Black, Sonnet #594

As if nothing has a color

And tomorrow is an absence —

Our one emotion is dolor —

A period is a sentence.

Why do we dream in black and white,

Fugal shapes dipped in clouds and ink,

In word-concatenations think,

And in zebra characters write?

Art starts with paper or canvas,

Both white, but proceeds to darken

As hours of inspiration pass,

Approaching black with brush or pen.

These poems reduce ordered paint

To something both more and less faint.

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

My Human Disguise.

Blind, Sonnet #593

Seeing all that has gone before,

And what little is yet to come,

I haven’t chosen my colors,

Not from the cathedral’s dim dome,

Or the canvas named by its frame,

(I can’t choose even my own brain),

Because I cannot see what’s seen.

I can’t distinguish grass from green

Or a male cardinal from red.

I look but find it hard to read.

I’m forced to think in images,

Most dancing on flattened stages.

I’ve not much time to choose my hues,

Thinking blood is less red than blue. 

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

My Human Disguise.