CONTEMPLATIONS (Sonnets #153 and #154)

 #154

Crystal Pyramid

A crystal pyramid, faceted creation
Of pressure, heat and imagination,
Frozen purity, a trap for light with five sides,
Where reflection upon infinity resides.
In total darkness it sleeps in oblivion,
But a single candle ignites a refraction,
Carving light into color in serrated planes,
Only as rigid as the stillness of the flame.
But a camera flash, like a blast of insight,
Will bury color at its heart and leave a blight
Of vacant lines as each facet locks to the next,
Like pages in a closed book obliterate text.
Let the sun burst it red, orange, yellow and blue,
Then open your eyes, take your time, and think things through.

#153

Two Men Contemplating the Moon (Caspar David Friedrich)

We can see the moon, but not its eclipse.
We drink the coldest stars with little sips;
Venus, a tear on the horizon's cheek;
Mars bleeds; the Dipper, wan and weak,
Contains an empty trapezoid.
The Milky Way flows nowhere from the void.
This night, we want nothing to learn.
Our regrets leak from a cracked urn
Of lust and yearning we fling at the stars.
Shattered, it forms constellations of scars.
The lunar eclipse, the earth's one moment
Of triumph over the universe's intent --
We grow no brighter by dimming the sun.
We leave chastened. There's so much to be done.

The Moth (Balthus)

#152

A woman had a vision of a butterfly
Or was it a moth? Neither belonged in her mind,
Or so she thought. She reached out to touch it,
But the baby inside her begged her not to try.
It hovered near the oil lamp, then around behind
Her, teasing her. She'd turn left, right, but it would flit
To stay unseen, then fly overhead, fluttering
Just above her eyes, turning back toward the light,
Which responded to its fleet wings by guttering.
She took a thread from her towel and flung it right
Across its thorax, caught the other end and made
A knot -- dandled it on its leash. It flew until
She pulled too hard -- the moth began to fade
Until the world it left behind grew still.

TESSELLATIONS (Sonnets 150 and 151)

#151

Mosaic II (Escher)

The mosaic of time isn't patterned moments.
The snail, men, and the flounder share the sand,
Fitted together like ten lovers holding hands.
Camel neck, elephant trunk -- each is bent
To fit into interstices, the empty space
The other leaves so that each with each may embrace.
The lobster pinches the mule's ears and tongue.
The walrus tusk teases the rooster's comb.
A winged demon harries the frightened young
Chased by a sea serpent and silent guitar drone.
At the center the naked young god intones
That all is illusion, all is now, all is ones.
But the tortoise will never catch the hare with wings;
Time isn't duration, but living things.

#150

Aunt Vidalia's Living Room (Alice Guerin)

Aunt Vidalia has an onion for a face,
Lives only in her niece's imagination.
Her living room is a madly beautiful place,
Where family history, all tessellation,
Stares (or not) from portraits and drawings without frames --
Ancestors, animals, some with forgotten names,
Attest to the attenuation of the race.
Unsmiling Utrum never made a decision.
His brother Achilles wore jammies till he died.
Great Grannie Grout's mink was her only possession.
Son Ozimand's tin suit was handsome, though he fried.
Large sisters Dawn and Faun loved to pose in the nude.
(Not sure about the rooster; ready to be stewed?)
Vidalia's niece still adds to the family tree.
Will she ever include herself? We'll have to see.

TWO ROOMS (Sonnets #148 and #149)

#149

The Red Studio (Matisse)

A dream room or a memory box? Possibly.
Or the way the mind might order its better names.
The pulsing heart, collected idees fixes of me,
Clutters its floor and walls with furniture and frames.
A room for work, the usual imagery --
Nudes, a clock, flowers, a wineglass and chair --
Abounds, transformed into the exotic and rare.
A genie's black bottle spouts dancing blue roses.
Each painted, sketched or sculpted nude poses
A challenge to what real nudity exposes.
In the studio all things are outlined in white
Or pink. A red table or urn casts no shadow,
As though blood has burned away wasted sight,
And left only essence, a fixed and edgeless glow.













