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    AC Benus
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Stories 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 - 48. bronze

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Sonnet No. 95

 

We are only made of matter that dies,

Of bones and marrow; of skull and of brains;

And every thought we had will end in sighs,

As those who bury us mourn our remains.

A Roman mosaic of a skeleton

Shows him toasting fate with pitchers of wine –

His memento mori is a ghastly grin

To remind we toil under a heavy fine.

But, finite as the threat hangs on our head,

Our necks are blessed with freedom, and with choice,

For those who have loved can never be dead,

And their thoughts will ever find living voice.

Horace said monumentum aere perennius,

And meant Love is the bronze tough enough to preserve us.

 

 

Sonnet No. 96

 

The fever may break, but my body's weak –

Racked with fatigue; parched in mouth and spirit;

Thinking in all things I have passed my peak,

If my stubborn will can let me hear it.

Donnie Darko came from Netflix, and now

I have two choices; to watch, or send back.

If that film's darkness I will allow,

Like-cures-like, my sadness it might attack.

No one knows what the day will bring along,

What thoughts or portents we may encounter,

But for this heart, it still carries one song –

And your love inspires its accounter.

Yet fevered of mind, and weak of body,

Your smile predicts my sole recovery.

 

 

_

Copyright © 2018 AC Benus; All Rights Reserved.
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Stories 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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Both of these are wonderful.  I love this from  95:   For those who have loved can never be dead,  And their thoughts will ever find living voice.

 

Wonderful, AC.

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I’ll add my voice to @Mikiesboy, these are both quite marvelous. Number 95 is especially so. The final couplet echoes in my mind, as does the third quatrain which changes the whole tenor the poem. I really like how our necks are blessed.

 

Number 96 brings us back to present days, to the immediate. Yet is none the less profound for that. I’m struck by how much hope and love can battle darkness and unease in this. 

 

Thank you for both of these. 

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Love is the bronze tough enough to preserve us. A lovely thought - but in whose heart? That is the great and heavy question we all bear.

 

As for Donnie Darko - one must be in the right frame of mind to grasp it. Even then, it's obscure, grim and a little manic. But I rather like the idea that we each have portals to guide us through time, connecting us, fulfilling our purpose in whatever form that is, life or death.

 

Thank you for sharing these two sonnets with us. I am moved by both.

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7 hours ago, MacGreg said:

Love is the bronze tough enough to preserve us. A lovely thought - but in whose heart? That is the great and heavy question

we all bear.

 

 

 

i think the hearts of all who we love and who love us. Some of us will have one great love, others of us many. But it's all love, isn't it? We will be in all those hearts, just as they are in ours, i think.

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i really like these two AC.

but even though i've read them several times, i just can't put my finger on WHY

there are parts of each that speak loudly to me, the rest is whispers that are just out of hearing range

 

as with all of your work, i can't tell you how much i appreciate you sharing them with us 

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On 9/17/2018 at 5:00 PM, Mikiesboy said:

Both of these are wonderful.  I love this from  95:   For those who have loved can never be dead,  And their thoughts will ever find living voice.

 

Wonderful, AC.

Thank you, Tim. I'm not the kind of poet who learns to recite my own work -- as I mainly write to forget things, not conjure them up at will -- but with No. 95 I can almost speak the whole from memory. I think it's special too.

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts once more :)  

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On 9/17/2018 at 5:12 PM, Parker Owens said:

I’ll add my voice to @Mikiesboy, these are both quite marvelous. Number 95 is especially so. The final couplet echoes in my mind, as does the third quatrain which changes the whole tenor the poem. I really like how our necks are blessed.

 

Number 96 brings us back to present days, to the immediate. Yet is none the less profound for that. I’m struck by how much hope and love can battle darkness and unease in this. 

 

Thank you for both of these. 

Thank you, Parker. You mention the neck thing, so I hope for others it brings up similar images as in my own head. I see hugs; big broad one encompassing the friend's/beloved's neck and shoulders. I see the glinting chain of a love token descending around the neck from a loved one; and happy, teary eyes watching from the inside. I see bravery sticking out its neck and denying the too-often held cliche in the oppressive straight mind that we are cowards, that we will not stand up for each other or those we love. 

 

As always, dear friend, thanks for sharing your thoughts with me.    

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On 9/17/2018 at 8:51 PM, MacGreg said:

Love is the bronze tough enough to preserve us. A lovely thought - but in whose heart? That is the great and heavy question we all bear.

 

As for Donnie Darko - one must be in the right frame of mind to grasp it. Even then, it's obscure, grim and a little manic. But I rather like the idea that we each have portals to guide us through time, connecting us, fulfilling our purpose in whatever form that is, life or death.

 

Thank you for sharing these two sonnets with us. I am moved by both.

Thank you, Mac. To answer your first question, in the rhetorical style of the Early-Modern Age, I'd say the eyes of future people who will read these poems. The tie-in to Horace is slightly personal for me, for though gone 2,000 years already, I find his poetry to be immediate and Zen-like. Ergo, he's one of my favorites :)

 

In regards to the film, I feel it's very poetic. It's also historic in a way, for if I remember correctly, it was scheduled to be released in September 2001. Because of the events on the 11th of that month, and the film featuring a horrifying plane crash, the movie was delayed and then released as a 'tax-loss' (i.e., received no advertising from the studio). Slowly on DVD the film became the cult classic it is as well as the emblem of the horrific turn all our futures had suddenly taken. 

 

But, when you say my poems moved you, that is the best feedback I can get. Thanks once again!

 

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On 9/18/2018 at 4:05 AM, Mikiesboy said:

 

i think the hearts of all who we love and who love us. Some of us will have one great love, others of us many. But it's all love, isn't it? We will be in all those hearts, just as they are in ours, i think.

:) :) :)

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On 9/20/2018 at 5:50 PM, mollyhousemouse said:

i really like these two AC.

but even though i've read them several times, i just can't put my finger on WHY

there are parts of each that speak loudly to me, the rest is whispers that are just out of hearing range

 

as with all of your work, i can't tell you how much i appreciate you sharing them with us 

Thank you, Molly. I'm really glad you had a chance to read these. Please never feel awkward about sharing how a piece of poetry made you feel, even if it's only to say you can't quite put your finger on it. As writers and poets, we all need to know our work gets through, even if it's only subconsciously. Thanks once again for reading and supporting my work. It means a lot to me :) 

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