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

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