Logical Sonnets

Graeme McAllister

Contents 1

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March Movements ………………

Ab Initio Ad Astra ………………

Albert ………………

Evolutionary Exile ………………

Saturn Cycles ………………

Blazing Flame ………………

Black Diamonds ………………

Hawk Mind ………………

System of a Soul ………………

Colour Mirrors ………………

Vision Tunnel ………………

Listen Young Man ………………

Spoken ………………

Memories Meld ………………

Aria’s Awe ………………

Lough and Key ………………

Logical Sonnets

MARCH MOVEMENTS

Quiet blooms flex steel strands

Bending, breaking earthly bones.

Precision moves beneath the sands;

Revealing, raising painted thrones.

Daylight dancer cross the sky,

Shift your veil just to one side.

Golden skin against the grey,

Subtle glimpses tease, entice.

March Movements warm the hands,

Draw curling ciphers from the bones.

Swirling inks extend their strands,

Recalled to warm winter snows.

AB INITIO AD ASTRA

The morning mists that seek a home,

Bind silver shells in ivory domes.

Ab initio ad astra

One circle course with varied scenes,

The roads restart, signpost new dreams.

Ab initio ad astra

Loud, deepening drums pull fast like sails,

Sleepers’ words wander paper trails.

Ab initio ad astra

Held salted seas within these forms,

What golden gains could calm their storms?

Ab initio ad astra

ALBERT

He measured the cosmos in a single sum,

Plotting the patterns woven by light.

He showed them the secrets and he felt delight.

When the world danced to the rhythm of a war drum,

He witnessed the madness of what we’d become.

He said; “I endeavoured to broaden their sight,

But one thousand suns burned and the world turned to night.”

They stop just at the brink of coming undone.

Knowledge climbs quickly but understanding is slow.

All children who run shall eventually fall,

Spinning again, too heedless to remember.

The last generation’s lessons are a distant echo,

As scientists and philosophers follow the call.

What shall we do with the secrets of the Hadron Collider?

EVOLUTIONARY EXILE

Soft chimes play on my ribcage; Neanderthal, alien

That blinking lights can't lull to sleep.

Moves beyond the liquid crystal lens,

3D mediocrity fades out, colours smooth, deep.

Sculpted drumbeats, engraved signals,

Spiral pathways blur the start, the edge.

Memory, sight, reverie; swirl, intermingle,

Ego slips from core to edge.

Ancestral circles and Linked formations

Hold simian shadows, wild, aligned.

Nerves spark, explode; primal constellations

Beyond slowly shrinking carbon cycles.

SATURN CYCLES

As Saturn's cycle reaches its start,

My colliding thoughts race to match the speed,

Of the machines that carry them across the sea.

They seek to separate reality from suggestion,

A quiet voice that echoes a timeless question,

Can Absolution be found in a work of art?

BLAZING FLAME

Egypt’s ancients, paperback mystics,

Such enlightenment to prove.

A quiet fact amongst the physicists

In solid form, we shake, we move.

Diamonds dance in empty hands,

A glimmer in a facial fold,

Heart’s veins aflame with molten strands,

Cherished less than freezing gold.

Paused in position and place,

Electric dancers noted, named.

Sliding into system and shape,

Fact fantastic, blazing flame.

BLACK DIAMONDS

Black diamonds disturbing thinkers

From labours for the masses.

A defiant star, cause, effect, collapses

Illuminated, futile, final answers.

Movements of a million brothers

Elude, taunt the learned classes,

Collected, Questioned, facts statistics.

Relative motion's darkest mirror

Rotation, regression, Illumination, Illusion.

Society strives to bridge, mend

The distance between science and seers

Defiant dancing, effervescing electron.

Answers, answers, the masses demand.

Black diamonds disturbing thinkers.

HAWK MIND

Who writes laws of astral economics

Without a biological insurance policy?

Still, cunning hands play stellar harmonics,

Compose logical sonnets, fractal poetry.

Tracks with patience and ease,

Sparks rush, collide without control.

Symbols flow, slide into the soul,

Passing ghosts; pages remain pure, clean.

Hawking’s mind taking flight

Through infinity? No words describe

Rhythms, pulses; savage, bright.

Inspiring awe, fear in technological tribes.

Time; Predator, chaser, Chronos

Tied in an equation’s subtle elegance.

Clockwork revelry, suggestions of sentience,

Connected, locked; Collected, lost.

SYSTEM OF A SOUL

Hydraulic Hearts and Neural Networks,

In perfect rhythm and Control.

Is the mind controlled by chemicals,

Or do the cells obey the soul?

COLOUR MIRRORS

EYES ABSORB THE CEASELESS SHAPES

PATTERNED WATERS PILE THEIR WAVES,

SIGNALS RUN THE COILING CORRIDORS

TAPESTRIES OF CRAWLING COLOURS

CLOUDS PLOUGH THEIR FORMLESS TERRITORY

ANCIENT STARS SUSPEND THEIR ENTROPY.

THAT SLIP, THAT SPILL IN OILY POOLS.

CEASELESS SHAPES THAT BURST, THAT BLOOM.

TO STROKE, TO STEER THE REACHING THREADS.

