The Dance of Life (Edvard Munch), Sonnet #504

The beach sand is gone, cut away

By high waves from the winter storms,

So we dance as if we feel gay,

Madly whirling, twisted forms. 

The band — drum, violin, guitar —

Knows only waltzes, jigs, and rags;

Its sense of rhythm races, lags.

Some of us linger at the bar,

Leaving women alone and lost,

Heartbroken at their rejection,

While others twirl till their feet ache.

The sun sets like a golden host

In a chalice of its reflection

In the still waters of the lake.

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My Human Disguise.

Brushwood School House, Sonnet #503

Photo courtesy of ACRES Land Trust.

In ‘03, they built this one room school

And hundreds more throughout the state.

I sit fidgeting on a three-legged stool,

Drawing my figures with chalk and slate.

My mother drives me three miles each way

Unless it’s a planting or harvest day.

They’re mostly gone now, torn down,

Become hazards for ghost-hunting teens.

People live in some, rebuilt, far from town.

Brushwood hasn’t fallen, though it leans.

I was the oldest. The teacher looked nice.

Her favorites were the smallest ones.

When I was 18, she looked at me twice.

We wed. I died at Marne. She schooled our sons.

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

Unbridled Folly (Francisco Goya), Sonnet #502

He liked to ride bare-assed on a stallion,

Which he left unbridled and unsaddled.

(Some said his mind was idled and addled.)

He thought he commanded a battalion

Of shiny battleships and rugged tanks,

Would tolerate no genius in the ranks

Who suggested the firing of blanks

To force the surrender of cash-stuffed banks.

Clutching golden mane he charged the fray,

Screaming “Fare forward, you fools!” at his troops,

Spanking with his crop his poor mount’s sore croup,

Reducing that proud steed’s neighs to a bray.

The exhausted beast reared, bit the nightshirt

Off our hero and tossed him in his dirt.

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

Storm (Sesson Shukei), Sonnet #501

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My Human Disguise.

The mighty sea is slave to storms

And fishing boats slaves to the sea

As men are enslaved by all three.

The deck, stout mast, and taut sail form

The only threat to fend off death.

The sea drowns beneath the typhoon,

What men call an angry god’s breath,

Waves caused by his stirring his spoon.

A gibbous moon runs through the clouds.

Suns skip among the fog and haze.

In a lull, waves, in rows, look plowed,

Then boil in an unsolvable maze.

The ship sights land, rocky, tree-lined,

Safe harbor for the terror-blind. 

Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci), Sonnet #500

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My Human Disguise.

Can the mind exhaust old beauty, even

One persisting as a form of perfection

Behind bullet-proof glass; we see, then,

With repetition, deem it a confection? 

Yes, La Gioconda, if we let it

Become blind to us, a rotting cliche, 

Or object of ridicule, an idee

Fixe, until we would as soon forget it.

No, lack of imagination can’t close

Her limpid eyes or silence what she knows,

What her kissing lips, brushing our own,

Might whisper in an evanescent tone —

Let me live in you, as you live in me.

I am so you can be because you see . . . .

The Satin Tuning Fork (Yves Tanguy), Sonnet #499

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My Human Disguise.

I cannot tune a guitar very well

Because I pluck a string and hear three tones,

Not one. My inner ears have extra bones.

My head is a struck and struck again bell,

A tuning fork made of satin and silk,

Vibrating musically like stirred milk.

A real tuning fork makes the air explode

And ring with a slowly diminishing 

Volume without ever quite finishing,

An eternal sonic episode.

I tap mine and tighten a tuning post.

At least that note is right. The other strings

Wobble off pitch the way a warbler sings

Or like the humming of a tone-dead ghost.

Snow at Louveciennes (Alfred Sisley), Sonnet #498

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

When the snow first falls it perfumes

The air; the myriad features

Of our world are made sweet and new.

Growing deep, flake on flake costumes

All but living moving creatures.

When shadowed, it blushes gray blue.

On warming days the snow falls first

From slanted roofs and tree branches.

Foot-thick boluses slide and burst

In childish avalanches.

The snowmen in every yard

Will droop in sun, at night freeze hard.

Before melting, snow turns dingy

And sad. All beauty is stingy.