Escape into Life (Yves Tanguy), Sonnet #549

 

A baby sits on a giant cherry

While the depleted sun falls through a cloud.

We escape into life not knowing how

We got on and off the forgone ferry.

We’re next to nothing, an ignorant crowd,

Unmovable when we don’t start a row.

The unrecognizable in our minds,

A blurred landscape that writhes, twisting, and winds

Around ideas, resolves from nameless shapes

Into the wonderland of snakes and apes.

All’s not dust said old iron to its rust.

Shrill winds erase the nothing gust by gust.

But the baby will grow and see beyond

Terrors, his mind become a magic wand.

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My Human Disguise.

Rain (Van Gogh), Sonnet #548

 

Not even he could paint the rain.

(Imagine trying to touch each drop

With the fingered tip of a brush!)

Perhaps trying drove him insane.

He was the master of the crop

Of wheat, of twisted tree and bush.

He caught killers dying in bars

And erased the night sky with stars.

He effaced himself with his eyes,

Made more of sunrise than sunrise.

Rain he could only imitate —

Slashing the canvas with his sword

Again and again — intimate

What is clouded inside the word.

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My Human Disguise.

Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow (Piet Mondrian), Sonnet #548

 

Red speaks first, as always: “I am

Of, with, by, from, and in the sun.

I nurture the ewe and the ram.

I think therefore I am the one.”

“Be still!” scolds Yellow. “Silly fool!

My thought is the ultimate tool.

Who else can turn the wheat to gold

Or teach the telling to the told?”

Blue intervenes: “I am the sky,

The bluebird, the sea. My thoughts fly

Beyond the seeing of the eye.

None can unblue me with their ‘why?’”

Black and White, all colors and none,

Part them, one from one from one.

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My Human Disguise.

Ice Storm, Sonnet #547

 

The insistence of freezing rain

Can darken an entire town,

Bringing a million branches down,

Taxing the chainsaw and the crane . . .

Or it can glaze limb and berry

So lightly it melts as it grows

And only the frailest twig bows . . .

This, the weight we all carry.

This ice vanishes in an hour,

Once the sun ceases to hide,

But before the bushes have dried

Great murmurs of starlings devour

Without desperation or greed

Every trace of flesh and seed.

Note: Photograph by the author.

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My Human Disguise.

Poof Taste (Alice Bea Guerin), Sonnet #546

 

Shape vanishes into shape, poof!

Imagination needs no proof.

Our skies reveal twisted Saturns

In proliferating patterns.

Approaching stars are spiny jacks —

Their ball, made of Jupiter, cracks.

We squeeze the world from a tube,

But we have to invent the cube.

A piece of unchewed bubble gum

Is galaxy Triangulum.

We read a creature’s intestines

Attempting to absolve our sins,

Interpret shapes of the erased

We find deep inside striped toothpaste.

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

Mountain in Winter (Paul Klee), Sonnet #545

In Farewell to 2020

The mountains are covered with salt,

Withering the conifer,

Sealing up crevasse and fault,

Petrifying deer femur.

Ragged peaks are crystallized,

Great rhomboids of quartz and calcite —

The imperfect reimagined right,

Its sterility realized.

I ask you, what then is to come,

Or is this all, the obvious end?

Blink! Don’t confuse all with a sum

Of the tatters we cannot mend.

Silently it falls, the slow,

Inexorable, failing snow. 

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My Human Disguise.

His Majesty Receives (William Holbrook Beard), Sonnet #544

He’s demanded they support his habits

Of frothing, striking, biting, and killing.

His followers, all mice, rats and rabbits,

Beg his mercy upon them, his willing

And most abject obedient subjects.

“What?” he soothes them. “I’m only kidding.

Act as you believe, not at my bidding.”

His cringing rodents think he suspects

Some treachery. Their leader, a wild hare,

Steps forward, bowing low, and says, “Please, sire.

We pledge ourselves to your every desire.

For you we would run with our asses bare!”

“Do so! As I am all you’ve ever feared!”

They ate each other when he disappeared.

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