Capture of H.B.M. Frigate “Macedonian“ by U.S. Frigate “United Sates” (Thomas Chambers), Sonnet #418

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My Human Disguise.

Today there are 61 armed

Conflicts ongoing in our world

On four of seven continents.

I sit here writing poems unharmed.

It’s almost quaint, the flags unfurled

As wood ships traded armaments

Until a mast or two went down —

Then the surrender of the crown.

Now, instead of drowning in waves,

Men and babes vanish in mass graves.

I was a sharpshooter at ten,

But never had to go to war.

Should I fear I’m like other men?

I’ve no gun to fire from my door.

Summer (Giuseppe Arcimboldo), Sonnet #417

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My Human Disguise.
















I live the burden of burgeoning life,

Beginning with dropping petals and seeds,

Ending with fruit and grain cleaved by the knife.

I live the engendering of my wife,

Though she hides from me in her stitched weeds,

Ever running and climbing, though gravid,

And when I catch her, laughing and avid.

I live the flight of kestrel and songbird,

Balance murderous capture and escape,

And keep the wolf from reducing the herd.

Sometimes they must settle for mouse or grape.

I live the rain’s basting the sun’s burning

My life until the last day’s turning

Changes all I’ve grown to ripened yearning.

Carnival in a Village with Beggars Dancing (Marten van Cleve), Sonnet #416

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My Human Disguise.








The dancing beggars use an old commode —

It’s long since lost most of its smell of merde —

To collect the same alms the prince bestowed.

Often a child is pushed, crying and scared,

To drop a penny in the chamber pot.

Together the beggars shout, “Thanks a lot!”

The carnival is races, song and dance,

And, out of the bailiff’s sight, games of chance,

Where more than one father will crap away

A week’s pay, then demand on terms to play. 

On this day, the good women ignore vice;

The godly men forgive their brothers’ sins.

Joy is an excusable avarice.

Tomorrow, again, the war on faith begins.

Bird Garden (Paul Klee), Sonnet #415

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My Human Disguise.







Why does the bird sing before the sunrise?

What is he saying when no bird responds?

Minutes later another species cries

As if to himself, then a third voice sounds.

Does the cardinal talk to the catbird?

That hardly seems likely. Though a starling

Will nag a red-tailed hawk, that’s not singing. 

Just the nuthatch answers a nuthatched word.

But it’s that first bird’s first note and why then,

Which breaks the dark silence like a siren,

I question. Does the robin hope to steal

The pre-dawn’s power and make himself real,

Or does he fear the sun will never rise

Unless his tunes ruin the light’s surprise?

Two Women Chatting by the Sea (Camille Pissarro), Sonnet #414

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My Human Disguise.







Even today, humid, with a warm breeze,

The sea, calm as ice right up to the shore,

Is a place they can’t love and can’t ignore.

It’s a canard that the horizon frees

One’s wishes until they are all one sees.

The water is only the place where breath

Stops, where a man can’t walk or even swim

The distance between disaster and death.

The beach is a sand glass filled to the brim

With liquid you can’t drink without dying.

How much of sand is crushed bone still drying?

The women chat of things both gay and grim.

They’d scoff at the idea of the sea’s gift

And fear most the daily threat in sea drift.

Saguaro (Alice Guerin), Sonnet #413

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My Human Disguise.


















He confronted his brother the cactus

After the decades since he’d seen him last.

Both had changed a little, both had amassed

Enough of themselves to say, “You’re still us.”

He pointed at the sand, the distant sun,

The spider, quail, snake, and the pygmy owl,

Almost extinct, and promised all to none.

He heard in the needles the faintest growl.

The saguaro pointed at the empty sky,

Its six hands fixed each on a different star,

As if to say the universe is dry

And begins and ends not here, but not far

Away, where the fires thrive, where cold hurls back

The flames. He left as the desert turned black.

The Virtue Wagon (Paul Klee), Sonnet #412

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My Human Disguise.









The wagon was a hit in the Virtue Parade.

Men and women (we couldn’t tell apart) costumed

In various stages of address and undress,

Depicted what we all lust for and none evade —

The self-righteousness that cannot be self-consumed.

The wagon dragged an anchor; why?, we couldn’t guess.

We marveled how the actors laughed but couldn’t smile,

Flinging candied hearts to the crowd mile after mile.

They tasted sweet and dour like sugary chalk

And gave no joy to boy or girl of true virtue

(Each of us knew ourselves to be one of those few).

The wagon was now full of nudes — look at us gawk!

Underthings, pants, and dresses came showering down.

A bald man in the crowd donned a harlequin’s crown.