Title Unknown (Yves Tanguy), Sonnet #495

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My Human Disguise.

I crawl beneath a cart that’s bearing trees

As thin as matchsticks and wait for love.

I feel not the slightest hesitant breeze

Nor do the sickly branches quiver above.

The cart has no handles that I can grasp,

Which leaves salvation to patient motion

With no guarantees, like the last gasp

Of the flounder stranded on the ocean

Beach waiting for a friendly stretching wave,

One in a thousand, if he’s to be saved.

I can wait beneath the cart for so long

Before risking rolling beneath its wheels.

I am agile enough, but not too strong,

And love, as I have learned, fears how death feels

Fanciful Ink Drawing II (Franz Sedlacek), Sonnet #494

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My Human Disguise.









Top-hatted crows fly single file to roost,

Run the town like magicians, all for show.

The snake-tailed cat and Mr. Legnose, loosed

Like all the other inmates, love to crow.

Ostrich-legged, necky racers set the pace

While tittering dancing ghosts dance in place.

But the man-mouthing Eggman’s won the race.

The castle’s prisoners wail from the roof

That they were arrested with too much proof.

A constrictor hangs, his neck in a knot,

From a decayed tree where men made of sticks

Perform unbelievable gymnastics.
The Ringmaster chides his caterpillar,
Though the Boss is a yapping black terrier.

Knot Eye Tiger (Alice Bea Guerin), Sonnet #493

The Japanese artist reduces the word

To the image, not unlike a cartoon

In its simplicity and lack of depth,

To find the inessence of the absurd,

The quintessence of the present rune.

Such images never drew in a breath,

But they look at us with knotted eyes

Drawing tight the ends of close and soon,

All to answer our what’s? with why’s?

This is our one tiger, the tigers croon.

You are only yourselves in our disguise,

Only knowing us without being wise.

The tiger has disappeared into the page

To reappear in the next human age.

State Street Bridge, Sonnet #492

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My Human Disguise.









The fourth son sat in the middle

Of the back seat as his father

Drove them around their new home town.

For being twelve, he was little,

Wore a brace of steel and leather.

His Mom told him to settle down

When he complained he was hungry.

The streets were unplowed slush and ice.

The river hadn’t frozen twice.

His parents always seemed angry.

He’d remember this wandering drive,

How no one laughed or even spoke

(As if their new home held no hope),

Snowblind to renewing life. 

Der Luftballon (Paul Klee), Sonnet #491

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My Human Disguise.

If you don’t know your ego, don’t ask it,

“Who are you really, a hot air balloon

Carrying me aloft in a basket?”

Its likely response? “Don’t be a buffoon.” 

We must accept what is most obvious,

That we are all we are, are all there is.

That town or field below are chimeras

And Aldebaran is oblivious.

We (what are we?) float, afflatuses

Incapable of nothing, kings of all,

Until our fear of ourselves deflates us.

Gasping, flailing, we wither of air and fall.

Courage! Ride the currents above the clouds,

Those infinitely reproducing crowds.

Portrait of Felix Feneon (Paul Signac), Sonnet #490

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My Human Disguise.

An anarchist portrayed as a magician

(True, the two have a good deal in common),

Feneon coined “neo-impressionism”

While being shadowed by the gendarmerie.

He was arrested twice on suspicion

Of bombings and an assassination,

Both times acquitted, reluctantly set free

To continue as a leading art critic.

Today we have no such chameleons.

Art is dying the death of the cynic

In a time of humorless deceptions.

The critic’s job has been stolen by sick,

Mad scribblers who only take exception.

Nothing is safe in a land of dim magic.

In The Loge (Mary Cassatt), Sonnet #489

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My Human Disguise.

The Madame has seldom been to the opera.

The loud music and gay costumes are amusing,

But she isn’t bedazzled by the “theatre”

Of bad acting and wobbly coloratura.

Her gaze into opera glasses accusing,

She scans the rows below for her wild creature,

That red-haired freckled feckless little “ingenue,”

Possessing neither loyalty, brains, or virtue.

Madame has taken chances in public before.

Still, this is business — she can’t afford to ignore

The traitorous behavior of a popular whore.

She doesn’t notice that she's being watched as well.

One of her regulars, a cop, an aging swell,

Is outraged — when he sees her next he’ll give her hell!