Hate

A black and bloody flower

Blooms in the hearts’ bower,

Its scent poisoning the hour.

Its thorns, proliferating pain,

Stab the heart again and again.

Words wound us without stint,

Hot soughing winds by dint

Of battering the heart’s cage —

Like a billion moths of rage

Demanding the end of the age.

A Nation of One, Terzata #37

His own minion in that nation,

He eats like a king, thinks like a stool.

All of his words are defecation.

His actions insipidly cruel,

He pounds his fist on the able,

Whips his army like a mule.

Hacksaw and hammer and Babel

Bang on the running heads

Of corpses on the embalming table.

He dreams of flowing Red,

Of flags and blood, this revelation:

The elimination of the dead

And his exalted exaltation. 

His Majesty Receives (William Holbrook Beard), Sonnet #544

He’s demanded they support his habits

Of frothing, striking, biting, and killing.

His followers, all mice, rats and rabbits,

Beg his mercy upon them, his willing

And most abject obedient subjects.

“What?” he soothes them. “I’m only kidding.

Act as you believe, not at my bidding.”

His cringing rodents think he suspects

Some treachery. Their leader, a wild hare,

Steps forward, bowing low, and says, “Please, sire.

We pledge ourselves to your every desire.

For you we would run with our asses bare!”

“Do so! As I am all you’ve ever feared!”

They ate each other when he disappeared.

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

The Laughing Fool (painter unknown), Sonnet #524

A man isn’t a man without being a fool,

At least that’s what the Fool learned in idiot school.

He began a money-infatuated ghoul

Chomping on the corpse of another greedy mule.

He soon grew morbidly obese on such fuel,

Then capered on to Fame’s self-deluding gruel

(Which turned half his tiny brains to stiffened stool).

All that power, women, and riches made him cruel

And he began to see all of life as a duel.

“Never lose, say ‘sorry,’ or forgive, and you’ll rule,”

He said, “Remember, your world is my private jewel.”

Then smiling men of stratagems made him their tool

And wiped his chin when he’d rather frequently drool.

Their hots for him have only just begun to cool.

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

My Human Disguise.

Gargantua (Honore Daumier), Sonnets #487 and #488

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

One

I am Gargantua the great.

I was born 11 months late

And 25 pounds overweight.

They say my mom did not dilate

So much as stay inebriate.

In my first 7 months I ate

Each day a raw half-ton primate

Brought to me in a silver crate.

The screaming made me salivate

Enough to fill the wide Euphrate....

Ease in bed’s my natural state.

Whenever I walk I create

Wobbles in how planets rotate

And the earth’s circle turns oblate.

Two

I’m sad I cannot copulate

Because I have not found a mate

Who can withstand my fleshy freight.

(I’ve other ways to recreate, 

So I ... what’s the word? Ends with ‘bait.’)

I write long essays to berate

The scientists with addled pate

Who say I can’t regenerate.

My dream is of a girlish Fate,

Who’ll bring me a Donna or Kate,

Who’ll match me stone for stone in weight,

And when at last I procreate

My sons will burst each kingly gate

And rid the world of love and hate.

The Red Jester (Jan Van Beers), Sonnet #476

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

“Now, my dears, keep watching the ace.

My favorite card — it has no face

And just one itty bitty heart.

Hee, hee! It can’t squeak out a fart

The way the queen of spades

Will call to her some dainty maids

To please her king of diamonds

With one who has a showbiz mons.

Now, see? Your lazy eyes don’t peel

On the ace! It has disappeared!

Where’d it go? It’s as I feared,

Some joker has stolen the deal.

Why, that’s me! I rule the whole deck.

Every card’s at my call and beck!”

Little Owl (Durer), Sonnet #392

Encore! Let’s sing out with an “o” vowel!

I know of a man like a leetle owl,

Draped head to tail with a golden cowl.

They say he even has a golden bowel

He fills with gophers caught on the prowl.

A kingly bird, his perch a small dowel,

He clears out his cage with a dirty towel.

