A Sudden Gust of Wind (Hokasai)

#117

I lived in the shadow of Pikes Peak when a wind
Knocked a tall Ponderosa Pine onto our home.
I watched it cascade down and feared the roof would cave.
The wind blew all day like the words of a mad mind,
Or endless release of energy from a bomb.
A thousand trees went down into an open grave.

Beneath Mt. Fuji the wind, fitful, capricious,
Is believed to be a spirit, both mischievous
And, at certain times of the year, avaricious.
Unbidden and unlooked for, it suddenly gusts,
Making kites of hats and snow of poets' pages,
Stirring up despair like blown kisses fanning lusts;
Or, like a petulant child, it writhes and rages
At the cold, dry mound it has suckled for ages.

Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (Dali)

#116

The floating nude -- not tigers disgorged by a bass,
Nor a bayonet pricking her flesh below the elbow,
Nor a stilt-legged elephant toting a pinnacle of ice -- 
Is the real dream, the painter's hypnogogic lass.
She's sleeping the secret to what we seem to know -- 
Above her stoney bed and fearsome precipice,
What a bee buzzing at a pomegranate means -- 
Consciousness is a dream of a dream of a dream,
A broken fruit released of its prepotent seeds, 
The begetter of perceptions, ideas, and deeds,
No more real than two hovering mercury beads.
She wakes and the tigers are leaping still,
The elephant's laughter soothingly shrill.
She can forget them all at will, and will.

Silence (Odilon Redon)

#115

I cannot tell you what I know because I can't.
You hear only what you imagine I can say,
Which is everything: what is evanescent,
And why you hear, or what is already empty.
I'm impossible, the opposite of being,
As darkness is the false negative of seeing.
But, if you can seek me out, I am a music,
Composed and at rest, a tune without beat or notes
(The Sirens would have shrieked, blasting voices
Into cracked larynxes just to mimic),
A sonata unwhispered I unlearned by rote,
My own sweet refusal to make any choices.
Now be quiet, if only for a moment
Stay your life, if only for a moment

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Duchamp)

#114

Light is invisible until it strikes our Eve,
When her body becomes an object we perceive.
It might have been there all along if we believe
That what we cannot see we can conceive.
Though unclothed, she steps quickly to achieve
The bottom of the stairs. Her limbs slice and weave
The air she's turned to gold, all to deceive
Lust her modesty can only hope to aggrieve.
Nothing of her is lost that we cannot retrieve
With a blink. But look! While looking too closely, we've
Dissolved her, like pouring Chardonnay through a sieve.
From oblivious blindness there is no reprieve.
Failure to see, to see, to humbly and with love receive
Such beauty, condemns us criminally naive.

The Sea Monster (Durer)

#113

Each moon the damned gray sea monster abducts our wives,
Then releases them to us as speechless as fish.
Not one has revealed what happens beneath the waves;
So we wonder, do they endure terrors or bliss?
He has antlers and a merman's scales, and a shield
Of tortuga shell, and eyes that say, "Ye shall yield."
Only Annalee, my perfect wife, fought the beast,
Calling to me as I stood helpless on the beach.
After she slapped his bearded face and yanked his mane,
He ripped off her dress and drowned her in shame.
Of all the women taken, only she has not returned,
Those taken since scoff at the possibility
(Each petulant and stiff, like a woman scorned)
That Annalee's alive, with him, beneath the sea.

Prodigal Son (Thomas Hart Benton)

#112

I've heard we regret most the undone thing.
Well, I've done it all, I just couldn't do it here.
Now I've come home to find there is nothing
But broken shadows and a skull's blind leer.
I once stroked thighs beneath a red silk skirt,
And drew a straight flush to win twenty grand.
I shot a man and watched his blood stain dirt,
Slipped a diamond into his widow's hand.
I've been chased, jailed, raped, and paroled,
And after all these years came home to be consoled.
The Bible says that I shall be embraced --
By the collapse of our home's rotting shell.
No soul remains to absolve my disgrace.
Regret is a corpse poisoning the well.

Hyde Mill (Sandy Ellarson)

#111

They moved the river to build the water wheel,
Then built a wooden race to divert the current.
Sluice opened, stones ground raw grain into meal
For a hundred years, until the old mill was spent.
River turning wheel turning gears turning stone,
A devolution of mechanics all to crush a seed.
The sun burns for years to dry an animal's bones,
And countless gallons of water won't break a reed.
I'm reluctant to approach the mill too closely
(Its ancient timbers are desiccated, ghostly),
Hear its stoppage rasped by the river's relentless
Passage over the shattered race's detritus.
Away from the wreck, a little waterfall churns
Spray, wrack, and spume, and, like time, it burns.