LOFT (Michael Antman), Sonnet #306

The loft will fall if the foundations rot.
The window frames are already bending.
The masonry, pitted by ageless soot,
Awaits the inevitable rending
Of every pillar and joist underneath --
The spitting of mortar like broken teeth.
Two pairs of women's shorts are on display,
But the lonely workman ignores the show.
Naked legs would only be in his way.
He turns the electric vacuum to blow.
Now he must wait for everything to dry.
He looks up for the first time, starts to cry.
He's sundered by a sweet paralysis.
It's beautiful, he thinks, not sure what is.

This is the third photo by my friend and editor
Michael Antman that I've written about. You can find his
considerable collection of photos at Instagram,
at https://www.instagram.com/michaelantman/
Or, if you're already on Instagram, his username
is michaelantman.

Morning News (Francis Luis Mora), Sonnet #303

The Times is meant to be crumpled in tight places,
Smudged, barely dry print, the yesterdays of faces.
What's done is done when read and forgotten,
And not until. A caveman looms, leers, teeth rotten,
One eye white, as if turned around in its socket,
The other reading about the latest rocket
Planned to reach the nearest star in a century.
He doesn't stir the slightest curiosity
In young women who can't smell him through their perfume.
The scent of ink is stronger. The stink of the tomb
Draws the caveman back into the metro pages,
Which he'll contemplate as his winey blood ages.
The bus slowly empties of papers and people.
A fallen Times lays gutters up like a steeple.

Note: Among other things, "gutter" is the word for the white
space in a newspaper between the print on the left side
and the print on the right side of the crease.

Blind Pew (N. C. Wyeth), Sonnet #299

A knife's as good as a drink to a corpse,
Or so Blind Pew might have said, but he's dead.
How does a blind bastard commit murder?
At night, when everyone is blind, of course.
His senses like an owl's swiveling head,
He'd think, my prey's eyes? Nothing absurder!
A barred owl once perched on my shepherd's hook
Bird feeder -- I watched him for an hour.
He'd scan the ivy by the house, then look
At me, then back where some creature cowered.
His black lusterless eyes looked blind, like holes
Of night in a graying sky, unblinking.
He dropped and flew off with a mouse or vole,
Like Blind Pew, satiated, unthinking.