Isn't Life

The man-headed calves
Came out of their caves,

Isn't life tragic enough?

Medusa frowned in her
Jeweled and gold rimmed mirror,

Isn't life mysterious enough?

Hercules was transformed instantly
by the gentle touch of Midas,

Isn't life abundant enough?

I curl inside myself as
A shield above a family mantle,

Isn't life comedy enough?

-Patrick Conners Jr

Like some heavy thing in deep water
~Dante, Paradiso III.123

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

James Wright - Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

-James Wright
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15590

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

Lady Lazarus - Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it-----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-------

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot ------
The big strip tease.
Gentleman , ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart---
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esBLxyTFDxE

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

Alone – by Philip Levine

Sunset, and the olive grove flames
on the far hill. We descend
into the lunging shadows
of goat grass, and the air

deepens like smoke.
you were behind me, but when I turned
there was the wrangling of crows
and the long grass rising in the wind

and the swelling tips of grain
turning to water under a black sky.
All around me the thousand
small denials of the day

rose like insects to the flaming
of an old truth, someone alone
following a broken trail of stones
toward the deep and starless river.

-Philip Levine, Alone

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/118/3#20595193

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

What message is there
In these bones?
Who would learn
Time from me?
How does God pray?
What was the language
Used by my ancestores?
Who will listen, laugh, and cry?
Should I lie? Will I change?
Into what? Who?
How many poems
Are writ in my soul?

~Patrick Conners Jr

Have You Prayed by Li-Young Lee

When the wind
turns and asks, in my father's voice,
Have you prayed?
I know three things. One:
I'm never finished answering to the dead.
Two: A man is four winds and three fires.
And the four winds are his father's voice,
his mother's voice ...
Or maybe he's seven winds and ten fires.
And the fires are seeing, hearing, touching,
dreaming, thinking . . .
Or is he the breath of God?
When the wind turns traveler
and asks, in my father's voice, Have you prayed?
I remember three things.
One: A father's love
is milk and sugar,
two-thirds worry, two-thirds grief, and what's left over
is trimmed and leavened to make the bread
the dead and the living share.
And patience? That's to endure
the terrible leavening and kneading.
And wisdom? That's my father's face in sleep.
When the wind
asks, Have you prayed?
I know it's only me
reminding myself
a flower is one station between
earth's wish and earth's rapture, and blood
was fire, salt, and breath long before
it quickened any wand or branch, any limb
that woke speaking. It's just me
in the gowns of the wind,
or my father through me, asking,
Have you found your refuge yet?
asking, Are you happy?
Strange. A troubled father. A happy son.
The wind with a voice. And me talking to no one.

-- Li-Young Lee

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

"The hand that writes is as good as the hand that ploughs."
~Arthur Rimbaud

Optimism

There will still
Continue to be
Cats named
Patches
Next year

~ patrick conners jr ~

from Dylan Thomas Poem in October

 It was my thirtieth year to heaven
     Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
        And the mussel pooled and the heron
                Priested shore
           The morning beckon
     With water praying and call of seagull and rook
     And the knock of sailing boats on the webbed wall
           Myself to set foot
                That second
        In the still sleeping town and set forth.

 -from Dylan Thomas, Poem in October
       http://www.bigeye.com/october.htm
or
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnoHCSU5yn8&feature=related

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

When corporations       determine                ethics
Elephants               look                          majestic
            In the snow

And                          whales                are        at home
                In a                                                                                  tub                performingstunts                                                                For          SunkistTuna We                     become                                            dronesObsessed with The IMAGE of rebellionPhotoshopped     and                     juxtaposedin                our                                music on theRite                                        Aid        playlistWe  pay                 millions    To sing                                                alongSmile politely customer                                          serviceComes                                  first Don't loseA single          sale Dignityisn't profitable Insincerity

                                                                                                                                is

"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

Evening Walk by Charles Simic

Evening Walk

You give the appearance of listening
To my thoughts, O trees,
Bent over the road I am walking
On a late summer evening
When every one of you is a steep staircase
The night is slowly descending.

The high leaves like my mother's lips
Forever trembling, unable to decide,
For there's a bit of wind,
And it's like hearing voices,
Or a mouth full of muffled laughter,
A huge mouth we can all fit in
Suddenly covered by a hand.

Everything quiet. Light
Of some other evening strolling ahead,
Long-ago evening of silk dresses,
Bare feet, hair unpinned and falling.
Happy heart, what heavy steps you take
As you follow after them in the shadows.

The sky at the road's end cloudless and blue.
The night birds like children
Who won't come to dinner.
Lost children in the darkening woods.

-Charles Simic

I admired the way you
Described god so clearly,
While dusting the cold
                                glass window.

The evening is like that,
Grave and alive, as you
Said. Tall and short,
Nothing to marvel at,
                                really.

Like a child reading a
Book out loud. Some
Words he gets and
Some are skipped over
                                entirely.

-Patrick Conners Jr

"That horrible march home,
that little unknown history of
inhumanity"

-from Charles Bukowski, Clothes Cost Money

Unwritten chapters
Of a person’s heart and soul
(Holding a flower)

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

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

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

“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