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These are being posted here in a specific order that I'm still tinkering with but they were written out of this order. I hope it all comes together well at least.

A Sonnet to Life

Life was a beautiful woman who passed me,
Brushing off my glance as She sped up in haste.
Her charm and curious elegance harassed me
In a fatal moment of style and grace.
Less fickle—more feral—and want of Respite
She could not look me in the eyes when I smiled,
Moving carelessly, and with indifference to Plight
Her body language had left me reviled.
The soft breeze of Her purpose, conceived
So bold, had struck me across the cheek.
I turned the other one to watch Her leave—
Behold! that Impeccable Physique.
My outward expression of self-worth had withdrawn
And I watched Her continue until She was gone.


A Sonnet to Death

Death was a beautiful woman who teased me
With countenance naked and pale.
Her cold Hands caressing my spine had seized me
Weeping and trembling, wretched and frail.
Into Her distant Eyes asked I tenderly,
“Dost Thou a life of living forsake,
Leaving this trail of tears in Your memory
And an ocean of blood in Your wake?”
O Temptress with Your scythe, unsheathe thee,
And kiss me like light to the flame
That glows in Hell along the river Lethe
And devours without sense of Shame.
She hesitated as I wept from the river’s dike,
“Harlot of Doom! unveil your Weapon and strike!”


A Sonnet to Joy

Joy was a beautiful woman who scorned me
When She smiled me down to my knees.
Stinging abrasions and bruises adorned me
(So violent Her gaiety!), and with ease
She would build up great walls of Glass around Her
To shelter Her peace and begin
Her assault on my heart; and thus I found Her—
I (on the outside looking in)
Had no real discernible offense against
Her barrage of Delight and Appeal; a fool
I was to believe I’d receive Recompense
From Her blatantly bold ridicule.
So in my self-aggrandizing self-pitying Place
I cordially yielded to Her sweet, beaming face.


A Sonnet to Pain

Pain was a beautiful woman who told me
At last, I was Her finest lover.
And when in Her desperate arms She would hold me
A comfort there I would discover
From the fragrance of loss in Her hair
And the gentle disease on Her skin
Of anxiety, doubt and despair,
Of the lies that She told with her grin.
We made love every hour in the darkest of Nights
And founded a union in Fears;
Married to the company of each other’s Delights,
Married to the long lonely years.
With the body of Hope a sacrifice we made,
Then together we buried Its corpse in the Shade.


A Sonnet to Ugly

Ugly was a beautiful woman inside,
Though, like the World it ne’er occurred to me
To look in the places where oft she would hide
Among vague mazes of Obscurity.
Wand’ring through Hedges, lost in things beyond description,
I viewed then through the Eye of the Beholder,
And from the Mirror Masquerade of this grotesque depiction
These careful-crafted solemn words I told Her:
If the pain of Loneliness and Anger should so bind You
With their brutal chains of Doubt and Confusion,
Do not be afraid—allow the Light of Love to find You
Through the cracks of Hatred’s hard-gilded Illusion.
And so as Her judgment by the World would never cease,
So this ugliness was mine upon Her release.


A Sonnet to Beauty

Beauty was an ugly woman who lured me
Away from Reason, Logic and Common Sense.
Her false pride foundations clearly preferred me
To lack an inquisitive Intelligence.
She scoffed and sneered at my well-meaning propositions
(For her comfortable ego knows just what her role is);
She could not open her arms for such honest religions,
But would gladly open her legs for the soulless.
Worshipped by the Darkness at the center of my grief,
In search of better desperate ways for quickened mass Appeal,
This perfect Wretch, graceful Monster, gorgeous Gypsy Thief
Employs wanton Lust and Envy to help her feel more real.
So compelled with this vindictive Vindication to pursue
Still my soul remains defeated; still my heart belongs to You.

Thank you for posting these. It seems an over-simplification to describe such complexity with: I like them.

They say sitting down with a cup of coffee and some good poetry is always a great idea, especially on a brilliant budding, blue sky day.

And so, I sat down with a café noir and began my pilgrimage through this enticing trail of words, perceptively laid out and filled with a certain Teratogenish Wisdom. The first sonnet acts as a starting point, triggering the imagination to further its exploration towards a particular perception or insight that was initially nurtured by the poets strong convictions. Once manifested in the mind through the process of visualization, each sonnet becomes fairly well presented in its distinct, yet befitting set of features, uncoiled and laid bare for all to see.

carm, um, thank you. Really, thank you. I am glad someone was able to expressively and eloquently describe in visualistic terms what I have represented here.