#148

Plum Tree (Kanō Sanraku)

His parents arguing in the bedroom,
Though no words are clear, their hatred
Is the coldest voice any child can hear.
Against his father's potent boom,
He erects four sliding doors from his dread,
Imagining plum trees with faded, sere
Blossoms. He prays for them to go to bed.

Years later he paints the doors in flaked gold --
The tree bearing sparse, meager blooms;
Its shattered trunk many hundred years old --
And installs them in his bridal bedroom,
Facing in; then he adds a mockingbird
On the last, least limb, to remind the groom
He must never repeat what he once heard.

Snow Falling on a Town (Utagawa Kuniyoshi), Sonnet #147

The painter says it's snow but I see comet tails,
Stars, and nebulae spin above the snowbound town.
It's all one element. Each flake of crystal hails
Down with blinding insistent force, without a sound,
Unconscious and mute emissaries of deep space.
Each man, woman and child must, for a little while,
Look up, forget their memories and fears, and smile.
Is there a better metaphor than snow for grace?
The town was built in a near treeless mountain's lee
In a valley where the shallow river freezes early,
So melting the snow for water to drink each day
Is a man's burden, deadly to ignore.
Though no one prays to the sky gods for more,
The world would end if snow just went away.

Sky Above Clouds IV (O'Keefe), Sonnet #146

I'd like to live in the clouds but it's forbidden.
I've walked blindly among them on mountains,
In Baguio, through rubble on Pikes Peak,
But it's not the same. Nothing stays hidden
For long before wind or sun raises the curtain;
The obscured becomes merely bleak.

O'Keefe's static pills of vapor
Might each contain a living soul or more,
Defying gravity, immovable by wind,
A purity of being replacing the mind.

No, I will float or fly with my brothers,
Learn their gentle ways and quiet tongue,
Escape the evil a pure cloud smothers.
I'll beg but they won't let me stay for long.

The Ultra-Deep Field (Hubble Telescope)

#145

1

A near infinity away a rock
Lies on the surface of a silent moon.

No one will ever touch it, but it's there.
An asteroid will slam nearby -- the shock
Will leave only the granules of a dune,
Cooling in the faintest stellar glare.

They pointed the Hubble at a starless
Hole near Orion and found galaxies
Where they thought to uncover emptiness.
They're nothing you or I will ever see.

I think at night of that rock and its kind,
Far more numerous than beams of starlight.
I'm their thoughts, unbounded, seeking to find
A life amidst the interstellar blight.

2

And if I could go to the universe's edge
(Even infinity, of course, has its limit),
Would I attain unimaginable knowledge,
Or discover that redundancy is infinite?

Why are there so damn many useless things out there?
A star can die, but none of us will weep.
Asteroids could kill millions any time or where.
Even the Big Bang didn't make a peep.

Like us, starlight is invisible until it
Illuminates an object with its energy.
We have a thought and something happens on the earth.
When I pass on will the universe still be lit?

I don't presume that everything will cease to be,
But more than me came into being with my birth.

Eternity and Wisdom (Arnold Houbraken)

#144

Who's the mad one? Her majesty Eternity,
Or Wisdom explicating the Ouroboros,
Pointing out how the serpent's self-consummation
Creates all perpetual circularity?
She finds his blather utterly monotonous,
His Latin-wrapped cane a young man's affectation,
And laughs at how he won't look at her breasts.
He's blind, of course, which she always forgets.
She's mad as math describing forever,
And can't pronounce the words "stop" or "never."
With her hand on the planetary sphere,
Warmed by a brazier of exploding stars,
She writes in her diary, "I'm not here.
I go on, on and on, though not that far!"

