mutant sonnet (extra feet)
when i was young and lived across town from my beloved,
at night i would walk out and look at the sky and know
that star-swathed moon-graced planet-strewn arch above
gazed down on my beloved as she slept or dreamed below.
older, i and my distant beloved spoke on telephones.
i imagined we both closed our eyes, as i did, to float
in dazzling cavernous meditative space, although alone,
conjoined in echoing chord, each voice donating a note.
and later, my far beloved i addressed through letters.
while composing, and while awaiting reply, that space
now mediated by no moon nor wire where we, together,
mutually contemplate, abide, converse, an implied grace.
learned sufi poets call beloved their coy elusive gnosis,
find in every moon face tone intimation of the divine,
scry their lifelong jubilant quest with grim obsessive focus;
see in my composite beloved divinity similarly sublime:
no secret sacred ethereal space exists for us to meet,
beloved, idealized fantasy no mortal woman could be.
by the same token, those, who have at times animated
my muse-beloved, they were no gods, offered no satori.
and these, the words fanatic i address fantastic her:
beloved, floating in the graceful luminous airs of
transcendent contemplation, these graceless words are
not love poems to women; they are clumsy prayers.