It started with an idea to write of pain as a lover, giving it female characteristics. I also wanted to put it into a sonnet, since I had not written a sonnet in a very long time. Then I began reading a lot of Baudelaire and was determined to create other "women" out of the important things poets talk about and keep them in sonnet format. I spent a lot of time working on each one, down to what words I wanted to include. I think they came out rather well. But I decided I'd just leave it at six. I think six is a good number and the six "women" I spoke of were the ones that had the greatest impact on me personally as a writer and, most importantly, as a human being.

6 is the minimum number of line/planes needed to create a 3 dimensional object. Did you realize that at the time?

Then I began reading a lot of Baudelaire and was determined to create other "women" out of the important things poets talk about and keep them in sonnet format. I spent a lot of time working on each one, down to what words I wanted to include. I think they came out rather well. But I decided I'd just leave it at six. I think six is a good number and the six "women" I spoke of were the ones that had the greatest impact on me personally as a writer and, most importantly, as a human being.

All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation. – Charles Baudelaire

I did not realize that, Gina! That's incredible. But what's that got to do with the Brooklyn Bridge?

carm, interesting quote from my favorite Frenchman. I would not have expected to hear him say that. Do you not think someone who reasons with himself to make calculations could convince himself he is doing something beautiful and noble? Could it be possible that a malevolent person could make something ugly and dishonorable by justifying his reason and calculations? I actually have to question that quote, unless I am misreading it.

One surely wouldn't expect "All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation" to come from such a great literary figure as Baudelaire, which is why it is deemed so powerful. As he implies, truth is likely to be found through the process of reasoning, not simply through romantic or philosophical notions of right and wrong.

This doesn't mean that reasoning is nothing more than cold, hard intellectualizing. As with most critical thinking areas, there are issues of content and context, quantity and quality, art and science, to consider.

Could it be possible that a malevolent person could make something ugly and dishonorable by justifying his reason and calculations?

We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities. -Henry Bolingbroke

Then what is one who attempts to reason on possibilities? Because that's me. I'm a fool, but that's me. I try to reason with myself on a particular decision by surveying the possible outcomes. Is this different?

carm wrote:As he implies, truth is likely to be found through the process of reasoning, not simply through romantic or philosophical notions of right and wrong.

Yes, perhaps truth is likely to be found through reasoning. But are those of us acting as romantics (guilty here) and on philosophical notions (often guilty too) really seeking the truth? Or perhaps just another version of it? Perhaps we are seeing the same truths from a different viewpoint, a different angle, a different lens.

Then what is one who attempts to reason on possibilities?

Teratogen, I hope to get back to this thread when time permits, so as to add a few more comments, for now this must suffice:

I Dwell In Possibility

I dwell in Possibility
A fairer House than Prose
More numerous of Windows
Superior–for Doors

Of Chambers as the Cedars
Impregnable of Eye–
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky

Of Visitors–the fairest
For Occupation–This
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise

– Emily Dickinson

Amazing possibilities exist for framing some of the ideas that are born from sharing various ways of thinking.

…perhaps truth is likely to be found through reasoning. But are those of us acting as romantics (guilty here) and on philosophical notions (often guilty too) really seeking the truth? Or perhaps just another version of it? Perhaps we are seeing the same truths from a different viewpoint, a different angle, a different lens.

The aforementioned is true on many different levels…

Teratogen, I have been analyzing, inspecting, dissecting, studying, kicking around, rehashing, and scrutinizing some of the employed strategies that have been utilized in this thread in an effort to formulate a coherent combination of thoughts, which I've included here in this variegated, yet summated response.

Of Truth:
The unity of truth can be found from a diversity of perspectives. The idea of truth is part of the intellectual oxygen we breathe. Whenever we state an opinion, defend, examine, or judge an argument, question, or investigate one kind of statement or another, we presuppose the concept of truth. Truth haunts as it ferrets out our loutish thinking, lame excuses, ignorance and our unfair offensive on others views. When our own ideas get misrepresented, we object and seek recourse. Truth stands over us like a referee…arms folded, ears open, eyes staring, missing nothing. If truth convicts us and we refuse to return its long, fixed stare, aren’t we merely expelling it in favour of our own protective version?

