Sonnet

When the thunder jungled
and the swelter song skipped
I knew the world by the stiches
I had had. When I, too tall for bed,
arched a timelinetablegraph,
avoided the bottom line (the crass
no-face of the dead)
then I became a man.
The kind who can laugh alone
or together or never with crying moans
taste the alkaline bite of truth. The can't
kind who thinks in those,
and is aware of the adamant gate
he builds from a desire to create
a legacy, a continuity whose
kissless kiss the mother stole--
who touchless, touched the sacred fold.