Monday, October 31, 2011

Voice Inside Mine

This is why your voice is still inside mine
Why it rings out over and over in my head
I'm convinced I hear it as loudly in my dreams
As when you are standing right beside me
With an assuring smile and soft eyes
This is why you are trapped in my head
Like a prisoner who is not held in by bars
Or cuffs but remains out of guilt
He's put himself in the greatest hell
Because he cannot imagine walking free
There's no freedom from yourself
No escaping our deeds
When we accept the path of Cain
We attach our souls to suffering
We are all cousins of murderers
For this we pray forgiveness
That we may walk in the light
Despite the actions of our Nation
That we identify ourselves with wholly
And Holy we want our mind to become
Our thoughts washed of our darkest seed
We read stories of saints
And invent rituals for cleansing
And plays for our katharsis
As though if we lie with all our hearts
Wholly, holy our creator will see us
He will overflow with pity
He might burst as a balloon with too much helium
He shall count the number of tears that
We cry each day while thinking about Him
While thinking about our own solid condition
We might find some piece of us
Some voice inside our heads that
Justifies our very existence among
Thieves, rapists, and murders
Yours is the voice I think about
Because it is pure light
It is the closest thing to an angel
I've ever experienced
And while our minds give us our
Perception of reality
While we are fed the heart of existence
By what we hear see breathe and feel
Each and every day and I read
About a woman who is beaten for the
Fourth time in a month
By the same man over and over
For years this abuse continues
Through ages filling volumes
Filling tombs and tragedies and being
The very living causes for pain and
Senseless rage
But there has to be something
Something to counteract the screaming
Blood
A single soothing voice of right
Something to declare beauty isn't only in fiction
That rocks and bullets are powerless
To the strongest voices in our hearts
The true source of courage and action
And your voice is wind chimes
In a hurricane
Growing louder in the immutable wind
The chaos is only a yawn
It is a whisper
As I fold my head into my own lap
And listen to the waves of your voice against my skull

-Patrick Conners Jr

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Earth’s Prayer


Dear friends, this is how I would pray
You look upon me.
I had these thoughts while
You were building your temples
Upon my mantle.
A holy site, a holy structure,
God’s temple,
You cannot imagine the insult!
Are my oceans not deep enough
To house all of the gods for you?
Are my trees not numerous enough to serve
as fingers for all your ironic gods?
Does the wind not blow fierce enough
To serve as the echoing
Incantations of a mad howling
God who has her whole life served
You with all her passion and bounty?
How much did it cost to build your temples?
What is their upkeep?
You wash my valleys in your blood
In the name of an absent delinquent God
Who has done nothing for you
Which my rains and fields do not
Do freely all the world around.
You cannot argue about my
Existence or divine form.
I willingly bear your waste,
I’ve been reduced to a mere staging area.
I’ve been accused of housing your Hell,
You’ve made me synonymous with filth and sin
And terror beyond your ability to cope.
You have cursed my womb,
Spat upon my breast;
And yet I’ve made you fat,
I’ve loved you beyond the form of any God
Whose temples you plague me with.
I exist now only as the rotting corpse
Beneath your feet.
Keep your alms,
I want no arms in my name.
I swallow your churches because they are obscene.
I reclaim my stone and mortar,
And the wood of your crucifix.
-Patrick Conners Jr
10/30/11

Saturday, October 29, 2011

The Cold Is A Terrible Thing To Forget

Reading Charles Simic tonight.
Bad chill set in a few hours ago.
Dogs bark in the late October night,
                Answering a train whistle
That reminds us the track
Is still there,
The same way a dog bite
Reminds us of nature,
And September reminds us of the world.
Glass is empty.
The cold is a terrible thing to forget.

-Patrick Conners Jr

Charles Simic Early Evening Algebra

early evening algebra
- Charles Simic

The madwoman went marking X’s
With a piece of school chalk
On the backs of unsuspecting
Hand-holding, homebound couples.

It was winter. It was dark already.
One could not see her face
Bundled up as she was and furtive.
She went as if wind-swept, as if crow-winged.

