Red Letter Day and South American Spice

Red Letter Day and South American Spice

Today I spooled out sonnets, sonnets, ten

Of them, extruding all like plastic knives,

Or forks, or spoons.  They spilled again, again,

Again as boring as Solomon’s wives

Became to him, perhaps, each plaything thin

As plastic handles while the nights wore on . . .

Each tasting like an ever new King Sin,

All building towards a climax in the dawn.

The point is not the red, more scarlet than

A poet or a monarch on his throne

Might hope for, maybe more like any man

Could never dream of, more like thrilling moan.

  The cluster of this rhythmic, rhyming ten

    For some tastes hot, as fieriest cayenne.

Phillip Whidden