Two of “Nine Dragons” (Chen Rong), Sonnet #581

The dragons follow us around,

Sneaking in and out of the mist, 

Shrieking nonsense, a silent sound,

Lonely and hungry to be kissed.

They are two of nine ancient worms

(A magic number in godly terms):

Each is older than the other;

Each is no dragons’ brother;

Each has a near toothless maw;

Each has lost all but one claw.

Out of this frightless paucity,

They have this one audacity:

Yolky eyes loll in scaly lids,

Laughing at our egos and ids.

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My Human Disguise.

Waterbirds Nesting (Josephine Joy), Sonnet #580

 

The great egret nests in a colony,

In woods not far from a river or pond.

They build thin platforms of sticks, twigs and reeds,

With a distant view like a balcony.

Not many fowl embrace this kind of bond,

Though crows return each night to rookeries.

The egret stands in water still as stone

For hours waiting for a fish or frog

They eat wriggling with a rapier bill.

Patience is the most precious skill they own.

A black mink will leap from behind a log,

Attack, cracking its legs enough to kill.

It’s then like ripping apart a child’s kite —

Broken sticks, torn paper red-spattered white.

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

My Human Disguise.

Altarpiece No. 1 (Hilma af Klint), Sonnet #579

 

Here is a painting of our mind,

A congeries of colored shapes.

Balls of twisted twine unwind.

What rises into reach escapes.

A thought is not of any kind

To the overly sighted blind.

Atop the altar of the brain,

A holiness we can’t sustain

Explodes and falls like acid rain,

Leaving neither symbol nor stain.

The pyramid and the circle

Rise from a baseless miracle,

The infant’s incoherent cries

At what enters unprepared eyes.

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

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Dandelion with a Death’s Head Moth (Margaretha Barbara Dietzsch), Sonnet #578

1

More beautiful dying alive,

(As it fades, generating seeds),

Than in its full yellow flower,

The dandelions in my yard thrive,

Though people denounce them as weeds.

White tuft atop a thin tower,

A brain tottering on a spine,

Its thoughts fly in windblown showers,

Infinitesimally fine,

Like disintegration of hours.

2

Some moths carry a second head

On their backs — fooling — they’re not dead.

Oh, how we love inspired dread,

When our own lives are extended.

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

My Human Disguise.

 

Couplet

 The moon glides on its blade of light

And leaves not a scratch on the night.

The Black Flag (Rene Magritte), Sonnet #577

 

Multiple shelves of sky

Hold old bric a brac,

Thunderclouds I can’t track

Or meteors descry.

Nothing seems to keep up,

Yet fills me like a cup.

I dance from shelf to shelf

Unburdening my self,

Turning war-bent airships

To innocuous pips

Soon to wing, flag, and drop,

To fill the raptor’s crop.

My dance is never done,

Shelf to shelf to the sun.

Free Curve to the Point - Accompanying Sound of Geometric Curves (Vasily Kandinsky), Sonnet #576

 

Now? Everything points to the now point.

There are no revelations in the joint

But what the curvatures of time anoint

Like ten fingers playing here’s the steeple

When inside there are no little people.

It is a lovely world after all,

When simple, not straight, no awkward bending

Of air, just the eagles’ mad descending,

And the cringing voles’ mute, terrified ball.

Then? A word for time with twined intention —

Then I was and what will I be by then?

Two words (not three) for all of duration

Lead us through the revolutions of arc,

Freely to the point of the question mark.

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

My Human Disguise.