Two Poems By Sean Patrick

Sonnet from a body

Dreams are a lie that consciousness has told 
to give it comfort in the span of sleep: 
for in their absence, death has taken hold, 
as far as notions that the mind may keep. 

When thought is gone, what innocence remains? 

The corpse persists – the anima has fled – 
to leave behind an empty nest of brains. 
To think that I have spent a night in bed, 
the continuity of me derailed 
by death, so far as thinking was concerned! 

My body, where my spirit was impaled, 
has rested soundly – by mind’s absence learned 
that it is being’s true home, not petty thought. 
We are our bodies, much as we wish not. 

Sonnet for a context

Sometimes I am a bubble floating in 
and popped by present moment’s piercing need: 
I’m newborn, having neither thought nor sin. 
Until an instant traps me, I am freed. 

And when the context catches up with me, 
it pins me to a present tense with doubt: 
Am I more than a moment? Can I be 
the history my brain churns and spits out? 

Or was I cultured on a slice of time, 
a Petri dish of my forgetfulness, 
and is this déjà vu I feel a rhyme 
heard soft, the squealing screwing of a press 
that laminates my life in “now” and “then”? 
I thought this once, but can’t remember when. 

Sean Patrick is a scientist and sonnet aficionado. Their poetry has appeared in Grand Little Things, UniVerses, Blue Unicorn, and Lavender Lime Literary.