Now, A Sonnet

There's nothing there we haven't seen before,
But not so many times we can afford 
To hustle past. Let's promise each other --
Never commit the sin of being bored.
Besides, so much has changed in just a year.
The sun-rustled air seems even clearer.
The pattern of the leaves left in the trees
(Yes, the postcard days ended yesterday),
Suggests paragraphs full of ideas,
Things we think but never think to say.
The colors play the least part of the scene,
And we must grant each leaf its final bow.
If we could stay to watch the last careen
To the ground, we might settle then at Now.

The Actor (Picasso), Sonnet #426

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

As I am “else,” I am more than I am.

I really only speak thus to myself.

My voice is always sweetly orotund,

But what I’m here to say is all mere sham.

I’ve earned a moiety of fame and pelf

And not once have I given a refund.

My fingers flick about like ten small swords,

No sharper then the edges of my words.

My visage contortions are a mirror

(That’s where I learned them) of your hapless souls;

Mine is a mimesis of your terror

As you nose up squinting from your mole holes.

Ah, sirrah, let’s be friends. I’m just joking!

This playwright coughs words as though he’s choking.

Absinthe (Degas), Sonnet #207

They say water poured in the absinthe glass
Awakens sin in the spirit, the green,
Distilled from anise, fennel, and wormwood,
Goes ghostly white; as though in some dim mass,
A transubstantiation into spleen,
Obliviousness of evil or good.
Elle has barely sipped her drink; already,
She feels her queasy stomach growing hot,
Her arms and legs loosening, unsteady,
Her soul becoming something it is not.
The cafe, full of smoke and stupid talk,
Will soon go soft, muffled, and disappear,
Like the one gone and the one almost here.
"I'll find you," she sighs, "if I can still walk."

Physiognomical Lightning (Klee), Sonnet #202

I met a man with lightning in his eyes,
A jagged scar on his nose and forehead,
Old acne pits on his fat cheeks the size
And color of old pennies, and he said,
"My name is Resentment; Sir God to you.
Do not speak or presume to ask questions.
I've something to say, though I'm no guru:
The time has come, the next second beckons."
He paused and a light split open his brow.
"Happens all the time," he said, "Do not bow.
I'm not that kind. A lesser deity,
I want neither piety or pity."
His face mended with a smile, then he left,
Leaving me with a forehead hot and cleft.

Untitled (Julia Guerin), Sonnet #201

Night, then thought-crushing life-bleaching lightbang
That burst your house before the thunder rang.
When it's right above you, it slaps your soul;
The sound turns the valves in your sacred heart,
And leaves your mind a maelstrom of a hole.
(The gods threw a lightning bolt like a dart,
At each other, playfully, or at men,
To prick forth their prayers again and again.)
Last night the city's lights withstood the storm,
But I, briefly, succumbed to its thunder.
A detonation ripped apart all form,
Idea or emotion, buried under
Avalanching nerves, reflected in skeins
Of lightning, and bare trees, stuttering veins.

The Mirror of Cronos (Matta), Sonnet #182

The present is the mirror of Cronos;
His mirror is the future and the past.
He deposed his father Uranus, cast
His balls into the sea; Aphrodite
Grew from the foam. He swallowed Ompholos,
A stone navel he thought one of his sons.
His Golden Age demanding piety,
He slew the Titan serpent Ophion.
So? We see all the same evil today;
Godly men who kill, corrupt, betray.
Cronos sees in his mirror his son Zeus
Dethrone and imprison him in the Nyx,
A cave of eternal life without a use --
Cannot see himself on the River Styx.

Wall Painting From The Temple Of Longing (Klee), Sonnet #181

A full moon and a gibbous moon in the dawn sky
Shiver like arrowheads that just struck the bull's-eye.
The stars show us everything since the beginning,
Until we close our eyes and discover nothing.
We ask "Is that all?" The given answer is "Why?"
To appease us, the gods have granted us longing,
Desire for what we can't have, see, or know,
Since the future, like a broken frame of stained glass,
Is all that's left of all the moments we let pass,
And sheds upon the now only a splintered glow.
Some say time's arrow is just consciousness at play,
That duration flies as swiftly in reverse,
Mending all but the present with no delay.
Try reading this poem, again, from this last verse.

Dante and Virgil in Hell (Bouguereau), Sonnet # 179

This, the eighth circle of Hell, where liars and frauds
Turn thwarted ambition to violent attacks,
Is the last refuge of all political hacks,
Where righteousness shrieks in the name of the gods.
Men of faith bite the throats of men of reason.
They tear at each other with once-ink-stained fingers
And vow to prove vast conspiracies of treason,
Calling to chambers testimonial singers.
Virgil and Dante cringe, impotent witnesses,
Appalled by acts born of conviction, yet witless.
The less guilty, forgers and fibbers, writhe like snakes
To flee the melee, though they voted for these fakes.
Above, a winged Lucifer grins his approval,
And schemes for our virtuous poets' recusal.