Truth is necessary, but if the listener never seriously considers what is being said, knowledge is never fully grasped or appreciated in all its varying perspectives.

"The silence at the heart of things/Where all true meetings come to be." In the silence of reflection, truth can be embraced. –Bruce Cockburn (The Rose Above the Sky)

of Romanticism:
Romanticism conveys notions of sentiment and sentimentality, whose ideas arose both as implicit and explicit criticisms of Enlightenment thought and of the society that produced them. The philosophes were deemed too objective, full of intellectual single-mindedness. The Enlightenment replaced the Christian matrix with Newtonian natural philosophy (mechanical matrix). For the Romantic, the result was nothing less than the demotion of the individual. Imagination, sensitivity, feelings, spontaneity and freedom was stifled, choked to death. The Romantics attacked the Enlightenment because free play of the emotions and creativity was blocked. Romantics felt man must liberate himself from intellectual chains so as to reclaim their human freedom.

"Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains" – Rousseau

The philosophes saw man as creatures endowed with Reason, but the Romantics saw diversity and uniqueness. Discover and express yourself, paint your own personal vision as you live, love and suffer in your own way, cried the Romantic artist. And so came the battle cry ""Dare to be!". They were extremely passionate about their subjectivism and about their tendency toward introspection.

Though labels sometimes too easily help us forget that past ideas form the context in which new ideas are developed and expressed, we are able to innovate. Intuition is equated with that which we feel strong toward. We can learn by experiment and by logical process, but we can also learn from intuitive flashes and feelings by learning to trust, respect, preserve and maintain knowledge and innovations by means of our own instincts.

"O for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts," – John Keats
"Bathe in the waters of life." – William Blake

To the Romantic, the heart has reasons that Reason is not equipped to understand. The heart is a source of knowledge where ideas are "felt" as sensations rather than mere thoughts. Romantics distrusted calculation and stressed the limitations of scientific knowledge, saying that science fails to encompass the variety and fullness of reality. The Romantic imagination takes hold of immediate reality and creates in accordance with it. They favoured selfless enthusiasm, which is an expression of faith and not a product of calculation. Pure unbridled emotion was celebrated irrespective of its consequences.

Truth and beauty are human attributes and any truth and beauty which emanates from the poet’s soul or the artist’s heart, let it be a world of fantasy, intuition, instinct and emotion.

In conclusion, I offer a truthful, kind acknowledgment towards your six sonnets. With a certain witty irony they play on my mind, but that's OK, because I believe you have skillfully mastered an ephemeral nature, methodically captured amidst each of the six sonnets multiple viewpoints. In reading them, I reflect on the paradoxical research that must have weighted you as you approached each of them with such individual seriousness, precision and unbridled emotion.

A judgement is an evaluation of something and to be just or, to justify its existence, ones judgement should be partial, passionate, perhaps even political and written from an unconfined point of view, one that opens up the widest horizons.

Very concise and all-encompassing dissertation of subjects. I applaud you.

I feel paradoxical, enigmatic; I attempt to use reason most of the time to understand the way things work, but when it comes to the way people work I harp on my romanticist notions and praise humanity for their emotional capabilities. It's like in Forrest Gump, when Forrest is visiting the grave of his mother and he tells her that Lt. Dan talked about fate; that the world is set and we have reason to be in it. Then he tells her what Jenny said about deciding our own destinies. Then Forrest profoundly and stoically states, "I dunno, I think it's a little bit of both."

Reason vs. Romanticism? I like the idea of them co-existing in me, as well as within all of us. It seems to be too much of a battle of the sexes, per se. Reason = males, Romanticism = females. Do you see the similarities? There's a place for both in us all.

As far as paradoxical research that weighted me as I approached each sonnet with individual seriousness, precision and unbridled emotion, all I can say is when I decided to make each subject into a female form I thought, What if this were a woman? How would she treat me and I her? Then I formed the structures.

