Undressed

[Two rhyming couplets are rule-breakingly offered at the end of this sonnet for you to choose from.  Why not tell me which one you prefer, please?]

A u bloom* in hair

As decoration; best

For the Barrier.

~ Sora [Englished by Phillip Whidden]

His wife sent me the neckties that he wore

When he had “dressed up.”  Now the man is dead

In ashes in the Lake of Saints, much more

Destroyed in ashes, much more in my head

In lightning strike and ashes in that lake.

Those neckties that he wore around his neck

Were sent to me for loving friendships’ sake,

Despite the lightning’s and the ashes’ wreck

Of him, the chancer, chancer in the stream,

In life, in love, in storms surrounding in

His free will choices, his addictions’ scream

In prison cell inviting Christian sin.

[First optional couplet:]

  Three wives locked out by turnkeys and the cell

    Were scarred by needs that forced him to rebel.

[Second optional couplet:]

  Three wives locked out by turnkeys and the bars

    Were crippled by his wrist and forearm scars.

 *A u bloom is a summer flower in Japan.  Rather than explain it, I have asked AI to put some in his hair in his pic above.

©  Phillip Whidden