Mountain in Winter (Paul Klee), Sonnet #545

In Farewell to 2020

The mountains are covered with salt,

Withering the conifer,

Sealing up crevasse and fault,

Petrifying deer femur.

Ragged peaks are crystallized,

Great rhomboids of quartz and calcite —

The imperfect reimagined right,

Its sterility realized.

I ask you, what then is to come,

Or is this all, the obvious end?

Blink! Don’t confuse all with a sum

Of the tatters we cannot mend.

Silently it falls, the slow,

Inexorable, failing snow. 

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:

My Human Disguise.

His Majesty Receives (William Holbrook Beard), Sonnet #544

He’s demanded they support his habits

Of frothing, striking, biting, and killing.

His followers, all mice, rats and rabbits,

Beg his mercy upon them, his willing

And most abject obedient subjects.

“What?” he soothes them. “I’m only kidding.

Act as you believe, not at my bidding.”

His cringing rodents think he suspects

Some treachery. Their leader, a wild hare,

Steps forward, bowing low, and says, “Please, sire.

We pledge ourselves to your every desire.

For you we would run with our asses bare!”

“Do so! As I am all you’ve ever feared!”

They ate each other when he disappeared.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here: My Human Disguise.

Kirkus Review of my book of stories: "The Story of My Universe and other Stories"

THE STORY OF MY UNIVERSE AND OTHER STORIES

BY CHRISTOPHER GUERIN ‧ RELEASE DATE: JULY 26, 2020

This volume of short stories teeters on the edge of plausibility, exploring everything from sinister cults to the coteries of academia.

Seventeen tales are offered in this collection of extremes written by an author who is equally comfortable examining the grisly as he is the demure. The opening story, “Shoot Me,” is one of strange coincidence—a young man accidentally shoots a fellow hunter in the forest only to learn that chance brought them together before. The following story, “Ball,” is a bizarrely intriguing tale about a man who inherits a mysterious sphere from an aging colleague and discovers that it holds wildly entertaining and destructive powers. Meanwhile, “Poet to Poet” is a cautionary tale about the predatory nature of academia. “The Metametamorphosis,” in which a fashion designer awakes to find he has transformed into a beetle, is a thought-provoking rewrite of Kafka’s masterpiece. The collection closes with the title story, which tells of a seemingly ordinary man who comes to the realization that “I murdered someone I didn’t even know.” When approaching Guerin’s writing, it is important for readers to expect the unexpected. Even then, nothing can prepare them for the knockout final sentence the author delivers in “Red,” the tale of a man who stumbles on a cult performing a ritual on a beach. Full of surprises, Guerin’s descriptive approach is refreshingly unconventional: “From this grassy bank wishbone-shaped twigs stuck up like fetishes.” Yet he also has the power to suddenly flip to the remorselessly brutal: “There didn’t seem to be any blood, though my fingers sank in slightly as if the skull had shattered.” The author’s stories are founded on a breadth of literary knowledge. In addition to Kafka, Gogol is a clear influence, even making an appearance as a supposed thief in “Gogol in Paris.” A naïvely pretentious conversation between two students in “Philosophy 000,” the weakest tale here, fails to bestow each character with a satisfyingly unique voice; on occasion, it is difficult to discern who is saying what. But this is a minor distraction in a strong and compelling assemblage that is sure to perturb and astonish in equal measure.

Elegant, impactful writing in a deliciously unnerving collection.

https://www.amazon.com/Story-My-Universe-Other-Stories/dp/1937484815/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Christopher+Guerin&qid=1608484398&sr=8-1

The Truth Coming Out of the Well (Jean-Léon Gérôme), Sonnet #543

 

Both the truth and its liars are hidden

And will not come forth to speak unbidden

By necessity’s will or convenience,

Unless called for by fakery of sense.

Only at the bottom of a dry well —

Half way, the easy half, from here to Hell —

Where nakedness — dear Truth — shivers and sighs,

Does Emptiness stitch gorgeous clothes of lies.

He emerges to strut in his glory.

Every sentence he spouts is a story.

His opposite, her body cleansed at least,

Climbs out to the reception of a beast.

They beat and rape her, drag her by her hair,

Throw her back into the well, her dark lair.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:

My Human Disguise.