STRETCH ACROSS THE GRANITE BENDS.

TO SHAKE, TO SWIRL DARKNESS, LIGHTS.

THE MOON'S CURVE HAS SMOOTHED TONIGHT.

The millions march in ordered step,

Beneath the gloom of charcoal skies.

They're buds upon a concrete carpet,

The coloured mirrors of the mind.

A slinking shoot that cracks it's seed,

To forge it's fruit across the skies.

A tapestry flowing from the thread.

The coloured mirrors of the mind.

A touch to make the planets tremble,

Strokes the spheres above the skies.

Given voice like struck cymbals.

The coloured mirrors of the mind.

VISION TUNNEL

Eyes absorb the ceaseless shapes

That slip, that spill in oily pools.

Patterned waters pile their waves,

Ceaseless shapes that burst, that bloom.

Signals run the coiling corridors

To stroke, to steer the reaching threads.

Tapestries of crawling colours

Stretch across the granite bends.

Clouds plough their formless territory

To shake, to swirl darkness, lights.

Ancient stars suspend their entropy.

The moon's curve has smoothed tonight.

LISTEN YOUNG MAN

EYES ABSORB THE CEASELESS SHAPES

PATTERNED WATERS PILE THEIR WAVES,

SIGNALS RUN THE COILING CORRIDORS

TAPESTRIES OF CRAWLING COLOURS

CLOUDS PLOUGH THEIR FORMLESS TERRITORY

ANCIENT STARS SUSPEND THEIR ENTROPY.

THAT SLIP, THAT SPILL IN OILY POOLS.

CEASELESS SHAPES THAT BURST, THAT BLOOM.

TO STROKE, TO STEER THE REACHING THREADS.

STRETCH ACROSS THE GRANITE BENDS.

TO SHAKE, TO SWIRL DARKNESS, LIGHTS.

THE MOON'S CURVE HAS SMOOTHED TONIGHT.

If the stars drift from an explosion,

One thing remains true.

If the stars orbits’ are frozen,

One thing remains true.

Ideas are engines, remember this young man.

Find worthwhile work for them to do.

Dreams make demands, remember this young man.

Follow the instructions they impart to you.

They’re lost when you don’t steer them,

Like ghosts slipping through.

They stop when you don’t hear them,

Like ghosts slipping through.

Words have wings, remember this young man.

Save the sights they take you to.

Vision is a vehicle, remember this young man.

Plan the path that it clears for you.

It was left to sour in introspective rooms,

All that changed was the view.

It was allowed to flower in extrospective blooms,

All that changed was the view.

SPOKEN

Words gathered, grown, lie in bundles,

Gardener’s gifts or scientist’s samples?

Carried gently past expectant faces,

Strive to flee parental pages.

The space vibrates with reinvention,

A realisation of an Escher etching.

Walls scramble, trembling, fleeing,

Between twin mirrors; reflections repeating.

The mic, Medusa, hisses, wriggles,

Mesh woven into shaman sigils.

Merge with double helix strands

To call out the sleeping sounds.

A voice meanders through my disassociation

Releasing syllables in a rocket’s reign.

The Countless days, through which they’ve slept,

Now ended in a mayfly moment.

SPOKEN

MEMORIES MELD

EYES ABSORB THE CEASELESS SHAPES

PATTERNED WATERS PILE THEIR WAVES,

SIGNALS RUN THE COILING CORRIDORS

TAPESTRIES OF CRAWLING COLOURS

CLOUDS PLOUGH THEIR FORMLESS TERRITORY

ANCIENT STARS SUSPEND THEIR ENTROPY.

THAT SLIP, THAT SPILL IN OILY POOLS.

CEASELESS SHAPES THAT BURST, THAT BLOOM.

TO STROKE, TO STEER THE REACHING THREADS.

STRETCH ACROSS THE GRANITE BENDS.

TO SHAKE, TO SWIRL DARKNESS, LIGHTS.

THE MOON'S CURVE HAS SMOOTHED TONIGHT.

Thoughts float on coloured clouds,

Repel, mingle, separate strands.

Fantasies, memories, bounce, bend

Chaos subsides, the moments meld.

Thoughts meet and swirl softly,

Rise, climb to sudden symphony.

ARIA’S AWE

Diva drifts across the stage.

Cloud carrying the waxing storm

Still silhouettes taste it's rage.

Tension tingles cold then warm.

Moment’s meditation; she channels

Verdi’s vision through her form.

Majestic, masterful the notes swell.

Echoes embrace, sedate resistance.

All absorbed, ordered, deferential.

Sights, sounds merge, fragile ambience.

Heaven holds no equal joy or solemnity,

Shining syllables mock cosmic radiance.

Aria awes with strength, fragility.

Quiet! Quick hands offer appreciation.

Illumination? Illusion? Hymn to humanity?

LOUGH AND KEY

Some mornings as I pass the lake,

I forget to let it touch my mind.

Eyes clutch the colour, the shape,

But awareness spins, then slides.

Nymphs dance in the swirling mists,

Orchids stir, straining in synaptic beds

Amid the briars of tasks and lists.

Pause to bloom or race ahead?