My Human Disguise, Parts One and Two, Sonnets #599 and #600

With these two sonnets, this sequence of 600 ekphrastic sonnets, My Human Disguise, is complete.

 

My Human Disguise, Part One, Sonnet #599 

Dear friend, do not forget what is hidden

In both the interstices and behind

The ears and feet and fingers of the mind

Cannot ever be revealed unbidden. 

I’m not the human, this disguise you find.

You must call to something else inside me,

A me even I think a mystery.

Both of us stare into the mirror, blind.

Each image we see is pentimento,

The colors laid on increasingly thick,

But like aging time, erring, erratic,

An offering of Now as memento.

I don’t understand “my human disguise.”

I never have. Is it wisdom or lies?

My Human Disguise, Part Two, Sonnet #600

It’s time to put down “My Human Disguise.”

Take off the mask, erase the images.

Enough of playing tyrant with my eyes

To creations of painters and such sages.

At times these acts of synesthesia

Have restored the blank page’s amnesia.

Then I remember I’m not a being,

But only its disguise, a seen seeing . . . .

   “He draws aside the brocaded curtain

     As if to reveal an intimacy

     Tantamount to an indiscretion,

     Though it is just to allow us to see.”

Notes: 

1. The concluding quatrain is

from the beginning of Sonnet #1,

“The Art of Painting” (by Vermeer),

from “My Human Disguise.”

The Art of Painting

2. Since this is a blog, the sonnets are

presented in reverse order. The reader

can start here for the first four sonnets:

My Human Disguise Beginning Sonnets

Click here for the next seven sonnets:

Next Seven Sonnets

After that, click on "newer posts"

at the bottom of each page.

3. The drawing for these two

sonnets is by Alice Guerin, titled

“Hands and Feet,” and appears as

the cover of the book containing

the first 200 sonnets of “My Human

Disguise,” published by Voca Me Press

in 2016. It also appears with Sonnet #40.

Fort Wayne, 1/15/22

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.

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.

Head Within An Aureole (Odilon Redon), Sonnet #590

 

The Glass Man looks in the mirror’s

Pupil and sees himself asleep.

The iris a gold-flecked halo,

A crowning of thought with errors

So lovely he must wake and weep.

His eyelids blink so: slow . . . slow . . . slow.

The Glass Man rouses and rises.

He foresees the coming crisis,

When all that he believes matters

Shivers from within and shatters.

What sonnets he has written out

Are more a whisper than a shout.

Like a mirror he turns face down,

Glass is all he has ever known.

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

My Human Disguise.

The Imp Of The Abstract (Rick Gydesen), Sonnet #588

 

“The abstract is the most we know,”

Says the blind, woodenheaded imp.

“Reality is just for show,

Like a colorful, leaking blimp,

Or eyes painted yolky yellow,

Which see only bye or hello.”

We might ask it, “How can you tell?”

It would reply, “There is no point

To my rejoinder or the joint

Where two knotty blocks form an ‘L.’

You may think you see something All,

A tree dropping leaves in the Fall —

They’re not even a chimera,

Just habit, your ephemera.”

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

My Human Disguise.

Dandelion with a Death’s Head Moth (Margaretha Barbara Dietzsch), Sonnet #578

1

More beautiful dying alive,

(As it fades, generating seeds),

Than in its full yellow flower,

The dandelions in my yard thrive,

Though people denounce them as weeds.

White tuft atop a thin tower,

A brain tottering on a spine,

Its thoughts fly in windblown showers,

Infinitesimally fine,

Like disintegration of hours.

2

Some moths carry a second head

On their backs — fooling — they’re not dead.

Oh, how we love inspired dread,

When our own lives are extended.

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

My Human Disguise.

 

Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (James Whistler), Sonnet #573

 

There’s expectation in her face

Even though she’s dressed in mourning,

But for a bonnet of white lace

And white cuffs and a wedding ring

Half-hidden by a kerchief gripped

So tightly it might have ripped.

Her straight chair sits on a gray rug,

Shoes on a padded wooden rest.

Silver threaded curtains hug

Gray walls as if they hid a guest

Once welcomed and now departed.

I wonder how her son started —

Arranging the grays and blacks square

Or with his mother’s haunting stare.

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

My Human Disguise.

Deer in the Forest (Franz Marc), Sonnet #571

The woods that spring were misty and the birds

Rarely came near, though we walked many miles.

We saw few wildflowers, many mushrooms —

More than ever, nature seemed absurd.

Foxes trotted with us, bereft of wiles.

Leafless red maples were upside down brooms.

We found hundreds of deer in the forest,

Dozing, dreaming, at rest in makeshift nests.

None awoke as we passed. We petted them.

They sighed as if grateful for our kind touch,

Though, as we thought of it, it wasn’t much,

Akin to repeating, “Amen. Amen.”

The day was not, in a common word, “Nice.”

We were, like every day, in Paradise. 

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

My Human Disguise.

Inventions (Michael Antman), Sonnet #570

 

We live where light and rust

Mount in measured layers

Like lovers without lust,

Or gods without prayers.

Who invented the bridge,

That fluvial sacrilege,

Or endless skyscrapers

Assailed by old newspapers?