Inventions Of The Monsters (Dali), Sonnet #178

Who sets the giraffes on fire, strips the maidens bare?
Who shovels corpses into an empty chess square?
Who puts breath into a breasted horse-headed bust
And grinds all of mankind's fillings into gold dust?
(They knew a real monster once, a failing student
Who could dissect a soul with a few rude insights,
Trepan their insecurities, vices, and fears.
He'd laugh as he gave each of them the treatment.
They'd laugh, but each felt secretly that he was right.
Too timid to see the truth, they were his mirrors.)
We gather at white draped altars and contemplate
Not who we are but what perversions to create.
The monsters exist to give us a thrill, a scare,
Which is why we invented them -- not one is there.

Seagram Building (Mies van der Rohe), Sonnet #173

What meant more to a strict thinker like Mies,
The building looked at or the looked out of?
The Seagram is what is, less what one sees,
A thing you might move through, but never love.
Was a man ever more ruled by the slide rule,
The right angle, and entrapped empty space?
Less may be more, but it's extremely cool,
Humorless, with a stern, unblinking face.
He's often pictured with a fat cigar,
A roundness, perhaps a form of penance
For abjuring the curvilinear,
Though for genius there is no repentance.
The Seagram is simple on a grand scale.
Sterile, and like dry ice, it can't go stale.

Yei Be Chei Dancers (Julia Guerin), Sonnet #172

From six to six the Yei Be Chei dancers,
Blessing herbs, heads in white and turquoise masks,
Shout and chant and stomp to summon answers
To ageless questions the Navaho asks.
Comic relief, the Coyote capers,
Makes faces, mocks the gullible gapers.
A Yei Be Chei also, he's serious
About making laughter delirious.
Only through disorientation
Will blessings descend upon the nation.
They are true spirits while the dancing lasts,
And as night becomes morning the sun casts
Shadows on faces in the audience --
At that moment the universe makes sense.

Please click the image to see a larger version.

The Minogame (Edo Period Scroll)

Minogame live in ponds for ten thousand years,
Grow long, hairy tails, actually seaweed they wear
Like a straw raincoat to deceive the eyes of men.
To find one is believed a propitious omen.
They stand on nothing, and nothing hold up.
They just swim, on and on, in eternity's cup.
Minds are all turtles who long ago lost their shells,
Scratching for moisture in the deepest driest wells.

The Jikininki (Heian Period Scroll), Sonnet #169

The hungry ghosts of Japan eat rotting man's flesh
In penance for a life of greed and selfishness.
At night, all skeletal limbs and bloated bellies,
They see only what the rat or the maggot sees.
In sunlight, each takes on its once human disguise
And wanders its former haunts under clouds of flies.

They say the Jikininki don't want what they eat,
That demon guardians won't permit them to starve.
Some try, but their torturers dismember and beat
And shriek at them: "Now eat what our flaming swords carve!"

These sad, sympathetic souls can only be freed
By prayers of a human free of vice or greed.
Thus the ranks of the Jikininki grow; they feed
On what we leave behind, until we share their need.

The Kraken Tree, Sonnet #168

My daughters called it the Kraken Tree
And said it had dived from deep space
To make a new home of rich earth
Being fed up with the bottom of the sea.
Its tentacles, both thick and frail as lace,
Were thrust aloft by its mantle's girth.
They claimed it snapped at voles and moles
With its beak and had plenty to see
Peering into burrowing animals' holes.
In summer the beast is covered in leaves
And becomes a home to nesting birds.
I ask if either daughter still believes
In the Kraken. "Dad! It's not just words!"

So, I find the Kraken Tree on my daily walk.
Sometimes the naked trees around it look like shrieks;
In frigid cold the rubbing of the branches creaks.
A rookery at dusk, here a hundred crows squawk.
The tree stands next to a frozen river that floods.
When it recedes it leaves shelf ice around the trunk.
It's March and the tentacles begin to grow buds.
Suckers sprout just above where the squid's eyes are sunk
Into grassy, leaf-scattered dirt, blinking and blind.
The swaying of its appendages stirs the breeze,
Playfully: the sea creature has some game in mind.
He'd have me believe he's just one of many trees.
I walk on, unconvinced, for I have touched his skin,
His living bark, and sensed the consciousness within.

Convex and Concave (Escher), Sonnet #167

Geckos stick out forked tongues at each other
In their race to the top of rounded stairs,
Where they'll disappear because nothing's there.
Men climb ladders to trumpeters. Mother
Seeks to fill her empty basket with air.
Banners state the geometry of the day.
The man near the dry fountain sleeps his life away;
Because he can't understand a thing, he can't care.
Each window, pillar, arch, and capital,
Each wall, riser and tread, each finial,
Was hauled into place by now-frozen block
And tackle, which the builder left behind
(Should he someday return). Here there's no clock,
Few shadows, no lights, only double bind
Architecture, mind alleys of the blind.

