Mask of Fear (Paul Klee), Sonnet #556

 

The mask doesn’t reach ear to ear.

It has one eye through which to peer.

(Not all you see is pure and clear.)

It does not change how you appear,

Or turn you into a seer,

Nor prevent you being a hearer.

It will hide an impolite leer

And a few, not many a tear.

You must lift it to sip your beer,

But not to look in the mirror.

Someone will say to you, My Dear,

There’s nothing in your life to fear.

As if you are blind, they will steer

You off the end of a pier.

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

My Human Disguise.

Once a Chicken, Always a Chicken (Laszlo Moholy-Nagy), Sonnet #555

 

The never that underlies the always

Comes closer sooner than we think it can.

Consider the egg. Its perfect shell says,

I’ve nothing inside until cracked open.

A running girl can jump over mountains,

Her muscles like overflowing fountains.

She can swing a bat at a vampire bat

And wrestle a dinosaur to the mat.

These toys of the mind are inside the egg,

And boys of her kind have a broken yolk.

They run fast as hell with a broken leg.

Nothing about anything is a joke.

Some essential status, long ago broken,

Was once and is always unawoken.

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

My Human Disguise.

Jealousy (Laszlo Moholy-Nagy), Sonnet #554

 

The lady with the clever smiles

With two lovers and a husband:

She keeps the little boy in one

Suspicious with her playful wiles,

Thus perpetually unmanned.

As though he is her only fun,

The lover two knows the others,

Sees them as his loving brothers;

He thinks nothing is going on.

The husband she calls her “ape-pun.”

Horny, he must wear her apron.

He shoots her with his be-be gun.

This is their peniletimate line,

Uncoupling with the final rhyme.

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

My Human Disguise.

Pears and Apples on a Table (Juan Gris), Sonnet #553

I see some things straight on or one,

Others flower, flake and fracture,

Like cracked ice and cloud-splintered sun.

We don’t even guess to be sure

Sight isn’t feeling or idea

(Pointed pointless logorrhea),

Content with being what we are:

A peggy leg, bunches of grape,

An unwashed cup and rotting pears,

The glass rings on an ancient bar,

Manipulations of an ape,

Uncountable senseless errors.

Be calm. It’s only verity,

Its grapefulness and pearity. 

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

My Human Disguise.

Winter (Peter Breughel the Younger), Sonnet #552

 

The snow in the back yard rusts like a plucked white rose,

Rutted with the tracks of rabbits and raccoons,

Leaf-pocked and stained with coal ash the wind blows

From factories on the river — a field of runes.

Couples skate, boys race, a man falls through the ice,

Though no one seems to see. Two drunkards play with dice.

The drowned body won’t be found until the spring thaw,

With no consideration of conscience or law.

The air is bitter, unignited by the sun.

The wind stings the cheeks, blinds the eyes, numbs the ears.

It hasn’t been this damned cold in a year of years.

Yet the day is a festival for everyone.

For now, winter distracts women, children and men.

The next snow storm will wipe the world clean again.

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

My Human Disguise.

Stacks of Wheat, End of Day, Autumn (Claude Monet), Sonnet #551

 

Most of my dreams are black and white,

A sickly world lit by moonlight.

Golden wheat under setting sun

Igniting quickly fades to dun,

To dim, to shadow, then to black.

A full moon won’t bring colors back.

Night is no dream, but serious.

Even if it hinders vision,

We can’t become delirious —

We’ve no excuse for misprision.

Fear is something other, the end

(Not of meaning or misreading,

The touch of warm flesh, or needing)

Of sight only the sun can mend.

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

My Human Disguise.

Sea of Ice (Caspar David Friedrich), Sonnet #550

 

A god we don’t know wields

A hammer on ice fields.

One blow is all it takes

(Or flutter of snowflakes).

Then like careening ships

Each floe striking floe flips

Skyward in great stiff sails.

The meaning of ice fails

The seal and polar bear,

Who run beyond nowhere.

Men are not to be found,

Their craft long since ice bound.

They swim below like whales

They’d come to weigh on scales.

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

My Human Disguise.