Sonetto del Corpo Dissolto (The Sonnet of The Dissolved Corpse)

Wrestling with the Italian Sonnet.

The gothic poem, in Italian Sonnet form, charts a descent, a slow surrender of the self in a futile attempt to bridge the void left by an absent beloved.

Sonetto del Corpo Dissolto
(The Sonnet of the Dissolved Corpse)

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I.

I bequeath to you whispers of my name,
The breath that stirs my voice, the thoughts I keep;
I send my dreams, pray, they may haunt your sleep,
And light the fire that ignites your flame.
I give hands, the poor heart they softly frame,
The pulse within my chest, its steady beat;
Each step I take surrenders to your feet,
Each word I speak dissolves into your claim.

But still, the void remains, a hollow ache,
No gift I send can bind your fleeting face.
So I lose my skin, my bones they do shake
And absence blooms, filling this empty space.
All that remains are shadows of despair,
Knowing you won’t miss my love that was there.

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II.

I mailed my fingertips, all raw and true,
The ones that scribed every word of desire,
An envelope stained with crimson-dripped pyre,
A grafted bond, severed, now sent to you.
Where in God’s heaven does one go from here?
Unremorsefully, I flayed my hide,
Removing my inners from the outside,
And found little solace without you near.

But still, the loss it pains, my heart does break
The absence of this weight has held me down.
They say souls do wander when not awake
Yielding to silence, dampened, dull in sound.
I scream into the void, no one can hear,
Knowing I long for your love—never near.

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III.

Little bridled tongue; the ligament’s rein,
Steering my bittersweet tastebuds back home.
Where weathered lips delicately do roam,
Near vermilion borders, tender and vain.
These kisses juxtapose with words unheard,
Soft singing, operatic on high.
Discordant notes erratically fly,
A diminished echo haunts, unreturned.

But still, the loss it pains, my words unspool,
A whisper evaporates into air.
They say that echoes haunt the speechless fool,
A voice unheard breeds sorrow in despair.
I mouth your name, but silence answers back,
My cracked and cancerous lips turn deathly black.

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IV.

I carved this orb, its cornea laid bare,
A rusting blade peeled a truth so thin,
Translucent sheets where sight became a sin,
A lone fragment sealed my eternal prayer.
The iris framed your name; I could not spare
This gaze yearns for what it can’t ever win.
A stamp of skin, a portal from within,
Bound to trace you. Unaware! Unaware!

These weary eyes still falter in their wake,
No distant star can light this sightless space.
I gouged my sight to rid this cruel mistake,
Yet blindness deepens in your absent place.
I blink at ghosts of moments never true,
A myopic heart that you saw right through.

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V.

O Pericardium! Caged heart, off-beat,
Serenading in discontented rhythm
Throbbing inside a much-maligned prison
This mechanical muscle, bound in defeat.
Untimely ripped from your wombed casing,
Packaged, bowed, impeccably arrowed.
Would the heart’s arrival become harrowed?
Sent to my love’s mirror, ever adjacent.

But still, the loss it pains, my pulse undone,
The weight was removed— crushing me anew.
They say a heart, once gone, still beats as one,
A rhythm longing for a love untrue.
I place this hollowed cage in trembling hands,
My ribs once locked, broken at love’s demands

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VI.

Argent-winged bird, hidden beneath my flesh,
Blade upon blade, I free you from within.
Scapula, Scapula, your life begins.
Fly away, beauty; fly to her— afresh.
Landing in the garden, burrow under
green moss-covered blankets lay uncovered.
Bury deep where seeds and life are smothered;
Nature’s incestuous, quiet wonder.

Yet bound to earth, I falter back to ground,
My sundered bone now grasped by ivy's thread.
I sent you flight, yet roots have wrapped it round,
A sapling bends where once my shoulder bled.
Its branches rise where love once met despair,
Knowing I'll grow, though never reach you there.

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VII.

Thoughts fracture, scattering like broken glass,
They dissipate into melancholy.
All the words I once voiced are now folly,
a name once whole, now lost in time’s morass.
The weight of memory that cannot last,
cerulean remnants drift on the sea.
The past absolves in waves relentlessly,
A fleeting echo in the tides that pass.

