The Lives of the Alchemists - by Charles Simic

The great labor was always to efface oneself,
Reappear as something entirely different:
The pillow of a young woman in love,
A ball of lint pretending to be a spider.

Black boredoms of rainy country nights
Thumbing the writings of illustrious adepts
Offering advice on how to proceed with the transmutation
Of a figment of time into eternity.
The true master, one of them counseled,
Needs a hundred years to perfect his art.

In the meantime, the small arcane of the frying pan,
The smell of olive oil and garlic wafting
From room to empty room, the black cat
Rubbing herself against your bare leg
While you shuffle toward the distant light
And the tinkle of glasses in the kitchen.

-Charles Simic, The Lives of the Alchemists

Shaving - Charles Simic

Child of sorrow.
Old snotnose.
Stray scrap from the table of the gods.
Toothless monkey.
Workhorse,
Wheezing there,
Coughing too.

The trouble with you is,
Your body and soul
Don't get along well together.
Pigsty for a brain,
Stop them from making faces at each other
In the mirror!
Then, remove the silly angel wings
From your gorilla suit.

-Charles Simic, Shaving

You

You,
time is short
you would probably
                Say that
you usually do,
you.

They say we shouldn't
waste our lives
and give incredible advice
on shopping, etiquette,
fine dining.

Have a date with yourself
and show up late
but come up with the
most unbelievable
fantastic excuse
something you wish was true.

You know its christmas
soon
and everyone is trying to find the perfect
gift to say how much they love you
I hope, for you,
someone has the courage
to give you just those words
instead.

-Patrick Conners Jr

The Cross II: Poland Was Pink

The great rulers
                                of kings,
                the crown
                                of thorns,
                crafted
by wood
                from
                                His Cross.

Last Friday
                the World
was conquered!,
a great day
                                in history.
                                Thank Christ!.

Then the man left the
Church
Seeing
                only

                                Colors.

-Patrick Conners Jr

http://inspiredfortune.blogspot.com/2011/12/outline-of-history.html

The Cross I.

Standing before the
Cross for hours and
Breathing the very breath of our salvation.

A man in agony crawls
Through the portal;
The wide doors swallow
His wounds.

The transfiguration
Written on his face
Glows like holy scripture.
Tears, like holy water,
Wet his lips.

He approaches his own
Face erected upon the
Rough wood of the cross.

-Patrick Conners Jr

http://inspiredfortune.blogspot.com/2011/12/christ-i.html

Bukowski 1

 

tonight I wonder where my Bukowski went, looking tirelessly under laundry, plates, sheets, bottles, and more scholastic books. I pause at an anthology American Modern Poetry!

Flipping through the pages until confirming Bukowski is absent and Tom Waits is silently looking out a dark window at pigeons eating out of children's palms. so quiet.

I Would swear he never lived.

-Patrick Conners Jr

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

Arthur Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud
You have some
Beautiful lines, but
You know that—

“L’amour divin seul
Octroie les clefs
De la science”—

I don’t speak French,
I’m sorry, I can’t understand.

“Goodbye chimeras,
                ideals, errors.”

~Patrick Conners Jr

In The Library

In the library,
Human Physiology
Looks across
At Climate Change;
Their gaze unbroken
For these many years.

Behind them listen
The Dynamic Natural Gas
Industry, and
Potroleum Product
Handbook.

There are entire encyclopedias
Written in the dust
On their spines.

~Patrick Conners jr

Optimism

There will still
Continue to be
Cats named
Patches
Next year

~ 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

Crayons, markers, glitter,
safety scissors, stick glue,
Elmer's glue, colored pencils,
finger paint, Pastels.

Stuffed rabbit, Legos,
G.I. Joe, soldiers,
Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures,
cars, Quake.

Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak,
Shel Silverstein, Bruce Coville,
R. L. Stine, Poe,
Lovecraft, Stephen King.

Pretty Pretty Princess, Candy Land,
Mouse Trap, Checkers,
Life, Monopoly,
Risk, Chess.

Gather, Hunt,
Grow, Culture,
Plow, Irrigate,
God, Math, Philosophy.

Stick, Sling, Sword,
Catapult, Cannon,
Gun, Bomb,
Nuclear end.

-Patrick Conners Jr

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

Those Winter Sundays

by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
Then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

-Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays

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

OF NICOLETTE - E.E. Cummings

dreaming in marble all the castle lay

like some gigantic ghost-flower born of night

blossoming in white towers to the moon,

soft sighed the passionate darkness to the tune

of tiny troubadours,and(phantom-white)

dumb-blooming boughs let fall their glorious snows,

and the unearthly sweetness of a rose

swam upward from the troubled heart of May;

a Winged Passion woke and one by one

there fell upon the night,like angel's tears,

the syllables of that mysterious prayer,

and as an opening lily drowsy-fair

(when from her couch of poppy petals peers

the sleepy morning)gently draws apart

her curtains,and lays bare her trembling heart,

with beads of dew made jewels by the sun,

so one high shining tower(which as a glass

turned light to flame and blazed with snowy fire)

unfolding,gave the moon a nymphlike face,

a form whose snowy symmetry of grace

haunted the limbs as music haunts the lyre,

a creature of white hands,who letting fall

a thread of lustre from the castle wall

glided,a drop of radiance,to the grass--

 

shunning the sudden moonbeam's treaerous snare

she sought the harbouring dark,and(catching up

her delicate silk)all white,with shining feet,

went forth into the dew:right wildly beat

her heart at every kiss of daisy-cup,

and from her cheek the beauteous colour went

with every bough that reverently bent

to touch the yellow wonder of her hair.

- E.E. Cummings, OF NICOLETTE

"We have all been in rooms
We cannot die in"

-James Dickey

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

Cthulhu and Aristotle

I was really getting into Aristotle
When the stars leaked a blazing
Red current through their void

From another world came
The mysterious Cthulhu
Waving his hundred arms

My coffee spilled
Erasing a thousand words
From my essay

That categorized gods
                and flowers

-Patrick Conners Jr