Der Luftballon (Paul Klee), Sonnet #491

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Death on the Ridge Road (Grant Wood), Sonnet #485

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My Human Disguise.










Did we consciously make the poles look like crosses

That communicated power across the plains?

Surely a “T” would have served the same purposes.

On the narrow Ridge Road it is about to rain.

Darkness gathers itself like a bishop his robes.

The truck driver is first to see beyond the curve

And wrenches the wheel hard right, headlights unlit globes.

Two sedans, perhaps one chasing the other, swerve

And then all three are on the wrong side of the road.

One car fishtails as the driver says a prayer.

The other is too slow to brake and both explode

When the truck squeezes metal layer on layer.

The trio leaves the road flying, takes down a pole,

Which crosses all three, not blessing a single soul.

Dust In Light, Sonnet #484

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My Human Disguise.









Have you ever watched motes

Closely, drifting in sun-

Or lamplight, tiny boats,

Rudderlessly, as one,

Ever shunning the dim,

Floating within the shaft,

Bouncing back from its rim

Until caught in a draft?

In quiet air the dust

Moves slowly, rises, turns

In a secret pattern

Closer to will than must.

Avenue at Arles (Van Gogh), Sonnet #483

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My Human Disguise.

For Ruth

When the ground rises up to steal

The autumn leaves and the maples

Grow taller as they become bare,

The cloud-entrapped sun becomes still —

Its new diminished light dapples

The hustling squirrel’s leaf-red fur. 

Chestnuts and buckeyes pack twig nests.

The burrowing chipmunk resists

The inner call to sleep so strong

He must chase his siblings or sing.

I too change, cooling with the air,

My heart walking on hands as far

As the end of the avenue

Where I turn and return to you.

Fog Run (Alice Bea Guerin), Sonnet #482

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My Human Disguise.

The mother runs away from her daughter

And doesn’t stop until she reaches home.

She was afraid that if her child caught her

In the evening fog they both would roam,

Blind and lost, perhaps into the forest,

Or off the sand cliffs above the river.

No, getting baby home quickly was best.

The old pine door opens with a shiver.

The child runs in and hides behind the couch,

Where she finds her in a resentful crouch.

In the morning, fog runs like sentences

In the yard and illustrates the windows.

The daughter stands on the front porch and knows,

What she couldn’t last night, what fog senses.

Sanskrit Character—Fudo, The Demon Queller (Hakuin), Sonnet #481

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My Human Disguise.

The character knew he could not kill

But only quell the demon within,

Only drive his foot into its throat

And not let up even when it grew still,

As he knew that was its rictus of sin

(Less potent when, silenced, no gloat

Assailed the air like a black-winged kite,

Its head and eyes deceptively white

Circling harvested fields, hunting soul),

His leg beyond strength, aging to stone,

A numbness, cold as unfired coal,

The marrow seeping from his ankle bone,

He thinks he could surrender and free

The evil that, laughing, wouldn’t flee.

Crows (Edo Period, Japan), Sonnet #480

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My Human Disguise.

My daughter says crows have a special caw

When they want others to come out and play.

She says they are nothing but beak and claw

Stuck to flapping smudges like to black clay.

Tonight they are a thousand cries, raucous

And shrill like legislative caucuses.

When the sun is gone, the crows, like all birds,

Will vanish and become silent as words

Pressed between the pages of a closed book,

As present as a European rook.

They huddle all night in their rookery

And at dawn explode in all directions

To escape each other, make mockery

Of murder. There’ll be no real defections.

Procession of the Autumn Insects (Matsumura Keibun), Sonnet #479

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My Human Disguise.

The crickets sing ceaselessly every night.

Are they warning off or chirping the dark?

They’ve a neutral effect, like a chalk mark

On an old slate blackboard, more gray than white.

I walk out into the back yard. Silence.

A crescent moon slides behind a thick cloud.

I shout “yes!” once and shatter night’s nonsense.

When I go in the crickets’ answer, both loud

And incessant, scolds me for my pretense.

I realize they are not scared, but proud.

In autumn, some crickets sound all day long,

As they regale the sun in regal state.

In moonlight, they whisper, winter can wait.

Soon the first frost will extinguish their song.

Print Gallery (M. C. Escher), Sonnet #478

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My Human Disguise.

To look through windows, that’s my task —

Through pupils, then my eyeglasses,

Then all framed images, unmasked

By fixed or widened apertures

(Bound as eyes are by eyelashes),

But what I see (I’m not quite sure)

Always changes all the same.

Too much is hidden by the frames.

I take what’s there and make sonnets,

An old form, adequate, fishnets

For ideas the images hook,

My own kind of print gallery.

I ask you not to read, but see

What I have written. Then, please, look.

Stone Henge (Thomas Hearne), Sonnet #477

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My Human Disguise.






What confronts us always hurts us,

Duration that doesn’t endure —

An articulate susurrus

In language absolutely pure

Of meaning, yet the understood

Plucking of a stringless oud.

These settling stones are no older

Than my standing here among them,

Though I will sooner grow colder —

The builders having meant “amen.”

I said “hurt” — I don’t know what kind.

The muscles clench and doubts impinge

On leanings and knowns of the mind.

It’s not a stone but a time henge.

The Red Jester (Jan Van Beers), Sonnet #476

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My Human Disguise.

“Now, my dears, keep watching the ace.

My favorite card — it has no face

And just one itty bitty heart.

Hee, hee! It can’t squeak out a fart

The way the queen of spades

Will call to her some dainty maids

To please her king of diamonds

With one who has a showbiz mons.

Now, see? Your lazy eyes don’t peel

On the ace! It has disappeared!

Where’d it go? It’s as I feared,

Some joker has stolen the deal.

Why, that’s me! I rule the whole deck.

Every card’s at my call and beck!”