A Murmuration of Starlings (Sonnets #163 and #164)

#164

Sixty thousand draw arabesques in formation.
Are they not hive-minded (doesn't each one
Each day turn the murmuration its way
Just once?), and a miracle of concentration?

They gather in the late autumn afternoon sun,
Purpose hidden behind each cascading array.
It's said their wings never come closer than seven
Inches, even with the most abrupt turn or dive,
Or clustering darkness that their rising leavens.

Perhaps they simply close their eyes and trust
To surrounding air sounds to stay alive.
With every change in direction they thrust
Forward, or drop, or turn, or rise, or stall --
Not one will falter, wing awry, or fall.


#163

Some scientists hypothesize
That a starling murmuration
Aggregates them to synchronize
And make one mind from a nation.

Like oscillating overtones
Of a guitar string's harmonic,
Each bird emits a low sonic
Signal to each bird's hollow bones.

Or, perhaps, their wings carve the air
Into symbols they all can read,
Like instructions, that tell them where
They'll soon find berry, grub, or seed.

Or do they so adorn the sky,
Just to do it, no reason why?

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Here's a video of a stunning example of a murmuration of starlings.

The Fall of the Rebel Angels (Bruegel), Sonnet #157

There's no reprieve. The angel falls out of its soul,
Becomes a creature of the earth, a splitting toad,
Blowfish, shark, naked soldier, or blind vole.
From eggs grow butterfly wings and white tails,
Reptilian, self-constricting. Calm angels goad
And herd them with blackened swords, spears, and flails,
Their wings edged with dried blood. A pustulant strumpet
Dances to the wailing of a thousand trumpets.
This is the great war of faith, so nothing must die.
One angel, still robed, tries, but can no longer fly.
Nearly blinded by the sun, it can't choose between
What it once believed in and what its eyes have seen,
And, crashing, becomes Belial, verminous beast.
His diseased tormenting of man has never ceased.

Trees in the Snow (Caspar David Friedrich)

#156

We cut down dead oaks to reopen the old mine,
One hundred years abandoned, a collapsed shaft,
And no promise the old diggers hadn't been good
At their work and found every nugget worth a dime.
My partner wasn't afraid of the dark and laughed
When I said, you go first beneath the earthen hood.
That was twenty years ago and old Caspar died
Before a single shovel was turned. "Christ!" he cried,
And, running from the shadows, impaled his right eye
On a six inch nail jutting from a rotting beam.
Having pulled him from the ruin, lantern held high,
I entered the darkness to see what he had seen.
There was a mirror there, neither real nor a dream.
I saw my self -- or at least myself if I'd been
A few hundred years old -- pluck out my eye and scream.

The Reach of Time (Julia Guerin)

#155

All the clocks drowned in the gutter of time,
In wax melted from a trillion tapers,
The hours from face to face no longer rhyme.
Lady Gone, her head done up in papers
(She turned blue when her capillaries froze),
Buffs the planets on her thigh with a rose.
Our red Lady of Soon, pregnant with love,
Runs and with her hand reaches above
The horizon to push the moon away,
And instead erases its ageless gray.
The sky behind leaks through. Her baby's birth
Will be ballyhooed with a lunar frown
And Gone will steal the infant for her own.
No matter. Soon is soon pregnant with Earth.

CONTEMPLATIONS (Sonnets #153 and #154)

 #154

Crystal Pyramid

A crystal pyramid, faceted creation
Of pressure, heat and imagination,
Frozen purity, a trap for light with five sides,
Where reflection upon infinity resides.
In total darkness it sleeps in oblivion,
But a single candle ignites a refraction,
Carving light into color in serrated planes,
Only as rigid as the stillness of the flame.
But a camera flash, like a blast of insight,
Will bury color at its heart and leave a blight
Of vacant lines as each facet locks to the next,
Like pages in a closed book obliterate text.
Let the sun burst it red, orange, yellow and blue,
Then open your eyes, take your time, and think things through.

#153

Two Men Contemplating the Moon (Caspar David Friedrich)

We can see the moon, but not its eclipse.
We drink the coldest stars with little sips;
Venus, a tear on the horizon's cheek;
Mars bleeds; the Dipper, wan and weak,
Contains an empty trapezoid.
The Milky Way flows nowhere from the void.
This night, we want nothing to learn.
Our regrets leak from a cracked urn
Of lust and yearning we fling at the stars.
Shattered, it forms constellations of scars.
The lunar eclipse, the earth's one moment
Of triumph over the universe's intent --
We grow no brighter by dimming the sun.
We leave chastened. There's so much to be done.