Library (Franz Sedlacek), Sonnet #463

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









The library is every room in my home.

Books paper the walls; teetering stacks on the floor

Can threaten me if I’m not careful where I walk.

I won’t tell you that I have read every tome.

It’s the yet-to-be-read books a library’s for —

A near-endless resource — reasons why I don’t talk.

Oh, to have them all in one room and organized

By author, genre, or ranked according to size.

The endless hours I've spent looking for one volume

And not finding it — it’s like exploring a tomb.

I know a man with one hall as big as a church

For his collection, bequeathed to him by his Aunt —

Every book by or about Immanuel Kant.

He only uses it for his cockatoo’s perch. 

The Moon Calf (Franz Sedlacek), Sonnet #456

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
















I once rode the moon calf 

Over the city roofs.

He was only a half

And made a nice saddle.

(Please don’t ask me for proof.)

Both of us were addled

By his mother’s mooning,

As if she didn’t mind

I might be marooning

Her boy from his own kind.

My ride bucked and I fell

Into a wishing well.

I said, “You go home now.”

The calf became a cow.

On the seashore there are two visiting apples (Rene Magritte), Sonnet #342

Too late, the tree stump silences the ax
Under a root stepping down like a foot,
To render the blade motionless and moot.
Are the visiting apples ripe, you ask?
One wears a green, his bride a purple mask.
Are they real fruit or molded of old wax?
They totter on the sand inching nearer,
A mute duo smiling and curious,
Not quite what we see, perhaps spurious --
Nothing on the beach is any queerer.
Yes, a cupboard tree holds a waiting bell
And a new dollhouse with a bright red roof --
Articles no apple would buy or sell,
Only mourn, and doing so vanish -- poof!