-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

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, 204^th 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.”

            -194^th 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”

-184^th 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?)”

                        -203^rd 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”

                                    -216^th-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.

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

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