Hope (George Frederic Watts), Sonnet #542

 

The single string of her burst harp

Can play a quavering C-sharp.

She embraces the instrument

Like a lover singing laments,

But hearing no responding tone.

Hope is always on her own.

One star and Jupiter, her chair,

Revolve in incandescent air.

She’s worn a tightly-wound blindfold

Since she was only two years old.

And she must seek a life in this

Emptiness and paralysis?

Yes. That is what hope signifies.

Creation of a song from sighs.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here: My Human Disguise. 

Valley of Aosta: Snowstorm, Avalanche and Thunderstorm (J.M.W. Turner), Sonnet #541

 

An avalanche exists in the abstract,

A violent snow and ice cataract,

Content without shape, without content,

A proliferation of the absent.

A blizzard wipes the air empty and white

And confuses real things with closed-eye night.

(Formlessness is a natural order,

An extremity without a border.)

The thunderstorm exposes the mountain

With splintering intensity; fountains

Of light define the crag, the slope, the tree —

Revealing only momentarily.

These words (also abstract) erase all forms

From the blankest page — revealing more storms.

With thanks to Jeff Strayer for the Turner suggestion.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here: My Human Disguise.

Wedding (Marc Chagall), Sonnet #540

 

For Ruth

We couldn’t foretell the future.

Who can? But with hope, trust, desire

On the wedding day, we made pure,

Our breasts pressed, blanketing with fire.

Outside a blizzard blocked the streets

And dazzled the windows light white.

Later, later, we heard the night,

Unafraid, as we stretched smooth sheets.

Forty-three years and nothing’s changed —

Not between us, not you, not me.

Newness, like children, we arranged.

We held them, then we set them free.

My love, I hold you in my arms,

Our kisses silence all alarms.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:

My Human Disguise.

Casting (Winslow Homer), Sonnet #539

 

When I cast the world disappears —

The rod, the reel, the line, the fly,

And the river cease to exist.

Even disappearance clears,

Leaving only motion. I try

To reach beyond the blazing mist.

The trout are only a waiting,

Still beneath endless cataracts,

Oblivious of my baiting.

Sand and pebbles stipple their backs.

When I leave with an empty creel,

I’m empty too, my wrist is sore.

Though I again begin to feel,

There is nothing lost to restore.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here: My Human Disguise. 

The Sheltered Path (Claude Monet), Sonnet #538

The old man plods toward senescence

On the sheltered path of his thought.

He thinks only what he can sense,

Senses only what he's been taught.

The trees on the path were planted

Decades ago as a windbreak.

Their trunks have been slightly canted

By dumb and insistent breezes.

Always more asleep than awake,

He follows that path, coughs, wheezes,

And nothing much occurs to him

He hasn’t sensed a thousand times.

Revelation would be a whim

Of these trees, these rustling chimes.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:

My Human Disguise.

 

Carpet of Memory 2 (Paul Klee), Sonnet #537

“Flying carpet” might be more apt,

Fleeing, unreachable, rapt.

Not magical, but uncanny,

Not even real, epiphany

Without a point because it is

Not up to analysis.

We’re given only a number —

How many can’t be counted, known —

(Fraying threads, fabric unsewn).

“I’m certain that I remember,”

I say. The carpet flaps. I fall.

Can I recall one thing at all?

The memories that I most fear

Are those I hope to lose next year.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here: My Human Disguise. 

Fog Run II (Alice Guerin), Sonnet #536

As if we’ve wandered into dark chances,

A fog descends through thick forest branches

With the silent drop of a heavy drape.

Our first intuition is for escape.

The fog uncenters us, spreading us thin —

Once guiltless we feel we might deserve sin,

That the fog is a judgement for not being —

Not feeling, not hearing, and not seeing —

Not as we might and now we know we must.

It’s not too late! The fog is life, not dust. 

Look back! Don’t let the other fall behind,

Or you both might become equally lost.

There could be nothing where the sun once shined,

But only now. Soon you’ll know heat or frost.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here: My Human Disguise. 

Myna Bird in Pine Tree (Mu Ch’i), Sonnet #535

 

It’s said you have to split its tongue

When the myna is very young

Before you can teach it to speak.

At first it wags its yellow beak

While emitting a stifled squeak.

