Seven Sonnets
George Kinney
(Summer, 1979)
Sonnet #1
A summer's day? Why choose a thing so dry?
Sweet William’s pen wrote not in th is our land
And time has changed and rearranged the lie;
But still we search and wonder by his hand.
Beauty beheld is at what distance lost?
Yet seen too close is blurs and soon has died,
But a song unsung is a late spring frost:
How can love be, yet be to me denied?
Shall I not admire one so fair as you?
You stand well-placed in lofty citadels,
No lower one could thus discern your hue,
Yet I, misplaced, cannot now love you well:
Ages hence?
Dear soul you will living be
And these kind words shall e’er attend to thee.
Sonnet #2
So brave and strong, secure in your repose;
content, yet breathing life you do not hide
As those afraid to live their cherished prose.
Who has the grace to know your tender side?
I only dare to think of you as Life,
soft rain, warm fire, and early morning sun;
I pass away the day in sweet delight,
Embracing foolish dreams of us as one.
But now I go too far: I dare not play
With words so frail and open to mistrust;
What honorable thing is left to say?
If feeling there is, then feel it I must.
What light could shine to a radiant star?
That light would now be with you where you are.
Sonnet #3
These lines must read as fine as fine can be;
Something less would not justify your time.
From page to eye, the heart and mind must see
Not just another drunkard's wasted wine.
Hidden meaning is too often not found,
And vanities are useless to the soul;
Better to simple, gentle love resound
And turn a loving cup into a bowl.
A thin line divides worthy praise from lust,
Yet my picture of you remains divine
Even if images return to dust:
Beyond your acts I toward your soul incline.
No all or everything I ask of thee,
Just those gifts you wi9ll gladly give to me.
Sonnet #4
How easily and quick new love doth change,
Dispersing into imagination,
Falling to obscure mini-minds whose range
Assumes, and th en destroys revelation.
The tide is in in the affairs of me,
And I sense a new sensuality;
Vague, salty, and deep, this illusive sea,
Yet real, breathing life to reality.
A poet, not a lie, I offer you;
My friends are mostly two hundred years gone;
But you remain to battle time anew,
And though you falter, you still carry on.
None other has championed me like you do;
Cultivate your discovery: I'm you.
Sonnet #5
I think it's fine, sublime, and endearing
To make love and lay my troubles to rest;
Being with you can't help but remind me;
Paradise losing is what I do best.
Turning time—point, line, surface to solid,
Takes more, sweet friend, than a talented hand
Or a heart full of love and belonging,
Or a mirror in the room where we stand.
I now must educate my pen to write
Beyond the limits of my heart alone;
The practical, reshape to the ideal,
Or is is it visa versa that it is Donne?
Plato, Milton, Bacon, Kant, and Locke, too;
What Ouspenski found, the wise Gurdjieff knew.
Sonnet #7
How can a bottle of wine be empty?
Have I really become that pedantic?
Yet I long for your sweet love to tempt me,
And I beg of my mind a new antic.
How binding is a long broken contract?
Has loving been ordained to pass me by?
Then what o\are these wings for, if not to fly?
Kurtesy, I fear I have forsaken--
A gentleman must bring more than flowers;
It has to do with how it is taken,
If primroses and daisies have powers.
But for liberties taken by my wives,
Jealously has portrayed me as unwise.
Seven wishes, each from the same heart;
Seven dreams emerging from one sleepless mind;
Seven portraits detailing fuller image;
Seven full moons have appeared in time.
Seven notes, not yet an octave;
The eighth is your heart finding mine.
Your Secret Is Safe
George Kinney
(1979)
Weather and season, beyond my reason.
Altered; torn; dead; reborn
Mind and soul opposing?
Song without voice; design with no strong builder.
Pen; sword; devil; lord...
I stand neither slain nor wiser.
A five pointed star; five wheels on a car,
Scattered from here to there.
Levels and stages; separate pages;
Is one of our virtues a spare?
Atom traces, changing places;
Stone from sand, here we stand,
The relics of our unknown future.
The shoreline of discovery, a miracle recovery;
Heaven showers, mental powers;
Youth, the noble victim of time.
Secret longing, sweet belonging;
Now and then, time and again;
Your whisper cruel, but inspiring.]
Faith and love, beautiful blindness;
Joy and mirth, incompatible with earth...
Your secret is safe.
Love Me Now
George Kinney
Love me now, for t here is no tomorrow,
Only an unknown number of todays perceived in succession.
Love me now:
Waiting, in view of what is real in us, is not right;
We are not of the future,
Our time is now; later never comes;
We know not of another dawn.
This is our light; we are here together.
True visions are insight, not longing for what is not;
Being alive while living—developing our memory of the present.
Love me now, my love,
This evasive and disappearing phantom we call life-in-time is illusion.
Within its realm, the beautiful becomes hideous,
And even the strong are crushed without honor.
Slayer, taker of life, giver of sorrow,
The view you would have us hold is a lie.
Love me now, for only in our embrace do I sense eternity;
Only from the wetness of our morning dew
Does the wter of life find me.
Only you know my heart;
Time is not ours to control;
It obeys neither our pleading nor our demands;
It does not feel our love,
Nor does it understand our striving to survive;
We cannot count on time to fulfill us.
Love me now;
We know not of perfect and eternal bodies,
Our only clarity and well-being depend upon what is happening now;
Our only peace reveals itself in the present to comfort us.
