Two Sonnets After Robert Fludd, by Matthew Muñoz and Saki

Untitled (a.k.a. "Et sic in infinitum"), by Robert Fludd (England) 1617

Et Sic in Infinitum 
​
The signifier bleeds into its margins,
Corrupting reassuringly abstract
Delimiters, the algorithmic jargon’s
Supposed colloquy with inexact
Imaginings unable to redact
Concrete irruptions of the signified:
Metonymy-annihilating black
(Our cosmogonic reminisces lied).
Illimitable desolations bide
Probationary vectors of escape:
Athwart the universal eventide
A throat’s incomprehensibly agape.
Inside philosophy’s canopic box
Lurks Absolutely Nothing, Nyctalops.

Matthew Muñoz

**

Un-titled 

(a trimeter sonnet)

You can't paint a picture of Nothing
Without painting something, in fact
A canvas that's blank is more Nothing
Than one that is painted all black.
For blackness is absence of light.
What's more, it's the presence of paint.
Black is the colour of night,
And colour's a thing Nothing ain't.
The only way to paint Nothing
Is to un-do the canvas in full:
Erase it by un-paintbrushing
(Even then, nihilation's not null).
Only a fool tries to frame
That which cannot be named.

Saki the Artist


Matthew Muñoz is a poet and programmer living in San Diego focusing on formal verse, from ingenuity of assonance and meter to emergence from automatic procedures. His webpage is knucklebones.rip.

Saki is an artist based in both Vienna, Austria and San Diego, California. After getting a master’s degree in Genetics and working in biotech for seven years, she quit science to become a full-time artist. Her current work focuses on using upcycled art to raise awareness for plastic pollution and the need for environmentally responsible scientific research. When not writing poetry, Saki is a costume designer, music and arts teacher, vegan pastry chef, and cat trainer. Her website is sakitheartist.com.