A Likely Story: The Manhattan Sonnets

Monday, December 14, 2009

The Manhattan Sonnets - 6

Some nights you stare at me as if I were
  Metal too soft to meddle with, and say,
“Let’s take a rain check on the massacre.
  We’ll do some mischief, dear, some other day.”
And some nights you can see I’m fit to fly
  And hale enough to hazard life and limb,
And so you gentle me into the sky
  Where I will wheel and hover at your whim.
And some nights you’re the one who’s weak and needy –-
  Who trembles like a fawn that’s terrified --
Who looks at me like Dunaway to Beatty
  Before the bullets end Bonnie and Clyde:
     A world-without-end look, as if to say,
     “Come, paltry death -- we two have lived today.”