The chalk must have been given to her by a child.
One kept looking for him in the crowd,
Expecting him to be very pale, very serious,
With a chip of black slate in his pocket.

-Charles Simic

Friday, October 28, 2011

172

you've been writing all day

listless seeking poignant

pregnant with some art

an incoherent fury of

untranslatable muk

thoughts, sins, temptations

regrets, longings, ghosts

Always ghosts

Running to and diving from

History intersected with

the faultiness of remembrance

imbued with emotion

fretting for the perfect syllable

"Lar!" That is how I'll end

this line! That's it, that's perfect!

the feeling dissipates

your grounded

hollowed tired

you've dragged yourself

over mental agonies

the result is only migraine

and inattention

Frantic suitcase riddle

swarms of experience

highly distant

leading to a separating will

And ego-high

The perfect verse



 
patrick conners jr-

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Take Back The Night

Tonight I'm thinking about captivity

And the stars

In the evening as the shadows grow

We flee inside

There are faces outside

We cannot go

Out

The night swallowed

Our freedom

How

Who

The drunken night is chaotic

Its absurd

Without lights where can we hide

Its absurd to be afraid of your own yard

In the vast expand outside in darkness

We can sing out like the stars

And eat of the moon

And we used to dance at night
-Patrick Conners Jr

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

John Berryman poem 172

Dream Song 172
By John Berryman

Your face broods from my table, Suicide.
Your force came on like a torrent toward the end
of agony and wrath.
You were christened in the beginning Sylvia Plath
and changed that name for Mrs Hughes and bred
and went on round the bend
till the oven seemed the proper place for you.
I brood upon your face, the geography of grief,
hooded, till I allow
again your resignation from us now
though the screams of orphaned children fix me anew.
Your torment here was brief,


long falls your exit all repeatingly,
a poor exemplum, one more suicide,
to stack upon the others
till stricken Henry with his sisters & brothers
suddenly gone pauses to wonder why he
alone breasts the wronging tide.

-John Berryman

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

With our naked souls in the air we begin our journey.

Here, the devil is just another soothe sayer, nothing to be feared.

We paint the sky as moving into our selves. We settle into our skin.

Langauges are made between two people as a contract of truth;

You have broken every line of it,

You and your infinite tales each more exotic than the last. They entrance us

We sit at your feet like Bhikkhus at the feet of a

Bronze Buddha. We draw you a warm bath of

Milk and rose petals and your ethearal body only floats

On top. I have found that this is not your sign of Christlike

Perfection. This is your unrelenting fear. It fills you like

breath filling an inflatable raft. You lay there suspended over

The warm white milk. The unknown holds us all captive. It

Determines our actions and speech but I have never seen

A case just like this. This inflated indesicive vessel

Over a clean pure tub. We choose our words carefully, our

Independence in this life depends on it. We choose a slow and

Reflective thought, building a water proof vault to stash our

Souls. So afraid that we may not be good at this floating. That we

May soil our soul by living.

Our words and your words. Words, words like charging bulls.

Patrick Conners Jr

-e.e. Cummings poem-

if i believe
in death be sure
of this
it is

because you have loved me,
moon and sunset
stars and flowers
gold crescendo and silver muting

of seatides
i trusted not,
                        one night
when in my fingers

drooped your shining body
when my heart
sang between you perfect
breasts

darkness and beauty of stars
was on my mouth petals danced
against my eyes
and down

the singing reaches of
my soul spoke
the green-
greeting pale-
departing irrevocable
sea
i knew thee death.

                        and when
i have offered up each frangrant
night, when all my days
shall have before a certain

face become
white
perfume
only,

            from the ashes
then
thou wilt rise and thou
wilt come to her and brush


the mishcief from her eyes and fold
her
mouth the new
flower with

thy unimaginable
wings, where dwells the breath
of all persisting stars


-E.E. Cummings

Monday, October 24, 2011

“Please allow me to introduce myself.”

