Aug 10, 2011 | Bible Story, Cain, Gus Stevens, Sonnet, The Unspeakable Name vol. 1, Victorian Sonnet
My punishment is more than I can bear! He who finds me will kill me in the open field. Not so. Your crime, cannot cut short my care; your head will be, against such vengeance, sealed. And yet, from the ashes of Eden—length to length— you will roam the desert...
Aug 7, 2011 | Bible Story, Cain, Gus Stevens, Sonnet, The Unspeakable Name vol. 1, Victorian Sonnet
You claim you are not your brother’s keeper, but I detect the absence of a proper fear. What will you say when I raise the sleeper? Though you have ears to hear, you do not hear. I begged you not to join your father’s war and his dreadful crimes not to...
Feb 13, 2011 | Bible Story, Gus Stevens, Rhymed Couplets, The Unspeakable Name vol. 2
There lies the body of our murdered monarch. Dare we now await the morning with the lark, hoping for the death of dark and dawn of day, with blood on our hands and in our bones decay? We have no claim, no light, no hope of hope and deserve nothing but a...
Feb 13, 2011 | Bible Story, Gus Stevens, Sonnet, The Unspeakable Name vol. 2, Victorian Sonnet
This lazy traveler reclines with dirty feet and receives his food from unwashed hands. He sinks his teeth in questionable meat and questions not this whore with tangled strands crying to him as if he were a god! And the whole muddied mob calls him...
Feb 13, 2011 | Bible Story, Gus Stevens, Sonnet, The Unspeakable Name vol. 2, Victorian Sonnet
Is this the one who would lay final claim to Great David’s old imperial throne, whose touch has cured an army of the lame but crawled our cobbled streets to die alone? Is this the “Coming One” we thought would reign, his head with glory’s...
Feb 13, 2011 | Bible Story, Cain, Gus Stevens, Sonnet, The Unspeakable Name vol. 1, Victorian Sonnet
The rising white of a blister on my hand is my blood guilt, my token from the fall— this and the damned weeds that curse the land with stains from our black revolt—our cabal with the snake against heaven’s highest king. Now everything is taken by the thorn and...
