Candlelit Meal

It may sound like a trite, romantic notion,
yet it’s a matter of fact beyond dispute,
not a wishful dream born from emotion,
a lovely way of talking, or just cute,
that you and I are here becoming one
though few may see our fusion in this way,
and when our unifying soon is done,
it might appear that you have gone away,
but I’ll be then composed in part of you
that help sustain my life and energy
till I dissolve as well thus bringing too
some sustenance in what is left of me.
Before we join, I affirm my gratitude
for you, my flavorful, life-giving food.

Photo: Sheila Sund, “Waiting for Dinner”

Mario A. Pita

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Woman Autumn

Although the breeze feels like a cool caress,
my intellect declares the feeling lies,
that lifeless molecules are all that press
against my skin, invisible to eyes.
Although the breeze feels like it’s full of care
that comes from far to where I’m sitting here,
my mind insists that this is only air,
indifferent turbulence of atmosphere.
But in a world that’s round, such thoughts are square,
and logic’s coldness will deny intent
in wind that brushes at my skin and hair
as if with love Someone unseen has sent.
I feel much lies beyond the grasp of reason
when breezes touch me in the cooling season.

Mario A. Pita

Morning Glories

A morning glory stem will wrap around
a sturdy thing to climb toward the sun
and won’t reach much above its sprouting ground,
if in the neighborhood there isn’t one.
If it can’t find a means for its support,
a stem may wrap around itself and strangle,
instead of growing tall, remaining short,
a bloomless, stunted, convoluted tangle.
Experience has shown me we’re like them
and need support for growing like a vine,
each one of us a morning glory stem
reaching for the light on which to dine.
In and of ourselves we can’t get far:
we need support for reaching to our star.

Mario A. Pita

Amiga

Your face may not have launched a thousand ships,
but when my mood has sunken and I’m sore
as if from shark bites and a storm that whips,
it’s been for shipwrecked me my native shore.
Your voice may not be of a singing star
who makes a fortune for what flows from lips,
but it surpasses drinks from any bar,
and I have treasured it like nectar sips.
Your love may not be of a wife or lover,
expressed like theirs, above and under hips,
but it’s as wide and deep as seas that cover
the world on which sail all relationships.
I may not be well known, so few can name me,
but I give thanks you can, my dear friend, Amy.

Mario A. Pita

Embracing Mystery

For years, I courted perfect Certitude,
though I could never take her by the hand,
nor did I ever see her in the nude,
and from her private quarters I was banned.
Despite the fervent hopes with which I wooed,
with flames of longing by aloofness fanned,
and though my aim was loving more than lewd,
my hope dried up, a windswept desert sand.
But Mystery is always at my side,
with features I may never figure out,
save possibly at some point when I’ve died,
and she leaves room for Faith as well as Doubt.
I’ve feared her, wished her gone without a trace,
but see her awesomeness in my embrace.

Embrace Release by Vincent Devine

Mario A. Pita

Drama Quartet

Axis

The world has often seemed about to end,
whenever things appeared to be most bleak;
about to break—it could no longer bend—
about to sink, from having sprung a leak.
Apocalypse has often been on lips,
and people fell for forecasts that were dumb,
and some have even hoped the planet slips
toward its doom, since that means God will come.
But what if the end of the world is only ours
and plenty survive that we consider vermin,
the roaches and rats devoid of human powers,
and none can hear a prophecy or sermon?
We might unleash an apocalyptic fuss,
but maybe the world doesn’t spin around us.

Exceptional

We thought that we could save the world by force,
that we alone were authorized by God
to set it on a good and proper course,
its people children not spared from the rod
to tame and shape them so they would be raised
as upright citizens we freed from fraud
and other evils, so we would be praised,
by cheering populaces who’d applaud.
But while we felt we fought for high ideals,
regarding blood we shed as justified,
we failed to see what arrogance conceals,
the lame excuse for everyone who died.
We’ve not progressed since war for Helen of Troy.
Still, beauty may save the world we don’t destroy.

Simulations

When androids programmed to seem just like us
appear so realistic that we’re fooled,
whenever they speak sweetly or they cuss
with parts that have been technologically tooled
to feel authentic though they’re simulated,
will we just play along as if they’re real,
from loneliness, regretting when we’ve mated,
because we’re more than what our senses feel?
We have a thirst that no machine can quench,
the thirst that’s for what’s true, what’s genuine,
and all else wreaks for us as with a stench
of death, of rot, of lame, old-fashioned sin.
We’ll simulate the feel of flesh, its sheen,
but still we’ll need each other—no machine.

Outlaws

A cop need not enforce the cosmic laws
of physics, such as light’s velocity,
ensuring everything obeys a cause
in them that came from some unknown decree.
No officer will pull you over for
your breaking laws like that of gravity
when through its ample loopholes you can soar
aboard a plane that’s high above the sea.
But still we wish that we could disobey
the laws confining us to entropy,
the laws condemning all things to decay,
their source an undetermined mystery.
And we succeed, in dreams, while fast asleep.
Awake, we need a faith or quantum leap.

Illustration by Veena Vignale
Sonnets inspired by Odradeck and Billy Bass Drink to the End of the World,
a book of four plays by the Physicist, Giovanni Vignale

Mario A. Pita

Grateful Complaint

You shatter me as if I were thin glass,
till there is nothing left of me but crumbs,
uproot and toss me like a weed from grass,
and strike my nerves as if they were your drums;
unhinge me from what I’ve held like a door,
stomp upon my dreams as though a floor,
deplete my youth and health till I am poor,
and I am left to wonder what I’m for.
But, Life, you’ve also treated me so well,
and I am not your victim of abuse,
though you have rung me like a broken bell,
and sometimes I have wondered what’s the use,
for through you I am given a wondrous chance
to love, to learn, to laugh, to sing, to dance…

Mario A. Pita