Individual Sonnets: One Two Three Four Five Two Two Seven Eight
Winning The War Within: Collected Sonnets by Stephen C. Rose
Late forties 80th ‘tween Lex and Third
Fruit wagons coal chutes All Souls sunlight sweet
Hall monsters third floor window hurdy gurd’
Tossed pennies wrapped in paper on the street
Bologna snacks at Mr. Popper’s shop
The Harlem-bound El rumbling overhead
No tickie gets no shirtie from Sam Hop
Upon such snapshots memories are fed
We moved away when I was five years old
The loss I tossed off then now seems so deep
The trails I try to follow are so cold
I wonder what it is I cannot keep
Then turn and watch thought castles Nietzsche made
Slip by slip way slip down the slope and fade
I puked a solid mass of gelatin
Cream-colored on an oriental rug
I was just five the school was Oberlin
That one to five time gives my heart a tug
We lived across the street on Eightieth
Ten rooms two floors the best I fancy now
Yes though I am long past halfway to death
I’d go back there again if I knew how
I did go back it was not long ago
I walked from our two rooms near Herald Square
But I could not revive that long lost show
The puke remains my foremost memory
It had a marvelous solidity
I met Harold on the Independence
He played the oboe for the New York Phil
Those were days of casual resplendence
When things just seemed to happen as things will
Harold taught me life has two dimensions
We said we’d meet in Capri and we did
I chose one of those small uphill pensions
At night it seemed that not one star was hid
He taught me to paint by doing nothing
And now the painting’s lost and so is he
Still I know I’m holding on to something
The knowledge of the work that set him free
Six hours of arduous practice every day
Small price a precious freedom who will pay
Time telling time as only time can tell
Tells nothing if the story goes untold
Our little lections spare us from the hell
Of meeting him and letting him take hold
The simple actions that his word demands
Are foreign to our robes our clocks our ways
Would you believe we all have healing hands
Ah freedom that I prayed would be always
I knew it then then lost it want it back
If I could wear that garment now I would
I was in heaven nothing did I lack
Could I be free from judging yes I could
Each telling now condemns me to my fate
Remembering what I can’t recreate
What force could give the world push it needs
To cease to have the poor with us always
A leader bold or simply more good deeds
A pill to zap our predatory ways
It’s really something when you parse it out
The wealthy cash in with impunity
And then support without the slightest doubt
Our several systems of philanthropy
Hospitals universities and jails
Peace-keepers shelters think-tanks UNICEF
And even when this noble structure fails
We rarely contemplate those who get left
We read escapes art sections and the like
And whoosh these dour declensions take a hike
The driver of a lethal vehicle
Must study some to pass a driving test
I ask you would it be tyrannical
To seek from would-be parents nothing less
Ah moralism please shut up you say
Or maybe it’s a voice inside my head
We’d rather gamble chips fall where they may
Than think too much about what lies ahead
Besides that talk about the father’s sin
Need not concern us when we’re so in love
And please don’t say most marriages begin
Upon a note that sours soon enough
We tie the knot when passion’s fires burn
When murder comes we say we live and learn
It’s a bit of a stretch to say that I
Am hardly attuned to our world of gore
But then to go and assume that thereby
I’m admirable stretches even more
I’m as complicit as those with no qualms
About loving a smackdown or fighting
My sparse good deeds and penurious alms
Make few dents in the wrongs I’d be righting
What of the wars in which someone must serve
I’ve avoided them all without thinking
Sure I’m opposed but I don’t have the nerve
The mere thought of assault leave me blinking
Falstaff lay down on the field and played dead
I play my war games inside of my head
I crucify whenever I commune
The body I once crushed I crush again
Each Eucharist becomes a new high noon
Each crusty loaf your body now as then
This fragment in my hand is your real flesh
I place it in my mouth and let thoughts run
St. Vincents Creedmore Joberg Bangladesh
A little boy drinks arsenic in the sun
I crunch down hard on this defenseless crust
And actively own my complicity
I crucify as crucify I must
And as I break this body I’m made free
All judgment turns to dust and blows away
And for a time a clear-eyed view holds sway
Nine
Wake me up when all the wars are over
Wake me up when hatred does not kill
And I’ll give everyone a four leaf clover
