The Spy (Cold War Mini-sub), Sonnet #632

 

Like a sty in the nation’s eye,

He’s a hiding-in-plain-sight guy,

A cataract of the blind lie —

People still believe him, though why

Is as mysterious as Pi.

A carnival barker, though sly,

And a connoisseur of the small fry

He munches either moist or dry.

He beckons the bucks from on high.

They all trot up to him and sigh.

He has a mantra: I am I.

There’s no disputing that, just try.

There are some who think he's a spy.

We know he’s set the world awry.

Note: The number Pi is considered 

mysterious due to its irrational and

transcendental nature.

The Wounded Deer (Frida Kahlo) Sonnet #628

No, it’s the beginning that is beyond

And the ending is already here.

No idea nestles inside a sound

Like a resting invisible deer.

Surprised, she’ll try to outrun your car

As if she knows just who you are.

She is not afraid or even shy,

And does not know how not to die —

Only the free are hunted and chased.

She can hide but she cannot escape.

What is that word again, that soughing,

Shortness of breath, then a coughing

That betrays not presence but intent?

She’s always known what beyond ending meant.

Mountain Brook (John Singer Sargent)

 

The brook ran through high mountain pasture

From failing glacier to pool to pond to lake,

Between banks limned with moss and aster

Rooted in cascades of shattered igneous flake.

I straddled the water running slow over stones,

My boots precariously gripping boulders

The water’s rilling shaped into hipbones.

Further up hunched matching shoulders.

I found a head and rolled it in, midstream.

The shallow, muttering water, unperturbed,

Flowed around and on like a vanquished dream.

Provoked, I left not a rock undisturbed

And rolled them in -- the addled stream burst

Banks and drowned the mountain pasture’s thirst.

The Park (Gustav Klimt)

 

The first leaves to turn lighten

From dark green to warm pale

Before a single one drops.

The gardens beyond brighten

Even as the flowers fail.

The nothing in the world stops.

My Dear Udnie, Part Three of Three

"My Dear Udnie" is one of what I call my "voices poems." (The title comes from a painting by Francis Picabia.) This is part three of three. Each stanza is a separate voice, though not necessarily a separate person. I bought postcards of great paintings I'd seen at great museums and these stacked up on my writing desk. Eventually, I composed this poem with each stanza prompted by a single painting.

IX

I’m in diamonds.  I do my best to provide.

But last night my wife acted out a strange scene.

God knows she was absolutely pie-eyed.

Dressed only in a bow, she grabbed my thing!

Solitaire sprawled on the rug with the dog—

goddamned loneliness, card game, my burnt knees,

the wallpaper samples in that catalog!

He says he’s good when he isn’t with me!

I buy this bird.  It’s dead but soft.  Nice.  Soft.

My woman could make nothing of these others.

So many birds you’ve brought down from aloft.

Shut up!  I don’t bargain with her lovers.

 X

 These women never let us get things done.

It’s such a basic thing to hang a man

on a cross.  And he’s not even their son.

I suppose they must do what they can.

The women weary of calling their men

to lunch they’ve made in the golden hay fields.

Harvest is a working madness for them.

They eat, to the sound of scythes, poverty’s meal.

Hurry!  The night finds the darkness.  The sea

will empty before our lamps are lit!

The fish peck eyes that can no longer see.

Hungry, we work to milk our mother’s tit.

XI

 She is the only woman left who has her hair.

Alone, in that shattered window, she sits,

nourished by food she gets from god knows where,

while I lug starving corpses to the pits.

Come, Perfect Fool!  I’ll tell your fortune,

while my girls cut your purse, pick your pocket.

I predict a fall in self-satisfaction.

You have a brain, but your actions mock it.

The sockets in the skull have been worn to

pinholes.  The jaw is a flower of flakes

in a desert stretched from red hills to blue

lakes, blooming for a dead man’s dead wife’s sake.

XII

See?  Here she is.  No man held her life.

Barbed wire and bullets were to no avail.

How swift a bird to fly above the knife.

Her body is still warm.  Her eyes are pale.

Trees are a curse on the moon, which is far

and updateless, while they stand here and grow.

My eyes stir a whirlpool of dim stars;

Diving for death, I see her and follow.

Udnie, my dear one, I see you idealized—

A fervent virgin staring at a house.

You were more than that, I realize—

A god my fervent prayer could not arouse.

My Dear Udnie, Part Two of Three

"My Dear Udnie" is one of what I call my "voices poems." This is part two of three. WARNING: THIS CONTAINS SOME SUGGESTIVE LANGUAGE. Each stanza is a separate voice, though not necessarily a separate person. I bought postcards of great paintings I'd seen at great museums and these stacked up on my writing desk. Eventually, I composed this poem with each stanza prompted by a single painting.