Memory (Magritte)

#143

The old bell of memory has never been tuned,
Won't sound unless rattled or rolled
Across table or floor. It's not a bell to be tolled,
But when rung blood seeps from an invisible wound.
Memory is a bust without shoulders or breasts,
Beauty the rubbing of thought once ruined.
(A sere rose (and brittle stem, one green leaf plucked) rests,
Exhausted by its perfume, relieved to be pruned.)
Memory's eyes are always closed, as though she dreams
To forget dark clouds, cold seas, and a sickle moon.
Dreams are harder to remember, it seems,
When tomorrow always arrives so close and soon.
I tend to her wound and kiss her cold lips,
One eye open for the lunar eclipse.

The Beekeepers and the Birdnester (Breughel)

#142

A bee once flew in my mouth and stung my tongue.
I ran home, had to be told to spit it out
(We all act inexplicably when we're young);
Even at three, fear and pain scar us with doubt.
Years later, in a fountain, I found a dead bee.
I squeezed it with my fingers and it stung me.
Even dead things, I saw, can act vengefully.

The faceless Beekeepers care nothing for insects.
They revere the hive, barely tolerate the queen,
Fear only the mystery that often infects
The males with a fury that can pierce the face screens
They reweave nightly, tighter, tighter, in their dreams.
The godlike man in the tree, stealing eggs from nests,
Ignores the fears of bird and bee, and never rests.

The Cyclops (Odilon Redon)

#141

The nymph drowses, doped in a bed of wildflowers,
Swats a mosquito from her neck without waking.
(Insects adore her liquid breath and pollen skin.)
Polyphemus has been watching her sleep for hours,
His great limbs grown stiff, his heart a small earth quaking.
A thousand desires blast his brain, not one a sin,
Which is unknown to him: hold her body captive
(He knows to love her as a man would destroy her),
Roast and swallow her whole, or he might even give
Her to his fellows, a joyful alms of murder.
But he'll do none of these things because of his eye.
He sees less than senses -- all is apparition
A second sight would shape to vivid perception.
She might be less than she seems, he thinks. Let her lie.

The Menaced Assassin (Magritte)

#140

The job is done, the murder weapon stashed;
A beautiful young woman bashed or slashed.
Wait! What was the victrola playing all along?
The killer and his captors listen intently,
Moved to inaction by a simple song
A woman sings with soft intensity,
As if her passion could efface a wrong
Perpetrated with mountainous cruelty.
Will a club and a net be sufficient
To subdue the heartless secret agent?
The song is over, yet they hesitate.
Three observers, representing the State,
All alike, unblinkingly accuse us
Of the action's interminable caesuras.
There is nothing for us to do but wait.

Wing Song (Alice Guerin)

#139

The sand wasp and the cecropia moth
Pray to the ruby-throated hummingbird.
Each thrums its own avian oath.
It's flight they worship, swift and blurred
Almost wingless, their supreme art.
They envy throwing one's self like a dart.
The sand wasps stun cicadas and bury
Them deep in nests for their larvae to eat.
The mouthless cecropia must hurry
To mate, or their larvae become parasite meat.
But the hummingbird need only sip sweets
And build a nest with the first mate it meets,
Or, having some objection, speed away --
Freedom for which the wasp and the moth pray.

The Ruler Tree (Julia Guerin)

#138

Rulers, like any tool of measurement,
Define the point of stoppage at each end
Of a thing, not the distance in between.
The moon and earth limit the firmament.
The lunar clock compresses each second.
Our sight stops the seen short with the unseen.
I greedily pluck from the ruler tree
The limitations that will set me free.
Someone has marked the bole. I must hurry
To get back and pluck all I can carry.
Evil men will soon come to cut it down;
Perhaps they watch from that darkened prison.
I'll have enough to build an entire town
If I stay unblinded by my vision.

