Sonnet 9

  • Bugle the horn and await my return,
  • Make sure to play a somber mellow note.
  • This departure soft harks a slow sojourn,
  • Amidst darkness a life to learn by rote,
  • A dire dwelt bond upon nothing it seems,
  • Unfelt atonement abruptly avast,
  • In svelte remission to negate dead beams,
  • And welt from recollection of lives past,
  • In faith I forwardly lend my moth gaze,
  • To make amends with those I since trespassed,
  • Lest treading sets my soul blindly ablaze,
  • My heart will land on reclaimed soil at last,
  • Unsighted odysseys steer ruse aband,
  • Distilling rife to instill draft reman.

Notes

I was doing a little reading early in the morning at a Starbucks near UCI and decided to audition Sufjan Stevens' "Greetings From Michigan, The Great Lake State" album. Bad move for my productivity, good move for the purpose of this site. The first track, "Flint (For The Unemployed And Underpaid)", got me writing this sonnet, especially the horns and soft piano melody. I'm a bit surprised with the outcome, granted this was my first listen to the album, but I guess the track title (and content) is relevant to my current state of employment, thus emploring me to write. And slightly offnote, the cutest little girl with yellow heart-shaped glasses was romping around the Starbucks with her loving parents shortly after I started this piece.

I was thinking of George Washington for one reason or another while I was applying some imagery/symbolism to this piece, and corrolatively on burial by sea. There's a calm morbid elegance to the whole process, both in procedure and meaning. So there's a lot of reference to sea travel and things of that sort. And "svelte remission" is an awesome term now that I think about it, and so is the last line altogether. I'm very satisfied with this piece.

— Huy on