If not I’ll keep on dreaming on until
Come on by when nations have stopped lying
Come on by when fairness is the rule
And children are not born to end up dying
‘N I’ll have no more need to play the fool
Hanging out with my imagination
Too far gone to say or do a thing
If I could I’d gladly change the station
And try to find a happy song to sing
But in my mind there’s just one song holds on
And it goes Kyrie Eleison
Ten
Mimesis Jesus can this compass truth
As Oedipus and chums and geigenwelt
Once seemed a way of parsing in my youth
Before Girardian influence was felt
What minds so compass all reality
All things to stated causes they reduce
What story can compel us just to see
A single vision our mimetic noose
I’ll take the Bard to be our still-best guide
And Jesus as our best iconoclast
And never more behind a theory hide
Or seek on earth a premise that will last
I’m free at last for I have finally found
There’s nothing I can wrap my mind around
Eleven
When Henry rallied troops for one last stand
Evoking honor calling God to heel
Who really won I think the Dead Fat Man
Whose only wish was one more merry meal
In what does loss or victory consist
Why victory is life devoid of lies
Defeat’s the denouement no lie can twist
No matter how hard anybody tries
The borders of the Bard’s mind now we reach
Beyond he and the Carpenter walk free
Past where old faiths lie spent on Dover Beach
I think I hear them singing let it be
And in such odd convergences begin
To win the war that always was within
Twelve
Sils lies six-thousand feet above the sea
Here Nietzsche came and spent some summertimes
The little room he lived in you can see
Not far from where the church sends forth its chimes
Sils is where Zarathustra was conceived
Think high think power and then overcome
He left most past philosophies ungrieved
Sadly he could not see what was to come
The people he despised adopted him
And used his language to describe their way
The wretched world was soon torn limb from limb
I hear his theories are the rage today
A sculpted eagle sits on Nietzsche’s lawn
Across the street I look at it and yawn
Thirteen
Lead your own life find your own self hold on
Your mama’s on the cell phone as you sit
Alone as some lone senior deemed long gone
Here in this Starbucks in a little bit
She’ll wordlessly get up and lead you out
Give up take refuge find the God inside
Better an inner joy than outer shout
What mama slights closed eyes can open wide
Perhaps she’s not your mama after all
Or else your daddy’s darkness has prevailed
From where I sit I see your dark hair fall
What difference does it make the family’s failed
Good riddance to all genders all blood lines
It’s to the dream within our heart inclines
Fourteen
A billion processes known and unknown
Piano playing Gershwin with no hands
A book on Nietzsche next to my cell phone
No second-hand declension understands
The lonely man who lived before these malls
Before these cars these planes the Fuhrer’s hates
Might have been happy with two rooms no halls
But not two crumbling Towers hate creates
I think our future holds much more in store
I think we do not know a tenth of it
Salvation is not knowing more and more
Some simple rules must do along with wit
Poor Gaia moulders in her padded cell
Meanwhile our ignorance still serves us well
Fifteen
It’s hard to read the papers anymore
It’s not my eyes they work so does my mind
It’s sequence reason logic I search for
And little but disorder do I find
A picture and a caption catch my eye
But nothing corresponds upon the page
My normal expectations swiftly die
And deep inside I feel a growing rage
Blind-sided angry beating my retreat
Still searching for a fragment here or there
There there here’s cogency come take a seat
Yield not your tender mind to such despair
Next I suppose you’ll tell me nothings changed
All will be well when I am rearranged
Sixteen
When I ran crying crucify me now
Across the floor of Detroit’s Cobo Hall
Excessive legalism took a bow
Denominations sidestepped one more call
None dared say Jesus complex but the thought
Could not have been too far from many minds
But all it was was me just feeling caught
Like one condemned when time finally unwinds
I think I cared about a unity
That no one wanted and few want today
I think I cared about a harmony
Whose price few have the least desire to pay
I’m twice the age that Christ was when he died
Still railing at the temple he defied
Seventeen
A dream before the hour of waking came
A party I am disconnected from
But now I see the place the scene the frame
From whence a trace of meaning may yet come
The scene would be my ex-wife’s property
Set high upon a hill beside a trail
And she is there invisible to me
Though it’s upon her action hangs the tale