The Plagiarism (Magritte)

#137

This poem plagiarizes this image.
Its wooden table supports an egg nest,
Which doesn't belong with the rest --
Potentiality versus our alleged
Natural world, real or perceived.
A vase, quite solid, planted with a cut-
Out of arranged flowers and leaves, but
Not to be seen or smelled -- to be believed
As a frame (inside framing curtains framed
By the painting's frame): a mountain meadow
With a tree with leaves whiter than snow.
Not everything we can think of can be named.
The mind steals what we can hear, smell and see
To crack the secrets of eternity.

The Entry of the Animals into Noah's Ark (Breughel)

#136

I

The Sunday school story as we remember it.
A pastoral scene, the pairing of animals,
Lions and leopards side by side with sheep and foals,
Without a hint of predatory lust or shit.
The gawky ostriches, porcupines, and camels,
Docile, climb ramps and enter the great Ark's dark holds.
The man, his wife, their sons and their young wives
Will follow God's bizarre orders to save their lives.
Imagine the storm. Forty days and nights of fury,
The terrors of dumb animals and humans tossed
On an ocean that crowned every inch of the earth.
And when it was over, God was in no hurry
To drain the land to reveal what his vengeance cost.
Instead, we are to praise humanity's rebirth.

II

The dove returned with an olive leaf in his beak,
A pretty metaphor for a new world of peace.
Even on Ararat, they found corpses, bloated,
Hanging from trees, clutching bindles, all rot and reek.
Seeking a last refuge before the flood's surcease,
Perhaps, drowning, they saw only the Ark floated.
Looking upon them, God acknowledged the shoah,
And in his guilt formed a covenant with Noah.
Had He meant to kill evil with greater evil,
His favorite son wondered, but couldn't question,
As he burnt offerings and bid his children mate.
A rainbow would remind God to control His will.
The dead land slowly began regeneration,
Though man's corruption would remain his fate.

The Ghost Kohada Koheiji (Hokusai), Departure of the Ghost (Klee)

#134

Ghosts are the human form of angels and devils.
Depicted as remnants of flesh, or foggy wisps,
They're barred alike from prayers, embrace, and revels.
They're cursed with loneliness and lacerated wrists.
It's said pain lingers, unresolved -- hence their visits.
If devils and angels are the minions of God,
Maybe ghosts are legions we send to the same plain
Of battle, to wander, Cain in the land of Nod,
Between both armies, to prove we've not lived in vain,
If we could but convince them their war is insane.
When they appear before men their message is clear.
Silent and staring, they accuse, or plead, or frown,
And when we try to speak to them, they disappear.
The only ghost I will believe in is my own.

The Taking of Christ (Caravaggio)

#133

A man who betrays another may have
Many motives, but the sin is the same.

Rationalizing, the sinner will salve
His conscience, oblivious to his shame.

Betrayal is an ambiguous crime,
A "virtuous" act muddied with a kiss.

He says, "Doesn't my judgement demand this,
That I expose this man while there's still time?"

Judas's silver wasn't his motive.
He resented and would never forgive

The burden of his Rabbi's instruction --
Far better to live with His destruction.

A traitor won't betray a lesser knave.
His hanged honor rots in an unmarked grave.

The Nightmare (John Henry Fuseli), Sonnet #132

Nightmares are death undergoing animation,
A stiffening fog of imagery shot through
With replete hues and stagey illumination,
Shifting floors and infinitely receding views.
They rarely project what we deeply fear
(Which I won't begin to name even here;
I don't tempt the fates crouching inside me),
Yet made real they would scream insanity.
Nightmares climb over the lip of the ego-well
To give flesh to creatures in my personal hell.
The woman's are not just imps with accusing grins.
Her blinded horse looms with a seeming friendly face.
The humped incubus pins her with her fleshly sins.
That equine smile makes a mocking promise of grace.

Carnival In The Mountains (Klee)

#131

The pale, blind lady with the veiny cheeks
Keeps her apples from the reach of the boy
Who's sporting a blue man's grinning death mask.
A fire-breasted chicken watches for geeks,
Extrudes an egg here and there, a decoy.
No head-biter shies from his sanguinary task.
We are in the green mountains where the air
Is green as moss and moss is black as tar.
Clouds droop between the peaks like suckled breasts
And every home is home to nameless beasts.
The Carnival King is a mechanical man,
With lightning brains and an eye for a hand.
The revelers kill him with a handful of sand,
And dump the apples into his belly trash can.