The chaotic passage of time must become still;
the opportunity to feel is easily lost in t he onslaught of moving images.
Distant dreams of paradise as a spiritual future
Are graven images contrived by our own minds
As an escape from confronting life with painful bravery,
Concealing from us whatever truth may be possible to understand.
Are we to become invisible?
Or shall we rather choose to cling to yet another rotting log for buoyancy?
Love me now, for we are the only forever, each unto ourselves and yet together
In accordance with our lives' desire.
A future is not ours to comprehend;
Nuclear physicists and priestly hypocrites...still far from our right or wrong,
For only along selected pathways may we travel safely,
And promises long cannot be preserved by us in any exacting form.
Our hope is not a pictured fantasy dream; our hope is in our memory of the present;
We are alive; love me now; the dawn has slipped away and it is midday.
Just A Thought
George Kinney
I had...nothing to drop out of;
Cheated, in a sense, by already being 'hip'.
I have always been a poet by nature--
An observer of the subtleties of life, thoroughly involved with investigating
and creating images of the invisible side of life through writing.
But I may have by-passed certain important energy sources associated with 'enlightenment'--
Certain psychological shocks designed to inspire genius, true conception,
deep understanding... which is necessarily accompanied by the ability to actually become in practical reality what we touch upon in the realm of insight or revelation
How far from removed is lost?
On Justifying My Life
George Kinney
Living on a windmill; how can it be?
The perplexity of this dream has confused me,
And taken away the warmth and vitality of even the softest, gentlest breeze.
And given to what?
Into what unknown does this moment extend?
A slave to the greatest freedom;
Tempted nto fidelity then held from embracing the truest lover;
Drawn into bondage by my own fate.
Yet by no greater soul have I ever been possessed;
Humanity is contained in m y expression,
but myself I will not free.
What can be the nature of theses illusions?
What can be the purpose of this translucency?
Purgatory unveiled resembles my condition,
For I know far too much to learn;
And what truth I m ay justly claim in consciousness secures itself well beyond my reach.
Such cleverness can only be outdistanced by a profound love for the good in life,
And a totally unaccountable hope for the future.
Recovery
George Kinney
(1979)
Picking up the pieces of a newly broken dawn,
Arranging them i a fresh display;
If time is an ocean, then I'm sailing on,
Away from the memories of a darker day.
The other side of my mind I seek,
An adventure never quite complete,
For things behind from which I flee,
To my surprise, in front I meet.
Still weak from battles lost and won,
Returning home to my someone,
I sought my love and found her gone;
My saddest song yet to be sung.
But from near death, new life can come,
And I from matter still unknown,
Hove forged a life stronger than stone.
I challenge life on open ground,
And trust not vowels, for the strength I've found
Does not depend on sight or sound;
My shape revealed neither square nor round,
In traced cubes and spheres my life abounds.
But now my love has returned, her laughter heard;
My heart is full; darkness absurd!
Does this new purpose transcend all time?
Is true love now destines to be mine?
Can it be held through ages long,
From life to life, from tear to song?
Or, like Adam's dream, ordained to end,
And into tragedy descend;
Either way, I keep a warrior's stance,
And guard this soul throughout the dance.
Never To Return
George Kinney
(2002)
What strange design this world I find,
Wherein I easily pretend
to challenge the devil and all his kind;
Yet fail to touch my ordained friend...
That fair and gentle dove
That from my side has flown,
Now dwells between my love
And every torture known.
Cruel or ignorant, who can say?
Either way the die re cast
A trusting heart is soon betrayed;
Two victims slain... the first and last.
Can war be waged on outer hell
When peace within is not secure?
The plight of warriors' hearts will tell,]
Must nobler friends' deceit endure.
Through pleasure is our treasure sought?
That from the grill to fire we stray,
And by lean emotion our souls are caught;
The strongest love least resistant to decay.
Yet by no other means can this human heart
Be expressed save by grace of being loved;
These troubled minds have no will to start
Toward higher life; we must be shoved.
What eyes have I with which to tell
The just water meant for my lips
From liquid fire sent up from hell
Which in cool disguise invites my sips?
Having no long memory of my own
Past knowledge is small strength to me,
And though it is said in every tongue,
I stand forewarned, but still not free.
One soft, alluring tone,
The voice of nature's intention;
Yet by the same, from what I've known,
I'm deaf to greater dimension.
Whenever restive contentment is felt,
then jeoprady is close at hand,
And at the temple where we knelt
The serpent's fangs are in demand.
Stability in love is effort in vain;
By motion is gravity overcome;
The one who seeks fidelity fines pain,
Having lost what divine favor had won.
A prisoner of Fate, perhaps destined to go;
But never to return? Please tell me no.
A Lover Knows
George Kinney
Oh, Oh my sweetest rose
Oh how deep some sadness goes
How love denied forever grows
These are things a lover knows
The slightest change in countenance
The slightest whisper heard by chance
Most fickle winds forever blow
The are things a lover knows
But, there! Your face is before mine
Your lips are near and mine they find
My hands touch soft your softest hair
Your heart is open, waiting there
The present becomes the world to us
All else dissolves and turns to dust
Our brief eternity comes, and goes
These are things a lover knows
Oh, dear tragedy, on it goes
Gathering up our lives in toll
Reason loses to wine and rolls
These are things a lover knows
Oh, Oh my sweetest rose
Oh how tender tears they flow
Through cruel parting gladness shows
These are things a lover knows.
