Painting the Eiffel Tower, 1924, Sonnet #559

 

A man hangs by his elbow, not trusting

His hands alone to keep him from falling.

He’d call the Eiffel Tower his calling —

Brushing to prevent it from rusting —

Sixty tons of paint every seven years.

I’ve been to the top in spite of my fears.

My vertigo let me look out, not down.

Just this photograph unstrings me.

I can’t imagine standing on the crown

Without losing my ability to be.

Yet, men dangled from such heights to build

It — 

        iron and rivet. 

                                One man was killed.

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The Bookworm (Georg Schafer), Sonnet #558

 

He bought his first book at the age of five,

The story of medieval warfare.

Another world came vividly alive.

A kin of dragons emerged from its lair,

An ancient and omnivorous wyrm

Penetrated the boy through his pupils

And thusly he began to read and learn

Of all the world’s glories and its ills.

Seventy years later his library

Lines every wall in his home’s every room.

There are books of inexorable doom,

A room devoted to lore of faery,

Even a shelf of books penned with a quill.

He hasn’t read them all and never will.

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My Human Disguise.

Girl Reading a Book (Charles-François-Prosper Guérin), Sonnet #557

What does it mean to read a book?

There’s no right answer anymore.

My daughters know it’s not to look

For something that’s never been there,

Like “truths” in ugly ancient lore. 

I once at bed time read “Scarface,”

The story of a grizzly bear —

At times it made little hearts race.

They still recall that book with love,

How the bear was far from human,

Though constant fear and hunger drove

It on from mountain to mountain.

They read books seeking for beauty,

Not from a false sense of duty.

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My Human Disguise.

 

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.