Greenboathouse Books, 2001. ISBN: 0-9685357-7-1. 7 x 7, 24 pages. $8.00 O.O.P.

These poems now appear in Living Will!

Ten of Shakespeare’s sonnets are freed from Shakespeare’s words and forms, to be once again the words of a living man writing out the story of a love affair, in exultation, rage, jealousy, infatuation, shame, joy, despair, and a thousand delicious, intimate details.

125

Do you think I care a rat’s ass for Martha Stewart
and her homes of the rich and famous, or want to thumb
my nose so violently at the status quo that I will go
down in history, which grows shorter by the minute
anyway and is likely to not even outlast my bad reputation?
I’ve seen the ass-lickers that hang around CEOs
go bust by paying too high a price for too few
insider tips and throw themselves from fifty-first
story windows. Traders could have settled for decent
salaries and full benefits, but are now slinging burgers
at MacDonalds, burnt out. No. I’ll wait quietly
in the shadows, thank you very much, until
you notice me and accept me simply, just as I am,
a man with all his faults. In this trade
there’s no chance for profit, time can tick by
all it likes, there is no hidden agenda: we’ll trade
shares in each other one for one. So if you’re going
to spread lies about me, please remember:
true love is least in your control when heaped with slander.

CXXV

Wer’t ought to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honoring,
Or layd great bases for eternity,
Which proues more short then wast or ruining?
Haue I not seene dwellers on forme and fauor
Lose all,and more by paying too much rent
For compound sweet; Forgoing smple sauor,
Pittifull thriuors in their gazing spent.
Noe,let me be obsequious in thy heart,
And take thou my oblacion,poore but free,
Which is not mixt with seconds,knows no art,
But mutuall render onely me for thee.
Hence,thou subbornd Informer, a trew soule
When most impeacht, stands least in thy controule.