Dying Hour

I want to use these great lungs of mine
To hold my breath for an hour.

I practice meditation for hours,
Warming up for the final act.

The final pause at the end of Life’s stanza.

The Taoists say holding your breath
Is yang, it strengthens every muscle

And every bone in your body.
The Taoists say that exhaling is

Yin, it relaxes and prepares
The body for some final rest;

And so, to breathe out, even to sigh
Is to die. When you read poetry

Out loud, you die. Not metaphorically,
But literally. It is the cycle of life.

I want to hold my breath for an hour
So that I can feel immortal. So that I can

Feel a strength that has never been
In my muscles and flesh. So that I can

Hold time still for just that short, minute,
Dying hour.

-Patrick Conners Jr

Kept Awake

“God’s refuted but the devil’s not”
-Charles Simic

I used to be kept awake
For hours each night,
With poems circulating
Through the veins of my mind.
It was a chore keeping up;
Like keeping the yard clear
               in the fall.

They were mad thoughts.
I thought they were not from me,
But from some dream state.

I collected more lines than
A confessional booth;
The notebook I refused
                to set down.

In the morning a shadow
                remained on the page.

-Patrick Conners Jr

Morality is trivial
Mice make metaphors

Unfocused eyes see
Nothing out the window
Today

The Seducer Only Smiles At Himself

There is so much more
Security when everything is naturally
                At odds--
Then we do not need to invent ways to
Fill the silence
                So unnatural.
Crafts and trees should
All be bells,
They should scream or just echo
Their last brilliant murder.
Dullness is never sought.

We need to
Fly toward the vibrant
Light until unconscious flies.

We need to be stuck in a
Wind tunnel. Though we crave
                Control,
Silence we cannot
Master--it breeds in us,
We do not produce in it.

If we only appreciated
Stillness, surely there'd be
no survival--Life depends
                on strife.
Love moves toward war of forms.
When you've gotten everything
Else done, just get high,
                You deserve it after all.

The alternative is stagnation,
un-accomplishment. Motion measures
man--growth, worms, cities,
rain, the heart beat-- Movement
                is connection.
Sound unites, we are
Comforted by distraction. Jesus
Was born, performed, spoke, died
Rose once more--even in death
Was not silent--silent, stillness,
                A disease,
There are pills for that!

If connection is holy, we must live in a
Holy age, right? Contemplation, no, that
is odd--Seclusion shows an indifference
and intolerance--War has always been
                a love story. The seducer only
Smiles at himself.
A soldier is anyone who knows
For whom he died.
                God does not smile at all.

-Patrick Conners Jr

flesh 'n wine

God, you're holding your palm out
for your future to be read

you've cast lots to divide your realms
we, we, we, our great race us humans

Have been entrusted to fight holy wars

To bless your children Because we hold your

Palm and study the lines God you should use

hand cream your skin could use to be smoother

Its rough as a snake we, we, we

Improve nature Have a cure for that

our reason and understanding The civilized

nations and our courts have no need for justice

you could say we we we know a great deal of

divination and tarot prophecies The man with

the beard and his half completed song we we

we are premature we want bread and wine

flesh and blood ripped from holy flesh

-Patrick Conners Jr

Search

I went looking for you in a hill last September.
The wind tossed my hair in front of my face,
My legs burned underneath me,
feeling the urgency of the search.

I ran up toward the expanding dark blue.
As I crested the hill the sun blinded me for a moment.
I looked around into the pure white light;
Everything was gone, the wind was deafening.

In another instant, everything had returned.
I was at the top of the hill with the sky and blown leaves.
So clearly I saw all around me, the small creek beyond the hill.
Alone on the hill, I walked to the creek.

The shallow and clear water did not even hold a face.
I was alone for miles in all directions;
I wondered at where you had gone.
For all these years you've wandered far from home.

It is impossible to describe my disappointment
I thought I had found you,
And my joy faded like a young child's at dusk.

I knelt at the water's edge,
Began dipping my cupped hand
Into the water, bringing it up in handfuls,
Digging just on the surface for a trace of you.

The water never left a spot to be reclaimed,
A constant stream entirely unaware of my hand.
I wanted some essence, some proof.
Digging and digging, tirelessly, the wind did not cease.

-Patrick Conners Jr

Writing in the Afterlife - Billy Collins

Writing in the Afterlife
By Billy Collins

I imagined the atmosphere would be clear,
shot with pristine light,
not this sulphurous haze,
the air ionized as before a thunderstorm.

Many have pictured a river here,
but no one mentioned all the boats,
their benches crowded with naked passengers,
each bent over a writing tablet.

I knew I would not always be a child
with a model train and a model tunnel,
and I knew I would not live forever,
jumping all day through the hoop of myself.

I had heard about the journey to the other side
and the clink of the final coin
in the leather purse of the man holding the oar,
but how could anyone have guessed

that as soon as we arrived
we would be asked to describe this place
and to include as much detail as possible—
not just the water, he insists,

rather the oily, fathomless, rat-happy water,
not simply the shackles, but the rusty,
iron, ankle-shredding shackles—
and that our next assignment would be

to jot down, off the tops of our heads,
our thoughts and feelings about being dead,
not really an assignment,
the man rotating the oar keeps telling us—

think of it more as an exercise, he groans,
think of writing as a process,
a never-ending, infernal process,
and now the boats have become jammed together,

bow against stern, stern locked to bow,
and not a thing is moving, only our diligent pens

-Billy Collins, 1941

They don’t trust us with shoelaces here
                They may be used to strangle ourselves
The sheets and blankets are so thin that
                They tear if you should try to hang yourself
The mirror is polished metal
                No glass shards to split your own throat
Hospital gowns and doped up patients
                Hungry from weeks of hospital food and sleep deprived

Only the truly ignorant claim to understand themselves
Assignment today: Come up with
                Five things you are thankful for
The lady next to me will
Not stop on about how
                They took my babies!
Her husband, she just knows is dead.
They replaced him with a clone,
                She won’t sleep with him
I don’t doubt that’s not why she’s here

My roommate is a returned war vet
                He screams out profanities
At night as he dreams of repeatedly stabbing me
He screams out my name like
                The Lord’s name in a desperate prayer.
He is a pile of rocks under the thin bed spread
Screaming damnation
                Fuck the doctors and fuck my soul!
I can feel it filling the room
                He’s near climax
When he wakes in sudden terror
And moves quickly to the shower
                On quiet feet.

The games of chess I play here
Are the most sincere I’ll play anywhere

-Patrick Conners Jr

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

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

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

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-

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