Swans Reflecting Elephants (Dali), Sonnet #196

My brain sees all it seems to need.
Tearing eyes stare, hungry to feed
It with bloody meat and crushed seed
It devours with delicate greed.
The iris, that maculate bead,
Expands the pupil as lights speed
Through neurons, never to be freed.

The elephants cannot be freed
From the lake; they have slow will, no speed.
From a swan's beak a single bead
Drops, ripples what my brain agreed
To see, bird become beast. We seed
Our lives with all we've seen, and feed
On illusions illusions need.

The Persistence Of Memory (Dali)

#16

The sleep button on the radio aborts

A sentence I complete in my hypnogogic
Muzz: a murdered innocence supports
The new hour’s inexplicable logic.
Blasé nature, having its fill of trees,
Pulls them all up to plant tall,
Thin rocks, become by implausible decrees
A maze’s broken impenetrable wall.
Fleeing memory (as though my years
Exhaust some primal force of variation
As I fitfully doze), they disappear,
Every citizen, from my interior nation.
The voice returns. I rise. Without fear or
Haste, I forget to dress before a mirror.