They can’t blot out the sky

Or dry up the rivers —

Just twist the eye awry

Till the brainstem quivers.

Throw light on slabs of glass

And vertigoes will pass.

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

My Human Disguise.

The Kiss (Francisco Hayez), Sonnet #569

 

A critic said what poets write about

Is rubbish, it’s how they write that matters — 

And that no one can write well about love.

The nonsense of a literary tout,

Who delights in poetry he shatters

With a crippling whip in a satin glove.

I don’t remember our first kiss, the kite

She’d made was loose and sailing out of sight.

It was probably then, on our first date,

When the only thing to do was to wait

For the kite’s return, like a falcon called —

Embracing, we felt tongues and lips scald.

The moisture and heat since then are the same,

Without diminution, beyond a name.

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

My Human Disguise.

The Gate of the Night (Paul Klee), Sonnet #568

 

The vagaries of thought,

Less what is than is not,

Impossible windows,

Into, out, no wind blows,

And no light pierces lights,

But open gates of nights

Where, like a crystal jar,

Spins only one bright star

Placing all in its place

In emptiness of space,

(I am a meadowlark —

I don’t sing in the dark),

Where all’s in good order

Outside my own border.

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

My Human Disguise.

Borrowdale Framed by Stone Circle (artist unknown), Sonnet #568

 

for Jeffrey Strayer

Extreme effort to frame:

What’s seen with or without

Enclosure takes the same

Circumambient route

Into the dark pupil.

Mountains and valleys spill

Beyond the circle’s span,

From rainclouds to brainpan.

They say it’s a hard climb

To reach the stone circle,

Yet, everywhere I’m

Found, the same miracle

Completes figure and ground:

A nearly perfect round.

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

My Human Disguise.

NASA Eagles Nest (Susan Hansen), Sonnet #566

 

Near Canaveral the eagles’ nest 

Was built years before the sycamore died.

They still return to it each year to rest,

To rebuild, to mate, to give birth, to guide

Their fledglings in the raptor’s arts of flight

And fishing on the wing — claws clutched tight

On a meal devoured in a single bite.

When the rockets go up and out of sight

Is their world momentarily destroyed

By shuddering air and splintering light,

Or are they only mildly annoyed?

It takes five years for eagles to mature.

Each abandons its parents first, unsure,

Alone, wary of rockets and the future.

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

My Human Disguise.

What An Aquarium Should Be (artist unknown), Sonnet #564

 

One should never write about dreams.

They are boring beyond nothing.

They replace what seems with the seams

Stitched between thought and everything,

Pulling loose when one would believe,

Sprinkling detritus like a sieve,

Leaving inchoate images

In minds of the greatest sages.

Huxley with his aquarium

Saw in sea life continuum

But only behind walls of glass.

Asleep, mermaids, all laugh and sass,

And marine grotesques, befuddle

His science. Seas dry to puddles.

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

My Human Disguise.

The Nymph of the Spring (Lucas Cranach the Elder), Sonnet #562

 

There still sleep secret sacred springs

Fed by streams from porous rock,

By dreams of dozing huntress nymphs.

Their arrows aren’t aimed at wings,

But men who would touch key to lock

Of their delicately draped limbs.

While a short walk from the old town

The spring is seldom discovered

By hunter or would-be lover,

Or princess in her silken gown.

Unnatural havoc attends

Disturbing of the nymph at rest.

The springs boil and mists ascend

To poison the unwanted guest.

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

My Human Disguise.

The Gate Contained (Michael Antman), Sonnet #561

 

The visitor etched the word “act.”

I don’t know why inside a heart.

Call it a moment of found art,

All gesture and little impact.

We’re staring out of a lost room

Through a cracked and discolored frame.

Bayside, metals and water boom.

The bright red bridge, in glorious bloom,

Guardian of what went and came,

Is like all things only a name.

With wrought iron and steel cable,

Men can create. They’re capable

Of containing the setting sun

But must let go when day is done.

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

My Human Disguise.

Veil Nebula (NASA), Sonnet #560

Think through the photograph to the reality

In Cygnus, twenty-one thousand light years away,

And understand to understand, that is to say,

What is a form of ionized ideality.

My fingers are only an arm’s length from my face,

The inexorable fate of the human race.

My eyes can see (only) if my lenses are clear

The remnants of nebulae no bigger than stars,

Erasing the difference between far and near,

Though the idea, the ideal of it, smudges and mars

The time and the rapidity and the distance

Of thought itself, transforming it into mere sense.

The universe reaches, absurdly out of scale,

A clustered everything blinking behind a veil.

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

My Human Disguise.

 

Painting the Eiffel Tower, 1924, Sonnet #559

 

A man hangs by his elbow, not trusting

His hands alone to keep him from falling.

He’d call the Eiffel Tower his calling —

Brushing to prevent it from rusting —

Sixty tons of paint every seven years.

I’ve been to the top in spite of my fears.

My vertigo let me look out, not down.

Just this photograph unstrings me.

I can’t imagine standing on the crown

Without losing my ability to be.

Yet, men dangled from such heights to build

It — 

        iron and rivet. 

                                One man was killed.

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

My Human Disguise.