations should take their rest at long last
on pillows of ice

not to forget this weekend’s italian wedding soup
frothing mophead hydrangeas
which isn’t to mention the clarinets violet green cadenzas’
viz. urban sweet pea vines

a place in the southwest where they serve the best coffee
you have ringtones, facebook etc.
and here come extraterrestrial trolley bells
conjugating by rote the future imperfect

a somnambulist of course finds himself in the garden of love
secluded connubial brass floor lamp
this fantastical stamp collection in which his soul finds rest
like a friday traffic jam

and who could be rehearsing stroh violin in this midday heat
sandra, your eyeglasses’ slategray epiphanies,
memories glistening like silverware strewn across the gray willamette
like blue herons’ architectural reflections

a red deck of playing cards, a traffic light gone to seed
17 maneki-nekos beckoning
and blue bicycles canter over that very same rose garden
as seedpods whirlybird across september

A.K. Barkley
© 2012

Image links to its source: 
"...Pourvu que j'aie un pneu-vélo Continental. Garanti un an. Usines à Clichy (Seine). "If I only had a Continental bicycle tire." Advertising poster for Continental tires showing a hobo on a unicycle with his dog running beside. , ca. 1900." Wiki Commons, public domain