All that work’s left him with a flappy jowl,

His chirps sounding like a whispered growl.

He’s known to hate the consonant avowal

Unless it leads to a follower’s howl

Of pain or his latest conquest’s yowl

Of pleasure, though that tends to make him scowl.

You choose. As a fowl is he fair or foul?

Might Not The Pupil Know More? (Goya), Sonnet #388

The young donkey, at his prayers,

Ignores his brothers, those brayers.

His missal is the alphabet,

Which he hasn’t quite mastered yet.

His master wields a paddle of wood

That stings him like a donkey fly

When he don’t learn his lessons good,

Like mistaking his “U” for “Y.”

“Might not the Pupil know more?”

Nickers Master, “Just his ‘as’s?’”

The brothers honk a mocking snore

And let a mephitic cloud pass.

The pupil thinks, They will be damned,

But first I need my cranium crammed.

End of the Trojan War (Tiepolo), Sonnet #385

The painter doesn’t clearly show a single face

In the starving, struggling, victory-mad crowd.

The men inside the horse could be laughing out loud

Without fear of being heard above the fracas.

The Trickster proclaimed that the genius of his scheme 

Was revealed to him in a post-debauchery dream

By a god who refused to say its name or sex,

But who had addressed the Trickster as Regent Rex.

(An error in speaking T never repeated.)

“Do this,” said the god, “and All will be defeated.”

In later years, faced with sirens and a cyclops,

He’d beg that faceless god for more brilliant guidance,

Since his own soldiers, as fighters, proved hopeless flops.

He returned to his wife with a bow and split pants.

Pulcinella's Departure (Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo), Sonnet #384

“The voice of the people” can’t leave too soon.

The fun was almost all he could endure,

Especially making game of the poor,

Though he didn’t like being called a goon.

Oh, how he’d made the great all look the same,

Throwing merda on every “leader’s” name.

They laughed at his japes without knowing why,

And threw gold at his head with insane glee.

He’d peeked up their wives’ dresses for a fee.

He’d danced on toes defying all to cry.

The best was the gun he pulled from his hump

(Not a deformity — a holster’s bump),

And waved around the world with bulging eyes.

“See this?” he crooned, “No one who likes me dies.”

Ship of Fools (Bosch), Sonnet #360

The ships of fools — hardly a pram —
A million in a small puddle
Full of people squealing, “I am!” —
A multitudinous muddle —
Even the largest has no rudder.
Beneath the overcrowded weight
The untarred bow plankings shudder —
When they burst there be men for bait.
Till then the riotous party,
Victorious, brave and hearty,
Gorges and drinks to their winning
Saint they love most when he’s sinning.
A busted lute leads them in song:
“Dam’ned they be, both right and wrong!”

Note: Click on the image to see a larger
version.

Narcissus in Rome (Caravaggio), Sonnet # 351

Some men are just reflections of themselves.
What the mirror shows them is all they are.
As the head moves, the unblinking eye delves
Into itself with an unthinking stare.
I knew a man bent to kiss his image,
Stopping just short, careful not to smudge
The glass or ripple the pool of oil sludge.
He saw the epitome of his Age.
When others dared to look into his glass,
He wasn't, he was -- it was hard to tell.
When they saw him, they saw themselves as well.
One day his image caught fire; flaming gas
Consumed itself and left a dull halo,
His semblance struggling to form from below.

Note: I also write about this great image in
Sonnet #450.

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. 

The Narmer Palette (3,000 B.C.), Sonnet #327

It's said Pharaoh spoke in twittering rhyme

Due to his lacking a crucial enzyme,

Because he ate off of a golden plate

What he'd repeatedly regurgitate.

His crown was golden too, a heavy weight

He wore a rug beneath to soothe his pate.

He smote his enemies with a scepter,

A wand of lead he called his "preemptor."

He had a single rigid policy:

"I'll destroy you before you can hurt me."

That was more than five thousand years ago.

This palette is all that's left of Pharaoh.

They say he ruled a united Egypt,

Leaving nothing not ravaged, empty, or stripped.