The patient teacher says one word,

And then to unconfuse the bird,

Repeats it many times, mimics

Himself, until the bird’s mind clicks

And its forked tongue repeats the word.

It can learn any human sound

As long as it's kept in its cage.

It dies if released from that cage

Into worlds of confusing sound.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:

My Human Disguise.

The Sleeping Gypsy (Henri Rousseau), Sonnet #534

 

Each night the old gypsy

Gets a little tipsy.

He falls asleep and dreams

Of all that more than seems.

Beside him lays his oud,

Vibrating strings and wood,

His bottle of red wine — 

Essence of the Divine.

He tightly grips his cane

To bash away the rain,

Or bat the falling star,

Erasing its bright scar.

A lion, maybe real,

Could make of him a meal.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here: My Human Disguise. 

Gilles, or Pierrot (Jean-Antoine Watteau), Sonnet #533

  

Some of us never get past our stage fright.

I forget my lines, stand stiff and dumb,

Unable even to exit, stage right.

My ears roar with white noise, my tongue goes numb.

The sight of clustered eyes — the audience

With its expectations, its curt demands,

Its taut, arms-crossed, unforgiving silence —

Fills my head with endless ampersands.

Each remembered line is followed by “&.”

& then? & then? & like an hourglass,

I become empty of yet-to-fall sand —

& then come the billows of laughing gas,

Off stage, the director’s disgusted look,

A finger across his throat, then the hook.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here: My Human Disguise. 

Memory of the Garden at Etten (Ladies of Arles) (Van Gogh), Sonnet #532

 

Without it we can’t live in the moment.

Without its slowly grown paler shadows,

Without its insistence, its distractions,

Without its being what no one else knows,

Now would be indecipherable scent,

Bodies statuary of fixed actions,

A path a path no walker ever crossed,

A mother’s love forever nascent,

Immediacy soon forever lost.

The dead past animates the dead present.

Old women walk among the dianthus

As a young gardener with shears deadheads.

All apply a modest calculus

Of then and now among the flowerbeds.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here: 

My Human Disguise. 

Impossible Chairs (Alice Bea Guerin), Sonnet #531

Possible chairs. Impossible chair.

Thought prints like graphite on white stone,

No less real than drawing on air.

(One is the only one unknown.)

The rocker can’t stop and will fall.

Not every three-legged stool stands.

The bentwood arm chair has no front.

The best words, written with an awl,

Are those that no-one understands,

Like this, an impossible stunt.

Don’t tell me these chairs are not real.

You might as well say pairs won’t peel,

That a compass can square the wheel,

Or that what is dead is ideal.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:

My Human Disguise.

Svetlana Reflects Herself in the Mirror (Karl Briullov), Sonnet #530

She sees. She sees. What does she see?

Searching, sad eyes? Defeated eyes?

I think she sees herself thinking.

It doesn’t have a property

Under lashes of dumb or wise.

It’s not a nothing nor a thing.

Two strings of pearls, two lines of thought

Only move when she concentrates,

Seeking for what cannot be sought,

What her mind only generates.

Before her reflection, her face

Is as thin as her bodice lace.

She turns away with no answer,

Twirls her body like a dancer.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here: 

My Human Disguise.

The Monk by the Sea (Caspar David Friedrich), Sonnet #529

The rock shelf doesn’t hold the sea

In place, thought the monk, rather say,

Water will accept a boundary

Because that is the given way.

He has learned little all these years;

How to eat, walk, but not to think,

But in the vanquishing of fears —

Little stones thrown in the sea sink.

He fears most the fog’s unwinding,

Like cloth from a bolt, the blinding,

When the sun’s lost sight of his eyes.

Then there's no telling fog from self.

He’s moveless till the wind rises.

A step might send him off the shelf.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:

My Human Disguise.

Lake Storm, Sonnet #528

On my birthday the storm rolls in

Off a roiling Lake Michigan.

Just out of the water my girls’

Hair stands on end from the static

Electricity; a cloud blurs.

An eagle flees on bursting air;

Its wingbeats seem prophetic

Of a sudden lightning bolt scare.

We’re in the house before the rain

And the thunder’s humbling pain.

The air is clear after an hour,

But such upset you don’t forget.

I’m a thunderstorm losing power,

Moving off for a clear sunset.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:

My Human Disguise.