Girl Chopping Onions (Gerrit Dou), Sonnet #350

Moribund metaphors abound -- the slow reveal
Of the nested skin layers of the onion peel,
The dead hen who'll never precede another egg,
The beer mug emptied into some drunk's hollow leg.
My dear girl, with your empty grin and eyes dark ice,
Pardon. I've no objection as you dice and dice,
As you cut to the cool white heart of the matter,
Through insinuations and insincere chatter.
The chicken and the onions will make a fine pie,
And I, at least, will be the last to wonder why.
Beware the princeling who begs you to come play ball.
His ignorance of your state might cause your downfall.
I wish you all the grace of love in future years.
Bless you for working so hard, so hard without tears. 

Army Men Attack, Sonnet #336

The military objective: to knock the chip
Off the mysterious stone's shoulder, then tip
The whole evil mass over and bury its white
And gaping, bespittled gob out of human sight.
The soldiers, rigid with fear and umbrageous rage,
Are all innocent, young, exactly the same age.
Their memories are identical, none recalls
How his father fought the same war with the same balls.
Though they are many (the stone is ageless and numb,
Impervious to thought, its nervous system dumb),
They're dry sticks waved over dry soil by a dowser,
When what's needed is a six inch field howitzer.
They break against the stone, bounce back, and charge --
Small men to prevail over what is merely large.

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (Gauguin), Sonnet #334

A question is meant for the gods.
Only they are made to ask them.
We worry more about the odds
That a fruit will grow from a stem,
Not why, or how a child will grow
When his thoughts are halting and slow.
We know one another too well
And learn to love our loneliness.
The sun and stars our only dress,
We aren't shy, and eagerly tell
Stories that explain everything:
The reason for the spider's sting,
Why a dead man isn't jealous,
And asking is ridiculous.

Please click on the image to see a larger version.

Las Meninas (Diego Velázquez), Sonnet #328

We all had nothing but art on our walls.
Tapestries, paintings, were consolation
Against the cold air's infiltration.
We wore overcoats and our women shawls.
The richest of us had painters employed
To make idols of our wives and children,
And to depict us as the handsome men
We weren't before our youth could be destroyed.
We were lords! Little ladies in waiting
Were equally fit subjects for the oils,
The poor things, our little princesses' foils.
The fools felt loved asked to pose for painting.
I myself died, mistaken for a hart,
An arrow in my neck -- a work of art.

Note: Las Meninas translates as "The Ladies in Waiting."

Pileated Woodpecker in Flight (David Mintz, photographer), Sonnet #273

They say his lost cousin, ivory-billed,
Once chopped down a sycamore and when locked
In a cabin with a bobcat, he killed
The beast with a stab, flinging splinters, knocked
A hole in the door and flew. Man, he mocked.
I don't believe his laughter is extinct.
The pileated's eternal drumming
Is always distant, like tiny thunder.
He's flown right over me. I flinched. I blinked.
His loping flight, black and white wings strumming
The forest light, is the end of wonder.
Here he's caught, head turned around and under,
Flying, crest upside down -- impossible.
Yet, a thing of feathers, flesh, blood, and bill.

Ascending and Descending (Escher), Sonnet #231

I grew up in the old stone house of sleep.
I'd sit on the top step of the entrance
And dream mazes of stair, of room, and floor,
My youth's slumber oblivious and deep.
Growing older, seeking a deeper trance,
I entered the house through the basement door
Where myriad doorless, high ceilinged rooms,
All windowless, lead me onto the roof,
My mind alight like pyrotechnic blooms.
There 25 me's, robotic, aloof,
Marched up and down and up maniac stairs,
Marched pair by pair by pair by pair by pair,
Never, never arriving anywhere,
Unblinking, blind with insomniac stares.

The Siesta (Van Gogh), Sonnet #219

Most nights I wake up for an hour.
The scythes of sleep are out of reach
And there's nothing left of my dream.
That day past is a bright flower
In my head the darkness can't bleach
Or wilt, or dim its spectral beam.
I force myself to think of hay,
Of endless fields of solid gold
I must cut down by end of day.
If I just had two scythes to hold,
I'd swing away and never tire.
Each stroke would sharpen each blade,
The hay stack higher and higher,
Until I dream beneath its shade.

Elemental (Sonnets #161 and #162)

#162

There's an idea (fake as this pyrite ball is gold),
That these shapes possess some elemental structure --
"A pyramid breaks into triangles and square."
My New Math teacher once, patiently, told
Us a plane held infinite points. I wasn't so sure.
I asked, if I take a sharp pencil to paper
And make a million dots the paper won't turn black?
It's a concept, he answered angrily, not fact!
Cube, sphere, prism, octahedron, and elliptic
Palm stone -- some machine cut, some grown, some nature-made --
Arranged on my highboy, formulate a cryptic
Code of concepts curiosity can't evade,
Though we examine them without penetration.
Their rigid simplicity mocks contemplation.


#161

Simple. Elemental. Basic. Fast. Essential.
Are these the bricks and mortar of the universe
Or the toys and pastimes of a collective mind?
It's true, some find them holy and reverential,
Expressions infinitely eloquent, yet terse,
Or like paintings, not quite finished, though signed.
Do lines along two axes meet only to end
Or pass on into a negative world designed
To balance everything, or do all lines there bend
And nothing here is ever perfectly aligned?
The mind, like gravity, tends to make things rounded.
Ideas are circuitous; words circle, spiral.
Convictions are light trapped in a mirror-lined ball,
But no line stops a line; no thought is unbounded.