From high beams in an uninviting room
Black bags with bullet-riddled bodies hang
Shot dead by her an act to seal her doom
Whoever thought she’d go out with a bang
But now those bodies have turned in to bats
Surveyed below by two supine fat cats
Eighteen
I see the books I wrote upon the sill
The sun comes afternoons to work decay
The pages spines and covers dry until
Their very will to live crumbles away
Why don’t I act to save these little works
The reason is they speak to me of death
I was not made to seek an author’s perks
For hyperventilating loss of breath
These days I seek a different legacy
Enter cut paste delete revise redo
Then put it up for anyone to see
Where else will words be in 3002
For shade King Tut did well to have a tomb
The World Wide Web is memory’s new womb
Nineteen
Being remembered is our great brass ring:
Lou Gehrig waving to a tearful crowd
Top gun first woman tour de anything
A photo of some fleeting moment proud
How fatuous to store what time defies
Believing our forevers really last
This life is fleeting as smoke on the rise
Wind dissipates the dust of every past
Some say that love will in the end remain
Thus the Apostle in his greatest text
He staked his whole life on life yet again
He had no question what was coming next
It’s much more likely we’ll keep keeping on
Than we’ll have life here after we have gone
Twenty
Ah speak to me of age and I reply
Mine varies with the passing of the years
That bodies age none safely will deny
But even so a counterpoint appears
I had a wisdom that surpassed an adult’s claim
Before my voice was changed or love I knew
If cats have nine lives I have had the same
And haply I’ll have more before I’m through
My eyes have lost their childhood gravity
And seize upon all moments of romance
My ears reject the term maturity
As terminal like death the end of chance
So talk of wanton youth and sweet decline
And it will be some other life not mine
Twenty-One
There is a grim monotony in death
As if life was a round that starts and ends
In silence bounded by first and last breath
If you’ve seen one but then it all depends
On how it happens and if young or old
If maimed incinerated or at peace
The song might change move from subdued to bold
But still and all one day the song must cease
Young Hamlet’s questions rise our ears to bend
And Jesus’ declaration is not lost
Either to fleeting dust we shall descend
Or to some dreamy future yet be tossed
Redemption is not knowing where we go
And not pretending what we cannot know
Twenty-Two
When nature died museums followed suit
The eye became the artist world the art
And now the eye requires no substitute
A conscious vision does the artist’s part
Strong music likewise rises in the ear
Songs mingling with the world’s cacophony
Until once held distinctions disappear
And art is simply what we see and hear
Next travel next invention next design
Indeed we are not far from Plato’s cave
We need no ideal world no cosmic sign
We live until there’s nothing left to save
Awakening awake awake awake
To see that life is but the art we make
Twenty-Three
What needs my love to celebrate a day
When every day I thank my stars for you
And anything a valentine might say
Would not do justice to a love so true
The hands of time are powerless when you smile
Arrested by the wonder of the sight
They lose track of their rounds a little while
And whisper softly of this shared delight
Vast spaces too are powerless to prevent
The journey of your love to where it will
No wall exists round what is heaven sent
No depths are there your bold love cannot fill
You came one day and set my locked love free
And daily I give thanks that you love me
Twenty-Four
Ophelia’s Hamlet’s true love so it seems
Though love is doomed by ponderous demands
Obeyed most swiftly in successive scenes
Two summonses to seal two deadly hands
We enter on love’s after-death decreed
By Denmark’s principalities and powers
But every utterance suggests love’s seed
Was sown before those om’nous opening hours
Poor Harold was all wrong re Hamlet’s love
He wondered if the Prince loved anyone
Well if Horatio was not enough
Add in Ophelia before Act One
In any case this is my pleasant dream
As I row down a star-crossed lovers stream
Twenty-Five
Your strength is constant as the surging tides
Your mindfulness as full as the full moon
Your heart is where your precious love abides
From its high podium you lead a tune
As bright with joy as bold Beethoven wrote
As sharp with wit as Rosalind might speak
As clouds upon the sunlit ether float
I am transported to a mountain peak
From there I contemplate your heavenly smile
Thanking my stars for leading me to you
There was a time when I lived mile by mile