V

She’s flat-chested and bald between her legs,

just like me.  Not exactly.  More tummy.

But she has three boys who moon and beg,

who don’t even care if she’s a dummy!

Sister says reflections off pump and pearl

will make a window of a girl’s dress.

I know boys who laugh with their eyes, so sure

of success—if not I, then others undress.

Yeah, they were naked all right, the whores,

jiggling, cooing, squatting, touching themselves.

About as exciting as two-by-fours.

I took a big one—boobs like swinging bells.

VI

I stretch every minute looking to see

that we’re still here beneath this crooked butte.

A short nap has creased my unworthy dreams.

Alone, she’d trade the sun her red suit.

I wonder what he’s like on trapeze?

She locks her legs about his waist and must

feel it.  That and the way he grabs her knees

And dives between them, flying with lust!

Later, she said, Lover, you are a top,

spinning madly.  Clear the floor and drill

the points of the compass until we drop

down blurred dimensions, dizzy, almost ill.

VII

Holding hands, the five dancers circle

on rippling grass, naked in spirit.

As the dance turns each dancer’s miracle,

the virgin breaks the ring without regret.

The truest is the dawn dream.  Fair bodies

bathe in cool waters, or pluck roses

for the golden basket.  Stirred, she flees

the crescent-moon-crowned bull’s hypnosis.

The King has said, “Her love is food for war.”

A slut fattens him daily for the job.

How they walk!  Their genitals must be sore.

In the tower, his Queen gives birth to sobs.

VIII

Pregnant, your belly grew longer, then round.

Your breasts too.  Painful for you.  Not for me.

I watched you sleeping nude and listened, found

a new life swimming in an ancient sea.

If there’s nothing but eyes to justify

her expense, what is all this darkness?

She ignores the child.  When I get mad, she cries.

Mother laughs, thinking, poetic justice.

Our breakfast room is a chapel of light

where my husband prays to the newspapers.

It has been years.  We no longer fight.

I serve him currant jelly with capers.

Pine Forest (Gustav Klimt), Sonnet #616

There’s no edge to the pine forest.

We’re always within and without.

It’s neither a question nor test,

Because there’s no room here for doubt.

Its mixed scents purify the air

And its shades rarify the light.

I decide to touch each column,

Which soon urges me toward despair,

As though mine is a hand of blight

That renders the living bark numb.

Without navigable details,

One can get lost in woods — not these,

Whose needled floors delimit trails

Some, not all, follow with ease.

Swallowtail (photograph by the author), Sonnet #609

 

The tiger swallowtail settled

In our Gomphrena Fireworks

Yesterday afternoon sipping

From dozens of pink blooms.

It became crazily nettled

And flew in wild fits and jerks

When a spicebush swallowtail, tipping

Its wings among the blossoms,

Exiled the tiger from its lair.

The wind pushed black wings apart

So wide they ceased to be a pair,

But held fast until the gust died.

The tiger landed like a dart,

But, like the wind, was again denied.

Winter Landscape (Alexey Savrasov), Sonnet #598

 

1970

When the river that ran by my house froze

And the wind had blown the snow off the ice,

I would skate, chasing the schools of dark fish

(Careful not to run too close to the floes

A warm well cracked into sharp ice slices)

Until they’d leave the shallows and vanish.

1870

“That harshest of winters we all survived.

The wind (so murderous) kept us alive,

Piling snow wherever the cold sought in,

Even when we had an empty wood bin.”

“That winter whole families died, frozen —

In our district alone there were dozens.

We burned the houses — better used as graves —

The wind blew snow on our fields into waves.”

Thanks to Irina Velitskaya for recommending this painting.

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

My Human Disguise.

The Acropolis, 1842 ( Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey), Sonnet #595

The patina of time is thick.

We feel a life inside old brick

We don’t on a mountain’s summit

Or taste in a fall windstorm’s grit.

For millennia after it fell,

An Athenian couldn’t tell,

As he passed its ruins by,

If it was really there, or why.

It cried out to his soul, sundered

By countless years of surrender,

A mountain of crumbling stone

Better ignored and left alone.

Did he feel, see or comprehend

That glory has no casual end?

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

My Human Disguise.

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.

Giant Squid Attacking Boat (W. A. Cranston), Sonnet #591

 

The Kraken, like all monsters, aren’t shy.

They live, not hiding, but where we don’t go.

Does each one have just an eye for an I?

Do they hunt us hungrily from below?

I wouldn’t turn them into metaphors

Because they slip thither on ocean floors,

Rising out of curiosity,

Fearful themselves of monstrosities.

They are too overwhelmingly like us,

Tentacle arms and a sharp teeth-like beak,

Astride their sea realm like a colossus,

In sum strong and in each single part weak.

Starlike, architeuthis came from space,

As did we, a fleeting elusive race.

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

My Human Disguise.