Head Within An Aureole (Odilon Redon), Sonnet #590

 

The Glass Man looks in the mirror’s

Pupil and sees himself asleep.

The iris a gold-flecked halo,

A crowning of thought with errors

So lovely he must wake and weep.

His eyelids blink so: slow . . . slow . . . slow.

The Glass Man rouses and rises.

He foresees the coming crisis,

When all that he believes matters

Shivers from within and shatters.

What sonnets he has written out

Are more a whisper than a shout.

Like a mirror he turns face down,

Glass is all he has ever known.

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The Last Day of Pompeii (Karl Bryullov), Sonnet #589

 

Some chose to run, many to hide

Inside their temples and rooms,

Where every one of them died

In incendiary tombs.

I walk in a mourning fog

Outside and inside my mind,

Hand in hand with Gog Magog

And all the rest of my kind.

What are these floods and fires

And stupidity admirers

(Viruses in a cracked petri jar)?

How can I fight the coming war

We’re already losing day by day

As we run, slower and slower, away?

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

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The Imp Of The Abstract (Rick Gydesen), Sonnet #588

 

“The abstract is the most we know,”

Says the blind, woodenheaded imp.

“Reality is just for show,

Like a colorful, leaking blimp,

Or eyes painted yolky yellow,

Which see only bye or hello.”

We might ask it, “How can you tell?”

It would reply, “There is no point

To my rejoinder or the joint

Where two knotty blocks form an ‘L.’

You may think you see something All,

A tree dropping leaves in the Fall —

They’re not even a chimera,

Just habit, your ephemera.”

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

My Human Disguise.

Bodhidharma (Anso), Sonnet #587

 

The man sat for nine years.

After seven he cut

Off his eyelids to keep

Awake. He disappears

Into the mental rut

So like and unlike sleep.

He becomes, without skin,

Just the robe he’s clothed in,

Empty of good and sin,

Sans end or origin.

At last he left the cave,

Thinking, “Mind is a grave

And nothing I can save.”

He gave the wind a wave.

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

My Human Disguise.

Death on a Pale Horse (J.M.W. Turner), Sonnet #586

 

Once a year we make fun of death,

When “trick or treat” becomes an oath.

Not one of us knows what it means,

So we taunt it with childish screams.

We scare ourselves beyond reason

Once night has beheaded the sun.

A pale horse carries a blind wraith,

With rags of lung squeezed dry of breath,

Flopping across a flesh saddle,

Disgorging eternal riddles.

A maddened and riddled monster,

His own owner and unmasker,

The beast is not stallion or mare

And foals only in our nightmares.

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

My Human Disguise.

Autumn Landscape with Four Trees (Van Gogh), Sonnet #585

In September, 

                       the first leaves turn,

Then nothing seems 

                       to change for weeks.

Later the trees, 

                       dun or blazing,

Consent to the slow, 

                       ragged burn

Harsh air hard frost 

                       and hot sun wreaks.

The eye blinks and blinks, 

                       erasing.

Oh, how the soul takes it amiss —

Departing summer’s final kiss.

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

My Human Disguise.

 

Cicada (Hua Yan), Sonnet #584

Why do birds and insects sing so

Effortlessly, without command,

As though they don’t care if they’re heard?

They tell us something we don’t know

And never try to understand.

I’d ignore the babbling catbird,

Perhaps, if I knew what he said.

The cardinal says “I am red.”

The cricket can’t seem to shut up

Lest I approach and interrupt.

The cicada’s incessant whir,

Like the blare of a small Klaxon,

Is intense and irregular,

An urgent call to inaction.

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

My Human Disguise.