The Cicada Killer and The Cicada (photo by Bill Buchanan, silver sculpture by Ruth Diamond-Guerin, drawing by Julia Guerin)

#130

We saw the hill of sand by the sidewalk,
The first time in the 30 years we've owned
This house. In twenty minutes the killer
Landed twice, clutching a cicada, dragged the bulk
Underground. Her wings made a rasping sound.
I drowned her with a gallon of white vinegar.
I feel some guilt at the sand wasp's demise,
But love of purity allows no compromise.
The cicada's song is the sound of all yearning.
His hollow abdomen and drumhead tymbals
Expand and contract, reverberating like symbols
Whose meaning demands a lifetime of learning.
Listen. The song, breathless, aching, intensifies,
Irradiates, irradiates the air -- and then it dies.

With this, the 130th sonnet in the "Brushwork" sequence,
I'd like to recognize my best friend and editor, Michael Antman,
who has read, closely, and critiqued every single sonnet. I 
appreciate his time, honesty, clear insights, and excellent advice, 
which I've invariably taken.

Metamorphosis III (Escher)

#129

Birds, insects, and lizards live in cages
Whose bars and locks melt over the ages.
Their forms meld in imperceptible stages.
Their names disappear from taxonomic pages.
We know that nothing without time changes,
That duration inexorably deranges
Our genes, ideas, stars, and mountain ranges,
That metamorphoses aren't equal exchanges.
And then there's growing old, which nothing assuages.
We spend a life making babies and wages,
Then nothings such as mirrors enrage us,
And no comfort comes from priests or sages,
But this: not all is rust. Yes, everything ages,
A puissance that releases us from our cages.

The Bad Doctors (James Ensor)

#128

Three Scrips for Bad Doctors

Mr. Ill was given a potent pill
(And a bill), and though it didn't quite kill
Him, it induced the drafting of his will.
Doc Diploma diagnosed lymphoma
Upon sniffing whiffs of Ill's aroma.
Dr. Pain declared the patient insane:
"Shock therapy will teach him to complain!"

We assume eight years of school and residency
Is rich justification for complacency.
We trust there's nothing more to learn after all that.
Give those you can't diagnose a scrip, a kindly pat.
Has it occurred to you to do more research, stat?

The doctors (and a butcher) have almost killed the tapeworm.
Death stands by to assist physicians, the most welcome germ.

Pandora (John William Waterhouse)

#127

The Gods made her, the first woman, adding
A quality that Each held dear, which she
Never understood, not knowing her mind.
They found her indifference maddening,
So, out of spite, They also made her free,
And invented for her a double bind.
They made her alone, but full of desire
For something she could not identify;
A thing made of smooth pliant clay and mire,
She dreamed of caressing, not knowing why.
Taking pity, the Gods granted a rebirth,
An object to resolve her paradox.
Pandora did not loose Evil on earth,
But eagerly freed mankind from its box.

River Under the Trees (Gauguin)

#126

On low descending stairs, the river steps
Past pebbles and deadfall, seeking the end.
The trees watch -- silent, impassive adepts --
Unmindful of what lies beyond the bend.
I've tossed the fly a hundred thousand times
This afternoon and have not raised a trout,
Though I see them, shadows beneath the pines,
Elusive as a vaguely recalled doubt.
A pileated woodpecker alights
On a dead tree, plants himself, and, ripping
At an oblong hole, flings wood left and right -- 
All those scrambling ants he is sipping.
I leave the river before he's flown off,
My creel empty, my mind rasped and rough.

