Ghosts in the Tree (Franz Sedlacek), Sonnet #465

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My Human Disguise.

The old crows fly with a graceless hurry

As if dodging barrages of thrown stone,

Retreat to their darkening rookery,

Arriving limp and sated, one by one.

I’ve seen them, uncountable, roosting

In a dead wood in the flooded wetlands,

The rubbing of their wings a dry cooing.

They hunch like bald men without legs or hands,

Some alone, some in groups of two or three.

They don’t seem to need or want each other,

Though most are uncle, father, or brother.

A ghostliness of camaraderie

Lingers, everything cold and indirect;

Extends the way the bare branches connect.

Song in the Twilight (Franz Sedlacek), Sonnet #464

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The bass pedals on the old organ don’t play,

Pumping out an old orangutan’s wheezing,

But the high notes sizzle like windpipes freezing

As the clock reminds us of time’s constant delay.

Rolling his shoulders with the beat, our musician

Has the musicality of a mannikin,

And the dolor of a flowering rubber plant.

His pet bat keeps the studio free of ant

And rat, its wingbeats synchronized with the clock.

There are no works of art on the tear-stained walls

And no pattern on the rug but a reddish flock.

Now our musician sings with a raptor’s calls

For blood or flesh or warning of the death of sound.

The bat chimes in on a gleeful two-part round. 

Library (Franz Sedlacek), Sonnet #463

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My Human Disguise.









The library is every room in my home.

Books paper the walls; teetering stacks on the floor

Can threaten me if I’m not careful where I walk.

I won’t tell you that I have read every tome.

It’s the yet-to-be-read books a library’s for —

A near-endless resource — reasons why I don’t talk.

Oh, to have them all in one room and organized

By author, genre, or ranked according to size.

The endless hours I've spent looking for one volume

And not finding it — it’s like exploring a tomb.

I know a man with one hall as big as a church

For his collection, bequeathed to him by his Aunt —

Every book by or about Immanuel Kant.

He only uses it for his cockatoo’s perch. 

Nightly Walk (Karl Hauk), Sonnet #462

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My Human Disguise.

I walk only during the day,

But it wasn’t always that way.

I lived on a dirty river

Beneath an iron train trestle.

As if the night and I wrestled

For ideas neither delivered,

I’d walk the bank, throwing stones

And heard nothing but senseless tones.

Years later, I wandered sidewalks

With firefly illumined street lamps,

Flickering houses like armed camps.

The slightest sound made my blood balk.

The stars zoomed — atomic missiles.
With each breath my last lung whistled.

Landscape with Lanterns (Paul Delvaux), Sonnet #461

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My Human Disguise.

The doorways are too small for grown women,

Who’re as tall as the ever-lit street lamps.

This is a city of unspoken sin,

Surrounded by ancient stones and armed camps.

Litter bearers take angels to the lake,

Where wing-naked once again they wake

In the warm waters off the stoney shore

Only to find that they’re angels no more.

On the flagstone street a mother, praying

Or reading from a book, awaits the Change,

The moment when she and all her daughters

No longer hear what men are unsaying,

When all they’ve understood becomes deranged

And their minds (if not their souls) are slaughtered.

Tyrannosaurus Rex, “Sue” (Field Museum), Sonnet #460

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My Human Disguise.

It’s thought s/he was a filthy scavenger, 

Like rats, roaches, or the turkey vulture.

Her arms were just too small and weak to fight,

And all a ruse that prodigious bite!

Absurd, a monster roaming on and on

Looking for whose leftover carrion?

They say volcanoes or an asteroid

Killed them all off in a few years or days,

Leaving earth a dark and near-lifeless void,

Blind for millennia to solar rays.

I loved them as a kid. Now I wonder

Why we don’t tremble today at thunder

Of beasts. New catastrophes loom, some think.

Will we live long enough to be extinct?

Philosophy, 1899 (Gustav Klimt), Sonnet #459

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My Human Disguise.

That being and nothing and time

Are the three dimensions of mind,

Qualia same in sense, not kind,

Is more than a plausible rhyme.

All unquestionable questions

Have been asked, answers propounded,

By men who offer suggestions

As truth — and we are astounded!

But what takes me is the beauty

Of one idea (though not its words,

Elusive as murmuring birds),

A glimpse of my own purity.

Combined they’re an absurdity.

Nothing is found in surety.