Sonnet 215

On March 31, 2019October 17, 2025 By Loubert S SuddabyIn PoemsLeave a comment

In truth, you would beseech me endlessly,
Your guilt a heavy stone upon my breast.
A child of love you wished to thus conceive,
A secret trust that no one ever guess.
No obligation—none—you staunch did swear;
No ties, no tasks, no burdens to confound;
Just you, your child, and hope to here forbear,
And I a memory lost, my life unbound.
No simple matter to unyoke a heart,

Yet there to leave a shackled soul to roam;
Though I, in pleasured moment play my part,
And so condemn my conscience to a tomb.
A life so precious must spring forth from love—
Or I stand dastard damned with naught to prove.

The Empress’s Clothes

On March 31, 2019August 13, 2023 By Loubert S SuddabyIn PoemsLeave a comment

A woman’s geography’s
Considered pornography
So everywhere that she goes.

She’s constrained unto modesty
So many times all that we see
Is face, fingers, hands, arms and toes.

A blatant indignity
At least at the beach where might be-
A veritable lacking of robes.

There strident ‘don’t look at me’
Undresses hypocrisy-
As all parts once hidden now show.

This seems pure inequity
Or at least rank false piety…
For empresses sometimes sport clothes.

Sonnet 214

On March 30, 2019October 17, 2025 By Loubert S SuddabyIn PoemsLeave a comment

What is true love? Perhaps not ever after;

Does it survive beyond the beating heart?

When souls dissolve to thin and vaporous matter

Does love so tarry, or with souls depart?

What essence yet lives on in memory

To tempt sweet tears or smiles thought may bring?

And when dear voices into darkness flee,

What forces raise their echoes on the wind?

Does love then fade like music in a room

Or yet like perfume on a bridal gown,

Evanesce as light trapped in a tomb

Or wane like haunting bagpipe dirges blown?

In hope love lingers ever and beyond,

So says my prayer, here captured in this song.

Sonnet 213

On March 24, 2019October 17, 2025 By Loubert S SuddabyIn PoemsLeave a comment

I remember us speaking when you returned,
Yet we spoke not of your most rank deceit,
Preferring platitudes, as if we’d learned
That biting rancour thrives on harsh critique.
Deft words did probe my heart as if to find
Perhaps some ember left in ashes grey—
A little spark or glow love left behind,
That breath might stir to flame, and light the way.
Puffery was wasted, the hearth stayed cold—
Stone cold, without a glim of hope afore;
And where once smarm could rattle dying coals
Into a raging pyre, now here no more.
This love, black cinders where no Phoenix lives:
Five hundred years or more could not forgive.

Sonnet 212

On March 10, 2019October 17, 2025 By Loubert S SuddabyIn PoemsLeave a comment

These pleasures of the flesh, my soul decry,
Yet powerless I am to thwart their throes;
And of us two, which one by strength decides
To embrace honor and make lust our foe?
All wrongs seem right when you are in my arms;
What vows of truth should we not then amend?
Our passion brief—wherein would lie the harm
If come the morrow, we to truth commend?
My hunger for your body wracks my soul;
Your lips inflame me with a madness sweet;
Your warm caresses all my heart cajoles—
All mortal reason vanquished in defeat.
No gods or demons could this fervor quell,
As we transgress the fiery gates of hell.