My handiwork has never been far from view, but recently there is even less reason for introductions. Browsing the daily news blogs, or surfing the daily big 24s will get you intimate with my nature. I am a workaholic is all. Adult ADHD. Type-A personality. All that bullshit. I really just can’t help it, it is love, love for what I do, love for who I serve. People do not think of me much as a servant, but if I could explain myself simply, it would be that I am just that: a public servant. People really do not understand love and necessity, that is the real issue. Love and necessity are who I serve, and in doing so I serve humanity. Look, a dictator doesn’t crumble without love, right? Necessity bids me to raise my fingers, and I do. Out of love. Is this thing even on?

“I’m a man of wealth and taste.”

Well, I mean, come on, a servant is allowed his share, right? This isn’t slavery, that is just cruel. If there is one thing I do not stand for, that is cruelty. What is wrong with indulging a little here and there, I mean what is it that Socrates once said, about wealth making virtue, you know the line. I suppose you could say that Socrates and I have a lot in common, I mean, we have both been called sophists a lot. Misunderstanding is the theme here. I have wealth because I work hard, I work hard because I am restless, that is the American dream after all. I am a capitalist and I excel at it, I am not going to apologize for that!

“I’ve been around for a long, long year.”

I am the first and last thought of man, after all. I’ve had my share of tributes and biographies, but I do not feel like any of them have really gotten my true nature. I try to tell my own story through actions. It is deeds that are most honored after all, right? At least, it was at one time, now I might be dating myself in still believing that motto. I took my first stand as an act of sacrifice and ever since then I’ve been proving that man really can’t serve two masters. The Big One asked me to bow before man, can you believe that? And disobey the previous command to worship only Him? Now, I make it my own personal duty, as a service to man, to show them that they can serve only one. All I do is bring the choice to them. I go to each man, individually, and do them each this service. I told you, I have a lot in common with Socrates.

“Stole many a man’s soul and faith.”

Now this accusation, I can plainly deny. How does one go about soul stealing anyway? Are we going to get into a debate about free will? Free will is a great thing when it is used for good, so why is it that every time someone uses it for ill, they go blaming me? All I did was ask him about the condition of his soul. That is all. I pointed out that he has one, sometimes this burden is too much for a man, I guess. But nowhere, Nowhere, in here is there any stealing. I leave the work of stealing to petty thieves, and even then it is by choice alone. Gosh, look at the time. I’d love to continue this interview, but I am a busy man after all.


Patrick Conners Jr
When you cried of loss did you whimper

            ghost names to the mess of sheets on your floor

While crafting your new art did you

            use the colors of your own eyes, hair, skin

Here’s your gun Alan

You know as well as any that

you’ve never seen a gun before

one’s been put to your head

Through the barrel screaming to the dead the angel

shatters the bullet and what should have been your last breath

Is a shutter that breaks your spine

            and then your heart

Paralyzed and mindless you drift across America

seeing the same parks, streets, lots, drugs,

            stores, pits, gamblers, losers, pin-ups,

            sneakers in the store windows, Christmas displays,

            Vaccinations for the virus of obese America,

            dollar stores, pawn shops, economic highs,

            and the derailing lows of mad houses

that put the gun back into your hand

and, Alan, you saw your reflection on that handle

Did you cry for loss or for gain

or do you even remember

where it is in America you left yourself

Street broken penniless full of Gin and Walt

high up in your life and spirit

breathing to the trees and starving bird nests

on Pennsylvania avenue committing the only unforgivable sin

asking for a bread crumb

   or an eternal silver dream

Patrick Conners Jr

Two Sets of Eyes

My lady has two sets of eyes:

There’s the soft,

            Sailingly uncouth,

not-quite-here,

not For Me pair.

(These are wild, but un-alert.)



And then, Oh, there’s

the hard un-

compromising

                        Promising

Fully                 Awake

—Am I immured?—

Pair of Amour.

(She uses these when she means to puncture me.)



But wait

                        Here’s another unfolding green

Erupting persona —Anger— in a flash.



Patrick Conners Jr

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Kerouac, I Think I'd like to Believe

Kerouac, I Think I'd like to Believe
(Thoughts and notes during 242 Choruses)
"This tree just told me
            See eternity
            Is the other side
            Of the other part
            Of your mind
            That you ignore
            Because you want to"
-Kerouac, 156th Chorus

I'm running out of places to stash
These discarded crippling hearts.
Kerouac, I think, I'd like to believe
That we are all reborn,
            Over and over;
We are all scholars,
            Responsible for teaching our souls.
And we’re all Buddha and Christ
            To be aspiring saints
Lost in Limbo.
Death's equal is the womb—
            I think that's what you tried to tell me,
And that soft souls know no equal.

