Fun with form, thanks to Jeff Knight.

Sonnet for Salomé

I said to you then that “you complete me.”

Though cliché, and stolen from a movie

it nevertheless, remains true today.

In the beginning, I was skeptical

convinced there were hooks attached to strings and

barbed wire fences on the horizon.

As you sleep, I look for signs of regret

and find only lust and satisfaction.

Afterwards, your scent remains in my ear

reverberating through fingers and palms

a pulsing freestyle beat that curls my tongue.

I lick my lips as a genuflection –

you linger sweetly like ripe mango juice

and I savor every thick, sticky drop.

NOTE: A real sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, either eight lines (octave) and six lines (sextet) or three quatrains of four lines and an ending couplet. Often attributed to Petrarch, the form – keeping the basic fourteen lines – was modified by such poets as Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton.