keeping it stark

if you can't say it 
in seventeen syllables
maybe it's too long

Dadaist VII

God's word, carved in stone
a beautiful calf of gold
and the thing itself

Dadaist VI

la plage et la ciel
et l'oiseau d'amour en vol
trahison des images

Dadaist V

so ridiculous
a haiku of an image
that is not a pipe

Falsification

a life devoted
to proving the artifice
of your chosen craft

dadaist IV

Plato's darkened cave
bound in a hall of mirrors
infinite unreal

Dadaist III

the surrealists
rejeted image for word
shunning Magritte's pipe

Dadaist II

the surrealists
rejected image for word
as if that would help

Dadaist

god's word, carv'd in stone
a beautiful calf of gold
neither are the pipe

Dadaist VII

God's word, carved in stone
a beautiful calf of gold
and the thing itself

post-Dada

while Magritte fretted
that image is artifice
Disney embraced it

hevel hevelim

in a foreign land
image tells the whole story
words without meaning

Magritte

in a foreign land
image tells the whole story
words without referent

go with it

while Magritte fretted
that image obscures the truth
Disney embraced it

formal precedent

August precedent
iambic heptameter
Chapman's Iliad

solipsist

mind contemplates mind
finds that it can't trust language
sings in defiance

Sisyphian

mind contemplates mind
and reports compulsively
that words are hopeless

Dadaism II

Magritte's images
show futility of words
spark conversation

Dada

peinture de Magritte
ce n'est pas le pipe lui même
et je'n suis pas "moi"

modulation

quiet and restrained
clapping at a funeral
for a touching speech

it's all personal

lacking self-respect
they demand you give them yours
petty dictators

restorative II

a tiny TV
blaring on a distant shore
meaningless static

fury

sulking Chris Christie
furious at being spurned
poor downtrodden whore

restorative

a lone TV blares
reality show blather
on a distant shore

priorities

bobbing on fair seas
the tempest of politics
fades in importance

tinted lenses

a Nazi's rampage
isn't called "terrorism"
if the perp is White

de gustibus

"Indian Buffet"
in most of America
"lamb" tastes like turkey

media filters

California's quakes
don't rank with Indonesia's
nor its volcanoes

hard currency

Freud's "sublimation"
converts everything to sex
dream economy

Saline

icy stars glitter
outside the spring, all is cold
the manatee squeals