Witches' Sabbath (Goya)

#125

The Magus wears a garland of doll's eye,
Leaves, bare of fruit, on his horns -- the berries
Were for the withering of children's fears,
Though too often the tiny babies die.
A terrified young witch mother carries
Her lovechild into a circle of sneers,
Desperate to fondle the Goat's hoof,
In spite of a starveling's left-handed proof.
The witches gather with a wanton will.
Though none has yet to cast a spell with skill,
They believe coupling with the Magician
Will make them charm like a politician.
With moonset, the end of the Sabbath looms -- 
A gibbet of dead babes and gravid wombs.

The Healing of a Madman (Vittore Carpaccio)

#124

A madness in us all is a thwarted desire to see.
A painter cannot see beyond his frame and nor can we.
The Rialto Bridge is closed for now to the taller ships,
And men step gingerly across her pedestrian planks.
The pot-like chimneys equal in number the gathered swells,
Tradesmen and pols awaiting the news, that they may worship.
A miracle will soon be performed and they must give thanks,
Though in such proximity they sweat, and the canal smells.
Above, Querini touches the madman with a splinter
Said to come from the Holy Cross, attempting to enter
The man's darkened mind and let in the soft lights of Venice.
Failing, he kisses the beggar's eyes, an act of penance.
The weeping madman stoops and strokes the glittering vestments.

The Baleful Head (Edward Burne-Jones)

#123

In the apple orchard's clear, octagonal well,
The hero reveals the Gorgon's head to his prize.
He's killed the sea serpent before it ate the nude
Beauty her frightened father had offered to sell
To appease a god angered by arrogant lies.
But why show his bride-to-be what's vicious and lewd?
Medusa made man or woman adulterers.
Enchanted by her shameless, urgent moans,
Her mad green eyes and wild, seductive leers,
Their surging blood turned them to stone.
(They died dreaming of her enchanted caresses,
Not because they abhorred her serpentine tresses.)
Perseus seems eager for her to see the head --
A pledge of fidelity, or to inspire dread?

The Sense of Speed (Dali)

#122

I have seen shadows outrun the sunrise,
Moving faster than the speed of moonlight,
Just as our blinking can outrun our sight,
(Eyelids being the shadows of our eyes).
I have seen the shadows lengthen the day,
Stretch out a minute into two or three,
Or hide an hour like a bird in a tree;
Asleep at dusk, the hour dreams away.
I have seen a shadow's hands on the clock,
Its skull aloof, indifferent to time;
Not so those hands, forcing the clock to chime,
Whipping the tic along faster than toc.
I have seen my shadow run without me,
A fleeing murderer of memory.

Achelous and Hercules (Benton)

#121

For the Victims of the Belvidere Tornado, 4/21/1967

When Hercules tore the horn from the river god
Before the harvest could be washed away,
The cornucopia -- benign tornado -- spilled
Its yield of grain, gourd, and fruit as the cloud
Of Achelous's rage began to twist and sway.
The next day twenty-four farmers were killed.
The funnel's path, cut by the bull's remaining horn,
Left nothing but the uprooted, scattered, and torn.
They say the sun died and the sky turned green,
That the god's roar was a detonation of spleen.
Hercules was never seen in those parts again.
Did he run or was he ground into human grain?
The one-horned bull rages on, rivers overflow.
No hero's left to rip from him the tornado.

Note: The victims of the Belvidere tragedy were not farmers,
but mostly town residents, thirteen of them children; but, 
for the purpose of the poem, which is based on mythology, 
"farmers" was more consistent. Click and hold on the image 
to see Benton's remarkable mural in greater detail.

The Broken Pine (Akseli Gallen-Kallela)/ Broken Oak (Guerin)

#120
I

Am I what I think more than what I see?
An obvious thought and pernicious truth,
It seems; thus, we have made a mess of things.
A broken tree is just a shattered knee.
The logic of zealots, rampaging youth --
The loner's automatic weapon sings.
The smaller trees surround the fallen trunk
Like children appalled by their father drunk.
We teach them to love our wide-eyed blindness,
To rationalize even one's kindness.
The painter's tree is no truer than mine.
We see the same, sad ending of a life.
But all of his splintering is a sign
Of unnatural and murderous strife.