Before I knew a love could be so true
And so I send you this frail valentine
Aloft with thanks to be yours and you mine
Twenty-Six
Sometimes my dreams outshine my waking hours
A floating image of a kiss persists
And my pierced heart claims efficacious powers
To part the veil and penetrate the mists
I place my Beatrice upon a throne
Defiantly dub her reality
She has no substance neither skin nor bone
Still I abhor to think she cannot be
For when our bodies rot beyond life’s span
Our substance is no more than her’s no less
Would we not be content to know we can
Live on in dreams and lives of lovers bless
In thought my fist demands a table’s mass
In dreams I gladly give such thoughts a pass
Twenty-Seven
I spend my time on isolation row
Far far offline without much recompense
It is less harmful than some games I know
And there are times it seems to make good sense
But some days I veer toward a bleak despair
It may be age or ailment creeping on
It would be nice to explicate this Fair
This Midway I have chosen right or wrong
I know what passes muster what does not
I know what I have done and what I’ve lost
I’m far beyond the need to plan and plot
And now I’m forced to contemplate the cost
The cost in dollars is no major thing
The cost in love beyond all reckoning
Twenty-Eight
There is no either-or when I’m with you
We’re eye to eye no tricks or illusions
No yes or no we seem to make it through
Free from the weight of mazelike confusions
Our pasts now fallow as a winter field
And far away as unremembered dreams
Are in dank tombs of recollection sealed
Against the resurrection of extremes
How can this be is this our fabled Nile
Where we float blind to truth on our small barge
Not when I see the light of your first smile
And think of all that does our lives enlarge
This certainty trumps consequence or cost
For either you love me or I am lost
Twenty-Nine
Our Father Abba friend a unity
You call us to this confident address
No airs no display no formality
No creeds no catechisms to confess
It is as if we had a common friend
As near to us as speech heartbeat and breath
And yes as if religion’s at an end
With we the witnesses to its sweet death
Not long ago the Waldorf played host to
The cream of world religion’s hefty crop
They did what world religionists will do
Left with a statement from their mountaintop
Much better simply to befriend this name
Vouchsafed by him who to our rescue came
Thirty
Who art are words King James’ translators wrote
And we can parse their meanings easily
The Who a Person clearly does denote
The art denotes the present perfectly
Who is no vanished Lord or ancient King
Art means not then or when but here and now
Our Abba is a Person listening
Our Abba to whom every head should bow
Some say that God is dead some say severe
Some do not care some speak His name in vain
Some claim His favor bad intent to clear
Then spread their evil death mayhem and pain
Jesus told us to pray a simple prayer
Addressed to one close by and always there
Thirty-One
Heaven is where Abba is always
And Jesus said Abba is close at hand
Which means that we can embrace heaven’s ways
As we can hear and see and understand
We turn within and find that heaven’s there
We speak the name of Abba we are moved
An energy beyond all we might dare
Each time it comes Abba’s presence is proved
Heaven might be beyond our universe
Heaven might be our most amazing dream
Heaven might save us from the primal curse
Heaven might be the crystal fountain’s stream
The heaven that is most real is revealed
When Abba’s home within us is unsealed
Thirty-Two
Thy kingdom come harks back to royalty
Perhaps we think the phrase can be skipped o’er
We might say progress look democracy
Must we go back to monarchy once more
First off let’s cut this meaning to the chase
No earthly form of government will do
No worldly realm is run by faith and grace
Yet that’s the way that Jesus calls us to
Thy kingdom come means simply let it be
Come Abba liberate us from our hates
Let love and goodness be our polity
Teach us each day to breach the kingdom’s gates
We have a star a a goal a call a way
The heavening of earth for which we pray
Thirty-Three
Thy will be done are we familiar now
This Thy is closer than the plural You
Thy will suggests we need not scrape or bow
Instead we simply have some work to do
For now it seems that Thy will can be known
It is not veiled by clouds or hid in fire
The seeds of purpose are now being sown
Can we create the goodness we desire
Thy will be done on earth the wording goes
A partnership a covenant a way
Till mercy like a mighty river flows
Till only reciprocity holds sway
If we but pray this prayer and understand
We shall not fail when Abba holds our hand
Thirty-Four
