Rick,
This is absolutely spectacular. It somehow manages to capture the zeitgeist of the moment. Its density and the layer upon layer of images that need revisiting and carry enough ammunition to feed that urge to reread. My favorite part right now is this:
Quote:
Impervious to all the moon can sorrow,
frozen mountains slam their wood-crack strains.
All color drained, gone even from the dayglow
factories that burned once and their trains
that throttled through the county night and day.
A river choked with surplus nurdles plies
the fallen forest like a mindless snail.
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I could really hear the mountains, and the dayglow thing is an example of that layered density. Regarding “limp petard,” I like to think non-spherians will need to look it up, discover it originated in flatulence, and the “flat” part’s slant-rhyming with “flapping” altogether sets a scene, humorous without detracting from the serious. Somehow that latter part of the sonnet brings Trump to mind, probably not what you had in mind, but still. Like “Huncke,” there’s this madcap image-jumping fervor to it yet the sonnet form (and I like the rhyme scheme!) ties it down somehow and there’s an overall solemnity to it, as there should be. It’s like a Götterdämmerung poem in a grand style. And the absurdity and humor is appropriate to the era in question. Sorry I couldn’t find something I’d change really. Just my general impressions. Well-worth reading and reading again…
Siham