II

If a tree falls in the forest....the old saw goes.
That cliche has become the source of all we know --
The answer being the answer is no answer.
Our consciousness is a kind of benign cancer,
Creating forests by invading their silence;
By dying we wreak universal violence.
Consider the wreckage where each tree broke apart,
The sundering of sinew, the breakage of bone,
The surrendering of structure to mere air, blown,
By what, all in the creation of works of art.
To see, to think, to know, to make, and then unmake.
To discover, to climb and fall, and then to break.
The happiest man revels in uncertainty.
We are the tree-makers or we are the tree.

“Comment une conscience se fait univers (peut être)” (Roberto Matta)

#119

What if the universe is an illustration,
Matta seems to say, just our assembly
Of images, some structured, and others,
Colors bleeding, a crystal seeking formation,
Ideas spinning with empty possibility,
Something the end of consciousness smothers?
A pilot, when the moon is full, will say,
"What a nice night for flying," but in space
Every moment is the same starlit day,
Or is it, without pilots, or the human race?
We strain to create boxes, not a shape
Found much in nature, only to escape
The elements, and that is how we think --
Though even boxes vanish when we blink.

Note: Loosely translated, the title means,
“How a consciousness is made universe (maybe)”

Magic Mirror (Escher)

#118

this moment this moment this moment this moment

Dragons on graph paper and images of beasts
March to assembly, an army at war within.
A propped mirror is the instant when time is rent,
What's done from what's about to be released,
That instant we neither recall nor contemplate a sin,
(The mirror internally, eternally lit),
Since we're in the act of committing it.
We are those silver, faceless, and unmoving orbs,
Who, before and after, our reflection absorbs,
While the dragons, a danger, but oblivious,
Circle us endlessly, meshing, silent terrors,
The jailers of the placid, dim, and unconscious.

the mirror mirrors the moment this moment mirrors

A Sudden Gust of Wind (Hokasai)

#117

I lived in the shadow of Pikes Peak when a wind
Knocked a tall Ponderosa Pine onto our home.
I watched it cascade down and feared the roof would cave.
The wind blew all day like the words of a mad mind,
Or endless release of energy from a bomb.
A thousand trees went down into an open grave.

Beneath Mt. Fuji the wind, fitful, capricious,
Is believed to be a spirit, both mischievous
And, at certain times of the year, avaricious.
Unbidden and unlooked for, it suddenly gusts,
Making kites of hats and snow of poets' pages,
Stirring up despair like blown kisses fanning lusts;
Or, like a petulant child, it writhes and rages
At the cold, dry mound it has suckled for ages.

Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (Dali)

#116

The floating nude -- not tigers disgorged by a bass,
Nor a bayonet pricking her flesh below the elbow,
Nor a stilt-legged elephant toting a pinnacle of ice -- 
Is the real dream, the painter's hypnogogic lass.
She's sleeping the secret to what we seem to know -- 
Above her stoney bed and fearsome precipice,
What a bee buzzing at a pomegranate means -- 
Consciousness is a dream of a dream of a dream,
A broken fruit released of its prepotent seeds, 
The begetter of perceptions, ideas, and deeds,
No more real than two hovering mercury beads.
She wakes and the tigers are leaping still,
The elephant's laughter soothingly shrill.
She can forget them all at will, and will.

