The Bridge Over Chaos (John Martin)

#45

To foresee the event prevents a misfortune.

Constant vigilance is a similar strategy,
As is prayer. Chaos is a man's portion,
Presented to each of us without apology.
Could mankind bridge it for even a minute?
If the world chose just one moment to save,
Say, next Tuesday at noon, a finite
Sixty seconds during which we gave
Our full attention: no rape, no murder,
No manmade or natural disaster,
Could we establish one minute of order?
Or would chaos swirl even faster
And bring even eternity to an end?
Oh, but what a message we'd send!

Christina's World (Wyeth)

#44

My Christina's polio did not break her.
She fought a lifetime of weakness,
And now, so many years later,
Struggles to stay up off the floor.
Years in steel and leather harness
Armed her for perpetual war.
Single, she became a teacher,
Never knew a man to comprehend
How necessary, at times, the wheelchair.
Her students, though, took her hand.
She remembers crawling up the hill,
But not how she got so far from home.
Perhaps her greatest feat of will,
But now, as then, she fights alone.

Note: This sonnet is completely fictionalized. It was inspired, however,
by someone I meet in fourth grade (1963). We both wore leg braces at the time.
She had polio, and I something far less serious. But, the braces were a bond,
of sorts, and we became good friends. We've reconnected in recent
years. She is well and near family.

The Temptation of St. Anthony (Dali)

#43

Temptation does not walk on legs
As long and thin as giraffe stilts.
It stomps like an elephant on eggs
Until it's churned a mess of guilt.
All the legends are full of denial,
As if that's all it took to be godly.
The desert is an empty trial
And determination works, oddly,
Better than love, if all you want
Is not to know physical love, riches,
Beauty, or the power of the tyrant.
I love how the hair shirt itches.
Angry, the Lord said, Make a life!
Work, charity, children, and wife.

". . . out of the air, a zebra appeared, with the face of a man." (Ruth Diamond-Guerin)

#42
That is my face on the zebra's body.
The striped plain is habitat and prison,
But no dream, not even a vision.
Move but slightly, I become nobody.
I can't remember how I came to be.
Perhaps I was bewitched by the gods.
I am a creature against all the odds,
A thinking, feeling singularity.
Animals are defined by their camouflage,
But not men, and I am neither one.
Come, capture me. I can dodge
Your eye -- before you start, you're done.
But, in doing so, I lose myself as well
In this dry, cold, vanishing point of Hell.


Note: This drawing, by my wife Ruth, originally in blue pencil, is based on a character from a long children's story called "A Tale of Tails," which I wrote in the 70's. The zebra's face is mine, 30 years ago.

St. Christopher Carrying the Christ Child (Hieronymus Bosch)

#41

Five years my father spent in WWII
Running a mobile army field hospital.
In New Guinea, he killed an enemy soldier
As he attacked a patient--as would you.
A devout Catholic, he prayed for safe arrival.
To the broad-backed patron of the traveler
He promised to name a child Christopher.
How many men have made a similar offer?
In '69, the Church proclaimed the saint
A myth and struck him from the Calendar,
Nullifying centuries of anxious supplication.
Bosch's work was never daubs of paint.
The universe weighs on every shoulder,
As we lurch towards our next destination.

Hands and Feet (Alice Bea Guerin)

#40

I am not the amalgam of my parts.
Not the knuckles, the joints, the palms.
These are merely the hands of my heart.
I am always hot. I've never been calm.
Sometimes I am nothing but an eye.
Seen through the circle of sight,
The darkness is all I need to know why.
My grinning makes my knuckles white.
My thoughts are like wiggling fingers
And my emotions are clenched fists.
I am my own twisted harbinger.
Look at me. You can't resist.
But we're all skin, sinew and bone,
Running from each other, alone.

Pandemonium (John Martin)

#39

Hortus, a suburban devil of Pandemonium,
Is lonely tonight for want of a loyal friend:
Anyone, sick or foul, human or fiend,
Even a specter enriched with plutonium.
The lights glare like angry souls at the palace,
And the burning rivers between here and there
Drown out the sweet, anguished tintamarre
Of endless victims of others' so-called malice.
Cold comfort for Hortus, who once boasted
The brightest shield and the longest spear,
Who stalked the palace halls without fear,
Now to stand out here, alone and untoasted.
"Curse you all!" he cries, "I don't deserve this!"
But knows there's no leaving Satan's service.