The Imp Of The Abstract (Rick Gydesen), Sonnet #588

 

“The abstract is the most we know,”

Says the blind, woodenheaded imp.

“Reality is just for show,

Like a colorful, leaking blimp,

Or eyes painted yolky yellow,

Which see only bye or hello.”

We might ask it, “How can you tell?”

It would reply, “There is no point

To my rejoinder or the joint

Where two knotty blocks form an ‘L.’

You may think you see something All,

A tree dropping leaves in the Fall —

They’re not even a chimera,

Just habit, your ephemera.”

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Bodhidharma (Anso), Sonnet #587

 

The man sat for nine years.

After seven he cut

Off his eyelids to keep

Awake. He disappears

Into the mental rut

So like and unlike sleep.

He becomes, without skin,

Just the robe he’s clothed in,

Empty of good and sin,

Sans end or origin.

At last he left the cave,

Thinking, “Mind is a grave

And nothing I can save.”

He gave the wind a wave.

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Death on a Pale Horse (J.M.W. Turner), Sonnet #586

 

Once a year we make fun of death,

When “trick or treat” becomes an oath.

Not one of us knows what it means,

So we taunt it with childish screams.

We scare ourselves beyond reason

Once night has beheaded the sun.

A pale horse carries a blind wraith,

With rags of lung squeezed dry of breath,

Flopping across a flesh saddle,

Disgorging eternal riddles.

A maddened and riddled monster,

His own owner and unmasker,

The beast is not stallion or mare

And foals only in our nightmares.

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Autumn Landscape with Four Trees (Van Gogh), Sonnet #585

In September, 

                       the first leaves turn,

Then nothing seems 

                       to change for weeks.

Later the trees, 

                       dun or blazing,

Consent to the slow, 

                       ragged burn

Harsh air hard frost 

                       and hot sun wreaks.

The eye blinks and blinks, 

                       erasing.

Oh, how the soul takes it amiss —

Departing summer’s final kiss.

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

My Human Disguise.

 

Cicada (Hua Yan), Sonnet #584

Why do birds and insects sing so

Effortlessly, without command,

As though they don’t care if they’re heard?

They tell us something we don’t know

And never try to understand.

I’d ignore the babbling catbird,

Perhaps, if I knew what he said.

The cardinal says “I am red.”

The cricket can’t seem to shut up

Lest I approach and interrupt.

The cicada’s incessant whir,

Like the blare of a small Klaxon,

Is intense and irregular,

An urgent call to inaction.

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My Human Disguise.

 

Broadway Boogie-Woogie (Piet Mondrian), Sonnet #583

 

The music in physical abstraction

Is in the eye that tries but can’t see straight,

A synesthesia, thought and action

Blurring all that is too far and too late.

Cross your eyes and a leaf disappears

Into a something, yes, but a nothing

Too, which will quietly begin to sing

Incomprehensibly to your pinched ears.

The New York City streets seen from a cloud,

All movement among sliding monuments,

Are like sheet music notes without accents,

Cacophonous, unrelievedly loud.

The autumn leaves run after taxi cabs

The old painter creates with little dabs.

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My Human Disguise.

The Flowered Dress (Edouard Vuillard), Sonnet #582

 

He bought it for her birthday,

But then he went away.

She wore it day after day

And when asked why, she said,

“These flowers replace the dead.”

She wore it when he returned

From far away in a urn.

She wore it when she was burned.

Her two sisters in return

Wore black and gray dresses

And hacked at their tresses,

Waiting, unable to yearn,

No hope even in flowers,

Tombed in the soberest hours.

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

My Human Disguise.