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    AC Benus
  • AC Benus
  • Author
  • 11/11/2017
  • 235 Words
  • 1,257 Views
  • 8 Comments
Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

One Hundred and Fifty-Five Sonnets - 38. a winter's tale

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Sonnet No. 75

 

Love to ourselves is a gift, that you've said;

We make gift of it to ourselves to choose,

To look at with stagnant, hopeless dread,

And thereby all the best options confuse.

In many ways I treasure your laptop,

It is a lifeline and a link between

Those impulses you have to simply stop,

And your desires to me that careen.

You say ours is too beautiful to live,

But you know it has already survived

All the cruel torment a cold world can give,

And through our joined suffering it has thrived.

You choose to love me every day, I know,

And what links us can sorrow overthrow.

 

 

Sonnet No. 76

 

Your skin is like molten alabaster,

Pygmalion pure; I've whispered in your ear,

And your animation soothes disaster

That stalked us with lupine menace and fear.

For our Winter's Tale will be one of heat,

Where mistakes are set aside by firelight,

And feet and shoulders are bundled complete,

In peace and warmth to see us through the night.

To touch your purity, and stroke your skin,

Heals all wounds we think we have inflicted –

For the cover we wear clears us of our sin,

And flesh-to-flesh, Love's blessing is predicted.

With hand on heart, from us dear life redeems;

Love warms our numbness, and no more stone seems.

 

 

_

Copyright © 2018 AC Benus; All Rights Reserved.
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  • Love 6
Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
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Chapter Comments

Parker Owens

Number 75 fills me with melancholy. For all the love described, there is the undercurrent of brokenness to counter it. You maintain this tension beautifully throughout. The final couplet confirms how fragile connections and love appear to be. Number 76 appeals directly to my senses. I can feel my fingers on perfectly smooth stone, warming to perfectly smooth skin; the moment of stretching out and and the time of being bundled - those times when our own stone turns to real flesh, and we become fully ourselves again. I am delighted with number 76, even as number 75 makes me apprehensive.

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deville

Number 75 has a strength to it , one that is tempered by fragility and doubt, a strength that has survived , is wiser and has recognized it is born of and survived through communication. Number 76 , hints at expectation and performance whether unreasonable or not , and that when we are together we are more than rigid Stoney perfection , but flesh and skin and emotion. 

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AC Benus
On 11/11/2017 at 9:20 AM, Parker Owens said:

Number 75 fills me with melancholy. For all the love described, there is the undercurrent of brokenness to counter it. You maintain this tension beautifully throughout. The final couplet confirms how fragile connections and love appear to be. Number 76 appeals directly to my senses. I can feel my fingers on perfectly smooth stone, warming to perfectly smooth skin; the moment of stretching out and and the time of being bundled - those times when our own stone turns to real flesh, and we become fully ourselves again. I am delighted with number 76, even as number 75 makes me apprehensive.

Thank you, Parker. Brokenness is pretty apt, or some approximation of the process of feeling trusted again (or that you can trust the beloved).

 

I was quite fond of No. 76 when I wrote it. It felt its particular style was a shift poetically, and many of the later Sonnets have a similar arrangement of theme and resolution. This poem also officially ends the 'rough patch.' No more hard feeling will appear in the Tony Sonnets :) 

 

 

AC Benus
On 11/11/2017 at 7:05 PM, deville said:

Number 75 has a strength to it , one that is tempered by fragility and doubt, a strength that has survived , is wiser and has recognized it is born of and survived through communication. Number 76 , hints at expectation and performance whether unreasonable or not , and that when we are together we are more than rigid Stoney perfection , but flesh and skin and emotion. 

Thank you, deville. I appreciate your take on No. 75, particularly the notions of fragility, doubt, and survivor's strength. 

 

Your comments on No. 76 are beautiful. Yes, too much time can be lost in idolization. It's connection - I've found - that truly brings conceptions to life. 

 

Thanks again :)

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AC Benus
15 hours ago, Mikiesboy said:

relationships, communication via words on a computer .. tenuous at best and misunderstandings abound. yet in some ways it can be a beautiful thing, letting us see each other, with out the physical.

 

The second is about the physical, beauty and love and how love can warm and reach even the hardest of hearts. 

Thank you again, Tim. Perhaps there's a stage of development when younger people fist begin to get online these days. It's something I never considered before your review, but perhaps part of the maturing process (electronically) involves the sudden insight that the other person at the end of the e-line is real. Perhaps, a flash happens, and they grow up when they come upon the obvious: their words matter; their feelings are real.

 

I think both of these poems skirt around these issues.

 

Thanks again for your comments, and warm support of my work. Muah.  

  • Love 1
AC Benus
15 hours ago, BDANR said:

The wording in Sonnet 76 was evocative. Your description of the individual is powerful and I liked your use of heat and touch.

 

Sonnet 75. This line: And what links us can sorrow overthrow. Beautiful. I appreciate how the both of you find resilience and strength being with one another.

 

Thank you for these AC :D!

- Bryant

Thanks, Bryant! For 76, I hone in on the word individual and feel good. I think you hit upon one of the themes running through many of these poems; one being two; two rejoining as one. At least your comments made me feel this way, which is great.  

 

As for No. 75, I'll take beautiful every day of the week, and twice on Sunday :yes:

 

Thank you again!

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