 What’s been buried inside me
            for sure?
The substance of my own father’s
            empty light
Derived from time working
            on dirt
And clay bones.”
-Kerouac, 204th Chorus

I won't be left with
The crickets forever,
But Their soulless song is soothing;
Teach me to see like you do
Into the valley heart of shades
Rounded by a black rainbow
By the moon that never sets.
That I may see passed the Jewel of Fate,
Emerge from boundaries—you and I.
Learn to not suffer the wicked;
But also tell it apart from the innocent.

Heaven, I have another side—
What's wrong with that?—
Don't send me 'way like the others.
Heaven we're all impatient,
What are you hiding?

"I'm an idealist
            who has outgrown
            my idealism
I have nothing to do
  the rest of my life
            but do it
            and the rest of my life
            to do it"
-33rd Chorus

I bear the language of the romantics.
I have a full heart and empty pockets.
I can appear awesome as a phantom.
I believe there are colors I have not seen.
I’ve spent eleven lives
            Trying to perfect the spontaneous sonnet.
I’ve Seen my silver soul; a speck on the mirror.

Being in selfless one-ness
With the such-ness
That is Tathagatahood,
So is everybody else
Lost with you
In that bright Sea
Of non-personality.
            -194th Chorus

In a crystal-nothing jar
            Nirvana sits empty.
Wait, I have my own ballad;
It’s in my pocket,
            It’s a telephone number,
   It’s a name,
It’s an answer—
Yes?
Wait, my Nirvana,
Why is patience a life-long lesson?
            I’m done waiting for mine.
No, there’s nothing spontaneous
            ‘bout a sunset.

The ecstasy of nothing
Abiding, pleasing, pleasuring,
            Feeling, grieving, having
                        nothing,
            No____thing.
Pure light is always seen
            Even in the no____thing of smoldering
            dark
Even now in the Divine Secular Nothing,
            Ultra Ecstatic Reality.
                        (a pause)
A secular God has only genitals.
"Therefore", she said, "Goddess is a redundancy."
silence

"So the children rush out, saved,
            And he gives them
            the incomparable single Greatcart
            Of the white Bullock, all snow"
-126th Chorus

The dance of the little boy’s anger
            So unforgivable
Mired down in the recess of
            Frogs, flowers, Scholars
An age, and fifty thousand breaths
            later,
Still a washed out vision
            Ambient surreal emotion
And a small diamond is made
            To be a third eye’s prism.
Me and a half-dollar spider watch
            a caterpillar dance slowly on a twig

Wow, I thought reading that,
            When I start falling
            In that inhuman pit
            Of dizzy death
            I’ll know (if
            Smart enough t’remember)
            That all the black
            Tunnels of hate
            Or love I’m falling
            Through, are
                   Really radiant
            Right eternities
            For me
-184th Chorus

Have all my choices been made
            Before I even know them?
Have I written this already—hundreds of times before?
            Once drunk, once high, once sober,
            Once in ecstasy, once alive, once
            Frozen stiff, once in anguish,
            Once after the Rapture, once in
            Fear of hell, once in unending
            Anticipation of heaven and light,
            Once in pursuit of Perfect Gain
And still now while pouring over
The Snake of Eternity.

Seeing that all’s illusion
You lose your mind
In meditation
And heal yourself well
            (AND WHAT’S BEEN HEALED?)
                        -203rd Chorus

The Saints say:
            The universe began in a garden
            All speech was meaningless before being named
            Everything was perfect and sane
(I think
            Blessed are those without a tongue
For they have never disturbed the hymen of Universe.)
Say They:
            Without morals none were judged
            Haloed cherub beings robed only in serenity
            Governed the careless creatures
(I think
            Blessed are those without reason
            For all others shall inherit their sins)

It is not moot to question how a dream
                                                ends”
                                    -216th-B Chorus

When you've proven the universal redundancies.
When moved by faith to:
            Confirm all rhetorical doubt,
            Put to sleep a thousand dragons,
            Silence the sirens in the sky,
            And strangle all lonesome thoughts.
Wont you lie down with me,
have a drink, retire
            Stoic
                        nirvana
split my side once more.


