Sonnet Challenge #39

Some things just fall out of the end of the pen…..

When I’m dead

You’ll be the first I’ll visit when I’m dead.
I guess that you’ll be waiting there for me
and we can say all that we’ve left unsaid
about things that were never meant to be.
You’ll get the joke I never did tell right,
unless we’re in a place jokes can’t be told.
You’ll know that fuss I made was not a fight,
and love that would have stayed as we grow old –
because it did, despite lives that diverged
for reasons that need never be explained.
Each time I thought of death, my feelings surged
that it would be when I see you again.
You’ll be the first I’ll visit when I’m through
and then you’ll know I wrote this one for you.

Sonnet Challenge #24

My friend and neighbor Bob and I usually get into some kind of philosophical discussion over dinner.  He usually comes to dinner on Mondays but he’s snowbirding at the moment so I get a few months off from trying to cook the healthy stuff he needs to eat.  A few weeks ago he was talking about visiting the graves of friends and relatives who have gone on to the next plane.  He said “I know they’re not there, but it’s like the last place they were, and it helps me to focus on ‘visiting’ with them.”  We both knew a sonnet was inevitable from that conversation.

Standing at your grave
Standing at your grave, you are not here.

Though bone or ash remains, your spirit’s flown;

and yet I came to visit one who’s dear

but taken flight.  This, your departure lounge,

a hollow hall where I can stand and wave

and visit memories you left behind.

It’s mostly when I stand here at your grave

the things you were come easily to mind

for me.  I know you wait ahead

with your side of the story that we are.

I’ll finish mine and see you when I’m dead,

where there’s no time and distances aren’t far

But now, beside your grave, I miss your face

and wish somehow you were here in this place.

Sonnet Challenge #14

This is the last one in the series suggested by Eric in Ventura.  His phrase was:This is the last one in the series suggested by Eric in Ventura.  His phrase was:”The attic, grandma’s art hidden behind the attic crawl space”
Having gotten close to the end of the list of suggestions, I’ve been working off on my own for a while.  I completed six sonnets on the weekend during quiet moments at the art fair and I’m now over the 100 mark!
Grandma’s attic
It’s an expected death, but still, she’s gone –

in heaven with Grandpa – her life love – again

and now it’s up to us to clear the home.

Sixty years of chatchkis, what a pain!

The auctioneer comes first and takes the best.

Next the ebay guy, then Goodwill runs,

and lastly to the dump with all the rest

but family albums.  Oh!  The attic’s full

of paintings!  Whose are these?  My God, they’re hers!

We’d no idea she was so good at art.

And dates! She’d painted in her youth for years,

but none since when our Grandpa stole her heart.

So sad, on these walls only now we see t

he artist her life wouldn’t let her be.

Sonnet Challenge #8

Another one from San Diego fan’s amazing imagination.  “Response to someone who wants to have their body cryogenically frozen after death”.  By the way, I’ve now gotten past half way to writing more sonnets than the Bard.  If anyone reading these has some more challenge subjects they’d like to suggest, I’m open to options.

Stone Cold.

Do you anticipate you’ll go to hell

and think your soul might just get frozen in

your body? Did you have a life of sin

that makes you feel you really might as well

just stay here?  You won’t bet on where you’ll be

upstairs or down?  Or do you disbelieve

in afterlife or relife – no reprieve

from non-existence? No eternity

for you.  You want to stay here in this flesh,

a jail whose rotting walls are stuck in time

by coldness, ’til the statute of your crime

has run and you can start your life afresh.

How little faith that you would want to stay

When heaven’s just a last heartbeat away.