Is peacefulness the destination
or but the quiet hum of fading breath?
Nothingness grows in deep meditation,
Sanity unravels, whispering death
A Buddhist emptying—let the silence grow,
Where love once burned, now softer embers glow.

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VIII.

These atoms, neurons, electrons dissolve;
Fade into the ether, into the sky.
Vibrating in binary forms of light,
A celestial mausoleum resolve.
In distant memories, I am benign.
The moon falls sharply; the sun, it explodes.
Stars become matter, my universe erodes.
I become anything but anodyne.

And still, the void remains, a hollow ache,
No gift I send can bind your fleeting face.
I lose my name, my shape, my bones, my wake,
And absence swallows time in dark embrace.
I melt into the dust, weightless and bare,
Knowing I dissolve for love that was not there.

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Notes & Reflections.

I have always been a freeform poet. Rules? Structure? I resist them instinctively. My writing is usually an outpouring. Raw, visceral, unconstrained by meter or rhyme. The act of trying to fit thoughts and emotions into a prescribed shape feels unnatural, even oppressive.

And yet, I want to always grow and put myself in challenging positions. There’s something deeply fascinating about constraint—about allowing form to dictate flow, rather than fighting against it.

Does poetry become a math equation if you set rules? How does one retain their voice when you are restricted?

Writing Sonetto del Corpo Dissolto was an exercise in both discipline and rebellion. It is a series of interwoven Italian sonnets, a form I was previously unfamiliar with and, frankly, intimidated by. The Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet, with its 14 lines, strict rhyme scheme (ABBAABBA CDECDE or CDCDCD), and inherent volta (a shift in theme or argument), demands precision. It does not allow for sprawling excess. Every word, every line break, must serve a purpose. For someone used to an anarchic approach to poetry, this was an immense challenge—like trying to sculpt wind into stone. Oh! And I forgot to add that each line must consist of 10 syllables.

My poems are vomit songs, they fall out as if by magic. This piece has taken me months to finish. Before I share the poem, some history.

Sacrificing the Body: Thematic Intentions

In Sonetto del Corpo Dissolto, I leaned into the constraints of the form while exploring the theme of bodily dissolution as a metaphor for unreciprocated love.

Each sonnet in the sequence fixates on a different physical element—breath, hands, voice, sight, heart, scapula (symbolizing failed flight), and finally, the universe itself.

The poem charts a descent, a slow surrender of the self in a futile attempt to bridge the void left by an absent beloved.

The form’s rigidity mirrored the obsession of the speaker—each stanza a desperate, measured attempt to give something away, to find meaning in devotion, to become love itself. But as each offering is made, the void only deepens. By the final sonnet, the self is gone, atomized into the fabric of the universe, yet still haunted by the absence of the love it sought.

A Fight Against My Nature

Adhering to the sonnet’s formal demands felt like performing surgery on my instincts. My first drafts were chaotic; I kept resisting the rhyme, forcing enjambment where it didn’t belong, breaking the rules whenever they became uncomfortable. But as I kept working, I realized that submission to form was part of the poem’s message—this was about discipline, about control, about a love so consuming that it followed the laws of devotion to the bitter end.

This wasn’t just a sonnet sequence—it was an act of self-imposed restraint, an attempt to inhabit the mind of someone who would methodically give themselves away, piece by piece, without hesitation.

The Final Surrender

Perhaps this is why structure exists: not as a limitation but as a means of amplifying feeling. The tension between form and content creates friction, and in that friction, something powerful emerges.

For a poet like me, used to anarchic expression, the Italian sonnet was a battleground. I struggled. I resented it. And yet, when I finally yielded, I found something in its constraints that I couldn’t have reached through freeform verse alone.

Sonetto del Corpo Dissolto is both an offering and an exorcism—a paradox of discipline and surrender.

Perhaps, in the end, love and poetry are not so different bedfellows.

Both require devotion, sacrifice, and the willingness to be shaped by something greater than ourselves.