By Muse Gifted

By Bud Koenemund

How do poems arise if not by muse
Gifted? Bestowed upon the inspired
Like sparks flickering off a lighted fuse:
Prelude to a blast of creative fire.
But, where lies the line between flame and fuel?
Is there divide ‘twixt poet and Goddess;
Or are scribes indebted for each jewel
Conveyed through genius? And, while less modest
Egos, so often inflated by pride,
May out of hand reject this argument,
Their hubris will stand tribute to the tide
Of rhythm and rhyme Erato has lent.
   I can never repay thy influence;
   Nor suitably praise such mellifluence.

The Girl in Those Sonnets

By Bud Koenemund

For "Her."

Can a human really be that perfect?
One being inspiring creation
Of a hundred little songs; an object
Celestial deserving ovation?
May a sole muse supply myriad rhymes
Required to fuel so many quatrains
Pledging devotion ‘til the end of time;
Even if those poems are writ in vain?
I would not believe sans experience –
Bless’d with the maddening gift of words,
As if by some Heavenly existence,
Though denied return of my love absurd.
   "Her;" Dark Lady to a mad sonneteer:
   The genius I will forever hold dear.

The Mad Sonneteer Featured in a YouTube Video

Yours truly has been included in a YouTube video promoting an anthology that published three of my pieces (including two sonnets).

The video includes the best picture ever taken of me, and two lines from my sonnet, "The Ways That My Body Remembers Yours."

Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzfj3fGJ5G4
(I come in around the 3:43 mark.)

Enjoy.

My Simple Love Poems Live in Your Eyes

For "Her."

My simple love poems live in your eyes,
And in the slope of your imperfect nose.
Your porcelain cheeks beguile, and belie
The strange magic that inspires my prose;
My poems lie in the warmth of your lips,
For their sugared taste enlivens my pen,
And causes my heart to stutter and skip,
While yielding the rhymes on which I depend;
The touch of your skin arouses my muse,
While quietly easing my troubled mind,
With a wondrous pow'r I can not refuse,
As your passionate breath steals away mine.
You are the womb that gives my lyric birth,
And the lungs that breathe love into my verse.

What's in a Name?

Bud Koenemund is The Mad Sonneteer! He earned his unusual – though perfectly descriptive – sobriquet during the summer of 2003. While taking a summer session English course at SUNY Rockland Community College, he allowed his professor, the indomitable Dr. Cliff Garner, to read a few dozen of his poems – including several sonnets.

Garner returned the work with many helpful suggestions, and – because of Koenemund’s love of William Shakespeare’s work, his penchant for writing sonnets (as Shakespeare did), and the overarching theme of his work – dubbed Bud The Mad Sonneteer.

While Koenemund writes in several different forms and across many genre, he usually prefers the challenge of writing an English (or Shakespearean) sonnet.