Mona Lisa’s Third Eye: Twenty-five Haiku

John Sandbach

talk is cheap

but even at that

the dinosaurs have no cash

*

in Coco Chanel’s apartment

a giant meteor

and a puff of smoke

*

drifting toward sleep —

dark perfume

falling off a cliff

*

he rises

at night to write down

strange chords

*

even before

he could walk, his crib

floated on water

*

diamond —

a gathering

of windows

*

falling rain

reveals the mirrors

hid in clouds 

*

a treatment

for claustrophobia — to swallow

elixir of mirrors

*

toward my back door

slow as a glacier

a graveyard flows

*

a tiny uncharted island —

a place

to hide from Egypt

*

mummy cloth

in a few centuries

I’ll unwrap myself

*

to prepare

for the Sack of Rome —

tea and toast

*

guns grow limp

unable to get hard

they die out

*

changing tastes –

once-famous paintings

are melting

*

behind Mona Lisa’s

third eye a temple of glass

still under construction

*

wet or dry

the stones are happy

to be a cathedral

*

inside a marble head

there is no memory

of Ancient Rome

*

in Kansas City

in a house of glass

a banker consults an astrologer

*

reaching up

Gertrude Stein catches

a bird in any sky

*

Gertrude Stein is laughing

a ball is falling to pieces

who fly away

*

just when I almost

saw the wind’s face

it changed

*

in Antarctica

researchers hallucinate

in fields of snow

*

like the Great Pyramid

there are many snowflakes

I’ll never see falling

*

in Gertrude Stein

patterns emerge

as fish in flight

*

it’s too beautiful –

I cannot finish

the novel