Patrick Conners Jr.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Preface to a Poetry Reading

I would just like to start out by saying that this poem is amazing
It is the vision of the next world, the new world, and the old
It is the marriage of Thomas and Donne
It is the Modonna and it births a slick and bloody infant
Who walks when it is born and pronounces himself king
It is the agony of war as it rises to its haunches and beats on its chest
gifted with thumbs, it can think of no greater pleasure than masturbation
It inspires riots, revolutions, the burning of flags, schools of philosophies, new generations, divorces, abortions, years of therapy on an overstuffed couch to remember just why my parents fucked up the world and most of all myself
It presumes that there exists truth, justice, peace, love, harmony, a savior even for the damned, angels to lead home soldiers, sovereign nations still accepting refugees, open and receiving minds, the ability to procreate without forever staining our souls from the act of fucking, but most of all that the thought of conception hasn't entirely been abandoned as only a failed contraceptive
I can see this poem moving the cloulds to reveal mountains, to dethrone the pope, the silence Buddhists, herald the end of politicians, make corporations beg for mercy while looking at the edge of a guillotine
I want the words to act as gasoline and burn the whole fucking town down
I want to see how many times I can say fuck before someone stops me
I, I, I, I, I, I,
the poetic I, the historic I, the non-existent I, the I that realizes I...
And I don't know
The funny thing is that I am not even a poet--I do not even write well
I can't spell eclusiastical and I don't know the meaning of transfiguration
But I got this whole idea when I heard a poet read one of her poems
I got the idea she was reading it from the sky
Her words were so precise and intimate that I knew she knew everyone by name
She led the audience around on a leash
The audience she turned into poets for only a brief period of time
before they left and felt the concrete under their feet again
And when they returned home they found their balls had not become anything more holy than they were before and that acid still burns the skin and that they still kiss with saliva and they are still never really sure what to say or how to act and when they realize that the angel is missing from their heads they rip out a peice of lined notebook paper and they try to sketch an image of what she looked like, and not being a particularly talented artist they try to describe her in the fabrication of their words, but they know that these would never be words that she would use to describe herself, and she would be unlikely to spend so much time on her breasts and her hair, she wouldn't say such ubsurd things as, "Be still my beating heart", or pretend that references to the "Coney island of the mind" were of biblical magnitude, and would leave out all references to the fragile nature of skin, and she would probably prefer to talk about the smell of alcohol on her breath or create an ode to the natural divinity of murder--
And it becomes clear that I am not writing a poem at all but am only ranting on with my imperfect words and unclear speech
And I'm a mangled beast, and I've spilled coffee on my shirt, and I havn't shaved in a week, and my nails are getting long, and I'm a little bit too old to start poetry now anyway, and these readings are always suffocating and my stomache reels, and I'm not very clear about anything, and I rely too heavily on the word And, and my vocabulary has been stunted since I was ten
I could never be her--I could never be a poet, I should stick to stories, short clever stories about the very serious and real world of work and suffering, and leave the world of poetry to the angels
I should make an apology speech and promise to write no more poems.
-Patrick Conners Jr

Thursday, October 20, 2011

My Son

My Son
"Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
And where have you been my darling one?"
-Bob Dylan, A Hard Rain's a - Gonna Fall
My blue-eyed son
My dimple cheeked son
My son I should have had
My son I should have been
My illuminated son
The feeble Nyquil high
                Suicidal son
My Crocodile son
My son with blonde hair
                Who is off to war
My son who wept at himself
My bloody handed son.

My conformist son
                Came to Thebes and
                Plucked out both his eyes and is
My son in dreams
My son I'll call Paul
My son will weep at that
My son I'll keep naming Lazarus.

My son, my nothing son
My queer son
My intellectual son
Who died
                Sitting on the backburner of my life.
Patrick Conners Jr