I feel paradoxical, enigmatic;

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy. - George Elliot

The truest sayings are paradoxical. - Lao-tse

It is always my wish to experience the world again, for the first time, and so I believe it is in my best interest to look at the world as though peering through the eyes of a child. The present alone is our happiness and we have to work hard to remind ourselves to take flight every day. Personally, I attempt to lead a very simple, conscious, coherent, and rational life, but during my sojourns I don't always maintain the serenity of mind to continuously direct myself in that regard. Sometimes, I too, feel paradoxical, enigmatic. I am reminded here of a phrase, one that is paradoxical, enigmatic, but weighty with meaning, “Everything that can be said is stripped of importance.” Perhaps that is why very few writers actually produce works that can survive the present narcissistic age. If the writing lacks wonder, it most certainly will lack the perspective of the overwhelming heights of imagination. The world is like a puzzle that is waiting to be solved and everyone seems to have an individual story as to how they want to go about solving it.

To man’s present thirst, (post)modernity offers the chance to drink from the vast salty sea of the future.

There are some that have a thirst for things which are paradoxical in nature — things that suggest their opposites. I enjoy reaching that point where I’m surprised by things, where the more I look at something, the less I seem to know so much about it. I like the idea of looking beneath the surface of things and I suppose it’s paradoxical, the idea of making things visible through language. It does seem like a strange and contradictory thing, to fashion things as visible in language. I suppose that is what makes reading so exciting, that you can read a writer and find deep resonances and connections to their way of thought, but you aren't pressed or willed in any way to agree with all of their verbalizations, especially if their thought appears unclear, shrouded in mystery and cluttered with conjecture.

This poem by Emily Dickinson plays on the paradoxically enigmatic, the prophetic voice speaking authoritatively as a sayer of truth even though that truth may be veiled to her audience:

A Death blow is Life blow to Some
Who till they died, did not alive become –
Who had they lived, had died but when
They died, Vitality begun.

Paradox, aphorism, and parallelism all come together here, if we listen to her playful language as she addresses the most somber of subjects.

Just for some lighthearted fun I have added a few paradoxical, enigmatic quotes:

The Unknown

As we know,

There are known knowns.

There are things we know we know.

We also know 

There are known unknowns.

That is to say

We know there are some things 

We do not know. 

But there are also unknown unknowns, 

The ones we don't know

We don't know.

A Confession

Once in a while,

I'm standing here,
doing something.

And I think,

"What in the world am I doing here?"

It's a big surprise.

The Situation

Things will not be necessarily continuous. 

The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous 

Ought not to be characterized as a pause. 

There will be some things that people will see. 

There will be some things that people won't see. 

And life goes on.

Paradox, paradox, paradox... I'm sorry, I'm REALLY tired and I began reading your post and my mind wandered a hundred times. If I'm in the frame of mind Coherence I shall re-read and re-spond. Just wanted to say "the known and unknown knowns unknown" one I've heard before a few times.

The truest things are paradoxical. Lao-tse, you make no sense! It's like mathemagics!

Death Blow to me now. [sounds like an action flick, no? Death Blow! I think that was the title of an action flick in an episode of Seinfeld that Jerry and Kramer went to see.]

Death Blow! I think that was the title of an action flick in an episode of Seinfeld that Jerry and Kramer went to see.]

Teratogen, here's the link…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkwJ_Iyvilk

Paradox poem:

I am the mother of sorrows,
I am the ender of grief;
I am the bud and the blossom,
I am the late-falling leaf.

I am thy priest and thy poet,
I am thy serf and thy king;
I cure the tears of the heartsick,
When I come near they shall sing.

White are my hands as the snowdrop;
Swart are my fingers as clay;
Dark is my frown as the midnight,
Fair is my brow as the day.

Battle and war are my minions,
Doing my will as divine;
I am the calmer of passions,
Peace is a nursling of mine.

Speak to me gently or curse me,
Seek me or fly from my sight;
I am thy fool in the morning,
Thou art my slave in the night.

Down to the grave I will take thee,
Out from the noise of the strife,
Then shalt thou see me and know me--
Death, then, no longer, but life.

Then shalt thou sing at my coming,
Kiss me with passionate breath,
Clasp me and smile to have thought me
Aught save the foeman of death.

Come to me, brother, when weary,
Come when thy lonely heart swells;
I'll guide thy footsteps and lead thee
Down where the Dream Woman dwells.

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

A paradox is a statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition. The term is also used for an apparent contradiction that actually expresses a non-dual truth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXwxI9ixuDY