~by Gregg Rowe~
I have no choice -- I have to accept death:
My love I've spoken in various forms;
No matter life's upheaval blackened storms --
And with my final and this lasting breath:
I slash with sword the grey spirit of Seth --
Her hazel eyes showed her son was not norm;
Because I had felt my mothers' womb's warmth:
Before I'm thrown into her winter's storm.
the Nile waters grow
fertilized land sows the seeds
I kneel before my gods
Salt blue waters I have cried day to day --
I've danced my notes and slept with male dreams,
Now as you raise me up to parting skies --
My love for Christ – I eat, drink, knell and pray:
Remember while I shouted and had screamed --
Today I live, tomorrow I will die!
Here are the first six sonnets in the series of sequence:
Sonnet Sequence 1:
What I Dream
(Italian Gregorian Sonnaiku)
allpoetry.com/poem/1050056
Sonnet Sequence 2:
What I Dream
(Italian Gregorian Sonnaiku)
allpoetry.com/poem/1054636
Sonnet Sequence 3:
What I Dream
(Italian Gregorian Sonnaiku)
allpoetry.com/poem/1055344
Sonnet Sequence 4:
What I Dream
(Italian Gregorian Sonnaiku)
allpoetry.com/poem/1055747Sonnet
Sequence 5:
What I Dream
(Italian Gregorian Sonnaiku)
by lordoftherings
allpoetry.com/poem/1056021
Sonnet Sequence 6:
What I Dream
(Italian Gregorian Sonnaiku)
by lordoftherings
allpoetry.com/poem/1056229
Author notes
I have not mispelled kneel in Line 12: I meant to write knell and below is my argument for the usage of this word in the poem:
knell :
noun : the sound of a bell rung slowly to announce a death or a funeral or the end of something
verb : ring, as of bells announcing death
verb : make (bells) ring, often for the purposes of musical edification
and where the word appears in the poem:
My love for Christ – I eat, drink, knell and pray :
This whole line is a religious ceremony in the Catholic faith
I eat the body of Christ
I drink the blood of Christ
in celebration of Easter and resurrection and rebirth:
It is true, in our reality, without suspending the disbelief, people do not ring neither do we eat nor drink Christ in reality, metaphorically we use symbols to convey this message. Metaphorically, people can knell or a ringing inside their soul at a closeness to death and then a rebirth. While grammatically kneel would be the correct usage, the word I chose has a double innuendo, the kneeling results as an action of the metaphorical knelling of musical bells at a death because of the sequent lines thereafter in the sonnet. The knell is juxtaposed beside pray and is not separated with commas like eat and drink are – musical denotations of a celebration which follows into the last two lines of the sonnet.
My love for Christ – I eat, drink, knell and pray:
Remember while I shouted and had screamed --
Today I live, tomorrow I will die!
I feel that if was to use the collegiate word kneel , I would be losing some force in the line as kneel denotes a surrender, whereas I am not surrendering the voice here, I am celebrating a life: The line could easily have been written:
My love for Christ – I eat, drink, ring bells, pray.
The image of one kneeling at a funeral before a coffin while bells peel in the background, for me personally is a weaker line than someone’s soul knelling bells just before they die and see the white light, so to say. The poem sequence opens on the mythology and visions of Zeus and Chaos and closes on the mythology and visions of Christianity, but the 14th line of the 7th Sequence connects back to the first line of the First Sequence.
Because of my health status for twenty years, living with a chronic illness; having open heart surgery in May 2004; and living with tentalitis (constant ringing of the ears 24/7) I have experienced knell in my life. The closest I have come to face death was the evening of my operation with a chronic medical condition.
What is anthimeria?
Anthimeria is the use of a member of one word class as if it were a member of another, thus altering its meaning.
Example (English)
In the following example, unhair is an example of anthimeria. Although hair is normally used as a noun , in this instance it takes an -un prefix and is used as a verb :
“I’ll unhair thy head.”
(Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, II, v, 64, cited by Corbett 1971 484 )
www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAnthimeria.htm
www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/contents.htm
Gregorian Sonnaiku
(How To Write This New Form—Learning Column)
by lordoftherings
allpoetry.com/Column/1043872
Written February 12th, 2005
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hugs and blessings, Sandi
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