Parade

The invention of the assembly line,
The conveyor belt, the repetition
Of a single simple task by one man,
Produces all that is useful and fine.
Let me push the button of ignition
On armor as heavy as a tin can.
No bullet can penetrate my new skin,
Sleek and silver and exquisitely thin.
I'm so perfect now a parade of me
Runs past the smokestacks of the factory.
I'm joined by a smart, lock-loaded army;
As we march, everyone behind his hood,
Goose-stepping, bright phalanx of right for good,
We stare down the decadent and swarthy.

The Spy (Cold War Mini-sub), Sonnet #632

 

Like a sty in the nation’s eye,

He’s a hiding-in-plain-sight guy,

A cataract of the blind lie —

People still believe him, though why

Is as mysterious as Pi.

A carnival barker, though sly,

And a connoisseur of the small fry

He munches either moist or dry.

He beckons the bucks from on high.

They all trot up to him and sigh.

He has a mantra: I am I.

There’s no disputing that, just try.

There are some who think he's a spy.

We know he’s set the world awry.

Note: The number Pi is considered 

mysterious due to its irrational and

transcendental nature.

The Fireside Angel (Max Ernst), Sonnet #631

 

If you dare to tell him he can’t

The monster starts his dancing rant.

The noise blasts an half-empty House

Where nothing stirs, not even a louse.

His legs lift just so high and pound

And pound the ground like myriad rounds

Aimed to shell the foundations

Of once allied loyal nations.

(He makes of enemies his friends

For obvious and evil ends.)

His confused shrieking grows louder,

Anger eloquent as gun powder.

When dance and rant become one

The work of dictatorship’s done.

The Undone Thing

 

My body's naked decay
illuminates a room of mirrors,

themselves reflections, years
compressed into a backward look.

That was flat bone, that, my eye,
that, hard skin, sharp spine.

As number shapes itself,
we all gradually freeze

into the markless prism
of each day: One. Attention!

Two. Prayer! Three. Reach out!
Thus, the count approximates me.

The caliper and the scale 
exact a shade of difference

between mole and melanoma-
sensations bought and sold:

a faceless, Ernstian torso,
odalisque sans ottoman,

I beckon like blue oblivion.
Afloat in a dusty tearpool

with feathers, stone, and pigment
peeled from unsized canvas,

mine is the life of reclining truth,
with plump breasts pointing up.

Excavation (Willem de Kooning), Sonnet #630

 

There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all 

beings like themselves...We find human faces in the moon and armies

in the clouds.  David Hume

The anthropomorphic follows me around —

In carpets, tree bark, and abstract paintings.

“If I am the figure, what is the ground?”

Each face whispers, “or am I just feigning?”

Or am I the pretext for pretending,

I reason, a message I am sending

To cohere around the inchoate

Only I can look at and recognize?

These flickering (blinked) images sate

My comprehension, if not my eyes.

“My face will melt if you don’t look at me,”

These ghost images say repeatedly.

I too unseen uncertainly erase —

Though an unreal painting could take my place.

Music

How can sound mean to me?

A note, chord or melody,

Or an invisible bird’s song,

Even the long ringing of a gong,

Is merely an evanescence

To the most fleeting of senses.

It’s only in memory that sound

As music turning round and round

Can deliciously endure

Until distilled and rendered pure.

Tiger Emerging From Bamboo (Kano Tsunenobu, early 18th century), Sonnet #629

 

Zen tiger — imaginary,

None living in Japan — just pelt

From which to construct a kitty —

No sharp claws and jaws, no fear felt.

It slips between stands of bamboo

On silently pillowed paws,

A denizen of our thought-zoo

Who will blink out science’s laws.

It rubs against ungiving grass

And under the shoots’ fingers purrs.

It hides as other animals pass,

Having no taste for flesh-filled furs.

Like time the tiger emerges

And as quickly all things purges.