We pray On earth just as it is in heaven
Thy will be done yes in this world of ours
You teach us to become a subtle leaven
Transforming principalities and powers
Still now as then it seems division rules
Raw conflict animates our thoughts and deeds
The ways of Jesus are called ways of fools
And thus the world rejects what it most needs
But are we not to stand by what we say
Bring heaven on it is our destiny
Your heavenly will on earth just as we pray
Come from this hoary conflict set us free
If we reject your singular intent
Then we reject all that is heaven sent
Thirty-Five
Give us — Abba you give us everything
In your abundance is no scarcity
The ill we do the ugly songs we sing
Merely reveal how little we can see
How little we believe you give us all
And save us from raw greed and envy’s yoke
Yet just as you know every sparrow’s fall
You know our prayer before a word is spoke
Our give us signifies our turn to you
As source of everything that we might need
Our give us marks a faith that pushes through
And grows and grows just like a mustard seed
Give us — such fine presumption this fine prayer
It might convince us we can walk on air
Thirty-Six
This day give us this day this day we say
Not yesterday and not tomorrow no
But only for this present do we pray
That Abba’s generosity will flow
Sufficient to this day our course is set
And we see each and every day as new
The past we can forgive if not forget
Sufficient to this day is all we do
The reason is not hard to understand
Try as we may the past will not be changed
And if a better future we demand
It surely starts with how this day’s arranged
All things we need right now are in this prayer
Today’s the day we seek our Abba’s care
Thirty-Seven
Our daily bread means what we need to live
It comes from Abba to us when we pray
Our daily bread we pray Abba will give
Our sustenance to help us on our way
If we are weak in body bread is food
If weak in spirit spirit’s what we need
This sustenance disperses the bad mood
And modifies concupiscence and greed
If daily we do not make this request
We lose ourselves on desolation’s path
Forgetting we live at Abba’s behest
And seeing out bleak rage as Abba’s wrath
Still Abba wills we have this daily bread
For thus our bodies and our souls are fed
Thirty-Eight
Our lead-us-not means we are taking hold
We trust that Abba now will be our guide
We shall not be led so far from the fold
That tempted we succomb to evil’s tide
In this most faithful prayer we show our will
To name temptations and to speak our no
For now we know that we can drink our fill
At Abba’s well whence healing waters flow
Mmight we slough off addiction with such ease
A million testimonies answer yes
Our lead-us-not creates a force that frees
Our wills the will of Abba to profess
When we hold to this will we hold the prize
And thus we shall defeat temptation’s lies
Thirty-Nine
Into temptation that’s a place it seems
In heart or mind or in our world somewhere
In scenes in memories or haunting dreams
But why would Abba have us wander there
I think these words tell us Abba would not
Abba would not have us so sorely tried
So we ask to be shielded from the plot
That ends up by accepting what’s denied
Temptation is pervasive we are weak
And hand in hand with evil it destroys
The very fabric of the life we seek
Until captivity defeats all joys
Abba will lead us if we ask him to
So in this prayer we simply say what’s true
Forty
Deliver us we pray deliverance
Come rescue us come carry us away
This life of ours would be a sorry dance
If Abba did not love us all the way
Earth is a testing ground a fallen place
So beautiful so fraught with endless threats
That if we could not call on Abba’s grace
We would be left with nothing but regrets
To pray thus is to face things honestly
In the same breath we say thy will be done
Abba’s strong hand holds ours eternally
Our guarantor none other than his son
Here midst the principalities and powers
We have a way beyond all falling towers
Forty-One
Deliver us from evil is the phrase
That likely ends the prayer that Jesus taught
The added words appropriate to praise
May be a later gloss an afterthought
In Mark from evil is the final plea
As well it should be evil is a force
Of such great power it dwarfs the raging sea
And drives all goodness from its loving course
This prayer alone is our most sure defense
Against temptation’s grasp and evil’s end
Without it we are lost bereft of sense
This prayer alone all rules of loss can bend
This bending is the way of Abba’s son
And with these words the battle can be won
Coda
The Lord’s Prayer Song
Abba whose home in heaven is
Hallowed and holy is your name
Let your realm come your will be done
TYill earth and heaven are the same
