Sonnet 1 The lantern shivers on the hallway wall. Its trembling flame rehearses with the dark. A hush collects, a whisper, thin and small; The rafters echo, ember-breaths remark. The door is closed but leans into the ear; Its hinges know the grammar of a sigh. A clock forgets the shape of passing year; Its hands are brittle bones that cannot lie. The mirror grows a frost against its face. A silver silence, bruised with distant rain. The stairwell dreams a downward, endless place. Its spiral tightens knots of sleep and pain. What lingers waits behind each latch and seam. A house that learns to speak within a dream. Sonnet 2 A house that learns to speak within a dream Will mutter truths it hides in waking hours. Its floorboards creak like thought’s unfinished scheme. Its windows weep with unremembered powers. The attic’s breath is candled into smoke. The cellar drinks its rust from iron veins. Each corridor rehearses what is broke. Each shadow hums the tally of remains. The walls are written full of names half-known. Their syllables grow pale against the stone. The bed repeats the posture carved in bone. Its mattress sunk by sleepers left alone. The house composes histories that gleam. A choir of silence stitched into a dream. Sonnet 3 A choir of silence stitched into a dream Resounds like bells beneath the tongue of night. It builds a hymn from dust, a thread of steam. A psalm that turns the darkened air to light. Yet no one sings; the silence sings instead. A fugue of absence curling into air. It circles round the sleepers in their bed. A wreath of echoes tightened by despair. The silence grows until the rafters bend. Until the floorboards splinter with its weight. It gathers time but cannot make it end. It gathers prayers that cannot change their fate. The silence settles cold as winter’s seam. A shadow folded tight around a dream. Sonnet 4 A shadow folded tight around a dream Resembles cloth that shrouds a vanished face. It carries secrets no one else can deem. It stains the night with residue of place. The curtains shift but never catch the breeze. The candlesticks remember vanished fire. A ledger marks the tally of disease. A coffin writes the silence of desire. The shadow holds a labyrinth of rooms. Their doors unlatched but leading into same. It fills the lungs with perfumed, choking blooms. It brands the walls with one repeating name. The shadow keeps its vigil, dark, extreme. A figure watching from within the dream. Sonnet 5 A figure watching from within the dream Emerges pale, a statue come to breathe. It flickers where the candle lost its gleam. It lingers where the clock has spun its wreath. Its voice is parchment rustled into ash. Its eyes are mirrors clouded over frost. It moves through hallways like a sudden flash. It counts the hours every sleeper lost. It does not strike, it only waits to see. Its patience sharper than a sharpened knife. It hums the notes of some half-faded plea. It measures pulse against the shape of life. The watcher holds the world inside its scheme. A lantern guttering along the dream. Sonnet 6 A lantern guttering along the dream Remembers every room it once has lit. Its wick is thin, its flame a withered gleam. Its body cracked but still refusing quit. It paints the ceiling with a trembling hand. It scrawls the rafters into moving script. It drips its wax across the ashen sand. It staggers though its handle has been gripped. The lantern shows the faces on the wall. The figures scratched in soot across the stone. It teaches that the shadow owns it all. It tells the sleeper they are not alone. It flickers out, as all things fade to seem. The lantern shivers on the hallway wall. Sonnet 7 The lantern shivers on the hallway wall. A house that learns to speak within a dream. A choir of silence stitched into a dream. A shadow folded tight around a dream. A candle drips its wax into a dream. A room hiding a painful dream. A knife healing a bloody past dream. A bone shattering the last dream. A box containing suffocating dreams. A clock ticking away every dream. A figure watching from within the dream. A lantern guttering along the dream. Each circle binds, each echo calls the seam. The labyrinth sustains itself in dream.
recently I was trying out new forms, this is a crown of sonnets!