Silence (Odilon Redon)

#115

I cannot tell you what I know because I can't.
You hear only what you imagine I can say,
Which is everything: what is evanescent,
And why you hear, or what is already empty.
I'm impossible, the opposite of being,
As darkness is the false negative of seeing.
But, if you can seek me out, I am a music,
Composed and at rest, a tune without beat or notes
(The Sirens would have shrieked, blasting voices
Into cracked larynxes just to mimic),
A sonata unwhispered I unlearned by rote,
My own sweet refusal to make any choices.
Now be quiet, if only for a moment
Stay your life, if only for a moment

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Duchamp)

#114

Light is invisible until it strikes our Eve,
When her body becomes an object we perceive.
It might have been there all along if we believe
That what we cannot see we can conceive.
Though unclothed, she steps quickly to achieve
The bottom of the stairs. Her limbs slice and weave
The air she's turned to gold, all to deceive
Lust her modesty can only hope to aggrieve.
Nothing of her is lost that we cannot retrieve
With a blink. But look! While looking too closely, we've
Dissolved her, like pouring Chardonnay through a sieve.
From oblivious blindness there is no reprieve.
Failure to see, to see, to humbly and with love receive
Such beauty, condemns us criminally naive.

The Sea Monster (Durer)

#113

Each moon the damned gray sea monster abducts our wives,
Then releases them to us as speechless as fish.
Not one has revealed what happens beneath the waves;
So we wonder, do they endure terrors or bliss?
He has antlers and a merman's scales, and a shield
Of tortuga shell, and eyes that say, "Ye shall yield."
Only Annalee, my perfect wife, fought the beast,
Calling to me as I stood helpless on the beach.
After she slapped his bearded face and yanked his mane,
He ripped off her dress and drowned her in shame.
Of all the women taken, only she has not returned,
Those taken since scoff at the possibility
(Each petulant and stiff, like a woman scorned)
That Annalee's alive, with him, beneath the sea.

Prodigal Son (Thomas Hart Benton)

#112

I've heard we regret most the undone thing.
Well, I've done it all, I just couldn't do it here.
Now I've come home to find there is nothing
But broken shadows and a skull's blind leer.
I once stroked thighs beneath a red silk skirt,
And drew a straight flush to win twenty grand.
I shot a man and watched his blood stain dirt,
Slipped a diamond into his widow's hand.
I've been chased, jailed, raped, and paroled,
And after all these years came home to be consoled.
The Bible says that I shall be embraced --
By the collapse of our home's rotting shell.
No soul remains to absolve my disgrace.
Regret is a corpse poisoning the well.

Hyde Mill (Sandy Ellarson)

#111

They moved the river to build the water wheel,
Then built a wooden race to divert the current.
Sluice opened, stones ground raw grain into meal
For a hundred years, until the old mill was spent.
River turning wheel turning gears turning stone,
A devolution of mechanics all to crush a seed.
The sun burns for years to dry an animal's bones,
And countless gallons of water won't break a reed.
I'm reluctant to approach the mill too closely
(Its ancient timbers are desiccated, ghostly),
Hear its stoppage rasped by the river's relentless
Passage over the shattered race's detritus.
Away from the wreck, a little waterfall churns
Spray, wrack, and spume, and, like time, it burns.

The Image Disappears (Dali)

#110

The first image to disappear
Is a recovered memory,
Now a vanishing Vermeer.
The woman is just scenery,
Like the map and the checkered floor,
Looking out a window or door.
She's pregnant and holds in her hand
A weapon, an artist's stylus.
She's been swallowed by her husband,
Right in front of all of us.
Both of them will disappear,
Because neither is an image,
But an embodiment of fear:
A man and wife erased by rage.

Sita (Odilon Redon)

#109

My dear, your diadem, jewel-encrusted nautilus,
A shield of serried shell and whorled pink, is us,
The gift of a god to expiate his enviousness.
I refused to let even him pin it to your headdress.
I pursue you and your captor, ten-headed Ravana,
Led on by the gems and perfumed scraps of clothing
You drop, leaving a guttering trail I follow,
As word follows word into our future Ramayana.
I know your face, how it won't betray your loathing
A rakshasa's touch, from which blister beetles grow.
Your dark eyes are fixed upon a moonlike ovum,
Wherein our twins will dream of battles to be won.
You know, my love, as well as he, that I will come,
And with his death I'll change the moon into the sun.