two sonnets

[joel]

If I were not to own my brilliant mind,
could yet humility be mine to claim?
The poverty of honesty affords
a harder truth: I mind exquisitely
and humbly place my high-cast love for you
in frames of truest grandeur. Virtue lacks
a worthy definition; love is not deserved,
but in humility nonetheless is served
in flash-blind brilliancy (and wonder backs
in brilliant mystery). I rest on you—
what case exists for purer modesty
than this meek radiant mind who humbly lords
it overall: I love this one and aim
with nothing more or less to be aligned?

Had I the right that this pericope
could be inscribed within your selfish thoughts
as love you might receive as self-revealed
and take, I wonder if I’d exercise
such influential interference—or
perhaps forgo on self-held selfish grounds.
No slave can serve two masters; love enslaved
cannot endure our selfishness unscathed.
I have no right to write in you love’s wounds
and peddle you within my arms a whore.
When not your love, I’ll find to exorcise
my demon hopes for you and somehow yield:
we are not one, but two. Still lovely thoughts,
had we a chance at love’s epitome.