Knot Eye Tiger (Alice Bea Guerin), Sonnet #493

The Japanese artist reduces the word

To the image, not unlike a cartoon

In its simplicity and lack of depth,

To find the inessence of the absurd,

The quintessence of the present rune.

Such images never drew in a breath,

But they look at us with knotted eyes

Drawing tight the ends of close and soon,

All to answer our what’s? with why’s?

This is our one tiger, the tigers croon.

You are only yourselves in our disguise,

Only knowing us without being wise.

The tiger has disappeared into the page

To reappear in the next human age.

State Street Bridge, Sonnet #492

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









The fourth son sat in the middle

Of the back seat as his father

Drove them around their new home town.

For being twelve, he was little,

Wore a brace of steel and leather.

His Mom told him to settle down

When he complained he was hungry.

The streets were unplowed slush and ice.

The river hadn’t frozen twice.

His parents always seemed angry.

He’d remember this wandering drive,

How no one laughed or even spoke

(As if their new home held no hope),

Snowblind to renewing life. 

Der Luftballon (Paul Klee), Sonnet #491

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

If you don’t know your ego, don’t ask it,

“Who are you really, a hot air balloon

Carrying me aloft in a basket?”

Its likely response? “Don’t be a buffoon.” 

We must accept what is most obvious,

That we are all we are, are all there is.

That town or field below are chimeras

And Aldebaran is oblivious.

We (what are we?) float, afflatuses

Incapable of nothing, kings of all,

Until our fear of ourselves deflates us.

Gasping, flailing, we wither of air and fall.

Courage! Ride the currents above the clouds,

Those infinitely reproducing crowds.

Portrait of Felix Feneon (Paul Signac), Sonnet #490

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

An anarchist portrayed as a magician

(True, the two have a good deal in common),

Feneon coined “neo-impressionism”

While being shadowed by the gendarmerie.

He was arrested twice on suspicion

Of bombings and an assassination,

Both times acquitted, reluctantly set free

To continue as a leading art critic.

Today we have no such chameleons.

Art is dying the death of the cynic

In a time of humorless deceptions.

The critic’s job has been stolen by sick,

Mad scribblers who only take exception.

Nothing is safe in a land of dim magic.

In The Loge (Mary Cassatt), Sonnet #489

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

The Madame has seldom been to the opera.

The loud music and gay costumes are amusing,

But she isn’t bedazzled by the “theatre”

Of bad acting and wobbly coloratura.

Her gaze into opera glasses accusing,

She scans the rows below for her wild creature,

That red-haired freckled feckless little “ingenue,”

Possessing neither loyalty, brains, or virtue.

Madame has taken chances in public before.

Still, this is business — she can’t afford to ignore

The traitorous behavior of a popular whore.

She doesn’t notice that she's being watched as well.

One of her regulars, a cop, an aging swell,

Is outraged — when he sees her next he’ll give her hell! 

Gargantua (Honore Daumier), Sonnets #487 and #488

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

One

I am Gargantua the great.

I was born 11 months late

And 25 pounds overweight.

They say my mom did not dilate

So much as stay inebriate.

In my first 7 months I ate

Each day a raw half-ton primate

Brought to me in a silver crate.

The screaming made me salivate

Enough to fill the wide Euphrate....

Ease in bed’s my natural state.

Whenever I walk I create

Wobbles in how planets rotate

And the earth’s circle turns oblate.

Two

I’m sad I cannot copulate

Because I have not found a mate

Who can withstand my fleshy freight.

(I’ve other ways to recreate, 

So I ... what’s the word? Ends with ‘bait.’)

I write long essays to berate

The scientists with addled pate

Who say I can’t regenerate.

My dream is of a girlish Fate,

Who’ll bring me a Donna or Kate,

Who’ll match me stone for stone in weight,

And when at last I procreate

My sons will burst each kingly gate

And rid the world of love and hate.

Card Players and Girl (Paul Cezanne), Sonnet #486

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

“Never liked the ‘cards as fate’ metaphor,”

Thinks the painter, though that is what he paints.

He’d watched this game played out the night before.

Its drama of poverty, he thinks, taints

The composition’s careful symmetry.

The young father staking all on three threes

As the two sharpers wait for him to call.

His daughter’s afraid he could lose it all

And more, while the man watching, pipe smoking,

Knows the game is rigged — he’s in on the sting.

Twice the painter draws the golden section,

Vertically, on each side of the dupe,

But mars the composition’s perfection

By revealing the faces of the group.