Poetry by Will Patrick *ASSOCIATE  MEMBER* The Writing Forum’s Writer of the Month - April 2012 The Writing Forum’s Writer of the Month - March 2008 THE WRITING FORUM’S WRITER OF THE YEAR - 2009   POET’S BIO: "Will Patrick” is the pen name for W. Patrick McNelly, an award-winning poet from Southern California who has been writing for over 45 years and has been published in several journals and poetry anthologies. A professional in the wastewater industry, “Will” is considered by his colleagues to be somewhat of a renaissance man for his many interests and diverse talents. A US Army veteran, “Will” is also a master composter, expert on raising redworms, a dulcimer maker, journalist, and lifelong student of The Urantia Book. A father to two adult children and one grandson, “Will” is single. He was named Writer of the Year at The Writing Forum for 2009. The Writing Forum is the exclusive internet Forum where you can read his poetry and writings. For his Christmas poems for 2011, please click here. Email: pmcnelly@gmail.com   POETRY BY WILL PATRICK Click on the button next to any poem title in the list below to be linked directly to that poem’s location on the page:   Endgame   Restless Sleep   Exempt me from this distance   Epitaph for a Traveler Still Unknown   Partial Clarity   Dark Winds   Tom the Giant   There are no words for this   Elegy on 9-11-01   I’m Late Again   The Fall   Owl Lake   To My Father   A Gift of Owl Feathers   Taken Hostage   The Opening Door   This Illusion   It’s About Time   Passages   There is a Margin at Fortune Failed   On Both Sides of Light   The Old Drain   This East Wind   A Necklace of Galaxies   Evidence   Pandemic   The Cold Moon   The Last Act   You Don’t Belong Here   These Are Not My Goats   Outside of the Circle   The Circles Are Dry   Daggers in the Lion’s Mouth   These Poems   Here’s What’s Left   Old Words   These Are the Words   A Plague of Rats   Vultures in the Backyard after an Earthquake   Endgame I won’t keep checking you. I’ve come all this way without knights or rooks no pawns white or black, yet you want to stay in perpetual check. So it’s a draw then; stalemate. You will have to move past this to see the sundown road come open to an endless dawn, yet in defense there is still an another opening you could try. But the Queen’s gambit was never easy for you, or Caro-Kahn looking like the French Defense, still you always lost in the endgame. ©Will Patrick   Restless Sleep I dream of chasing raccoons at midnight with my lost cat, crawling through crevices too narrow even for moonbeams to reach. I listen to messages from another galaxy with ears of steel, as opossums hide from barking dogs in discarded stovepipes, dying there from starvation; I go looking for the smell. A siren in the darkness fractures the stillness. I dream I awaken, startled, sweating from the chase, fending off the advances of a sultry seductress, playing darts in a dark tavern with Einstein, waiting for a rainbow train to wherever it goes, feeling myself grow weary in the darkness, drinking moonshine until I’m finally asleep again  ©Will Patrick   Exempt me from this distance Walk with me my love through deeper green shadows in this deciduous forest we turn into through webs that stick us together tonight through small portages we cross over fallen oaks glacial boulders distant thunder sudden downpours exempt me from your distance today pace this with me even now step by step holding my hand tightly as we leap over it mark this path for our return maybe only with petals today or junipers scented in the wind make that breeze come to me to let me feel you here... there beyond our past... not left lingering this is deeper than any marriage, our vows are singularly etched in the wind, and we succumb to each other, lovers who will always be saturated by eternity ©Will Patrick   Epitaph for a Traveler Still Unknown You cannot be like Houseman’s friend And wear the globe you’ve left behind. Flotsam on gravity’s ocean, you drift forever free, Having cast aside forever, all earth and wind and sea. Your body won’t to earth return But to transcendent cosmic dust, Eaten not by brother worms, But by the energetic rust Of fundamental particles Spinning in frantic, Brownian race Beyond the reaches of perception, Into the kaleidoscopic space Where isolate atoms dance And to fusion do aspire, To set free at last in radiance, The scintillations of the soul, The luminescence of the heart. © Will Patrick   Partial Clarity I recover from the fog, citing a sinister slow recoil of time as the culprit for this toil. Aware only of rocky sand, I wash in a wavecrest mist on land, and capture torn lightening on the shadows of this tryst.  After winds come, I take the broom and make small piles on the walk past noon. The rain tree wood dries next to the fresh compost. I take my wand and water the moon. Yet today I seek a distant dusk, scraping rust from the wind ledge and gold from the edge; I trust the night as I begin.  We speak each word with utmost care, and from these empty jars we dare hide away novas on ancient stars.  But I seek your softer kiss tonight and await a silent voice for my aching heart to hold me close as our tears ignite these hills and frame the parts in splintered light. Still I look for you through this waxing moon. We seek the sun to warm this room behind a veil where we hide the sound, to leave behind the worlds we knew, you beside me, and me beside you.  © Will Patrick   Dark Winds we pray to an unknown god through shadows and uncertainty wearing masks made from dark winds that know no substance we see only through the damp fog of broken time lost in history's gauze barely awakening from the nightmare of Adam's loss we walk only on unpaved roads now rutted by broken wheels choked by dust rising from our ignorance fractured by our deeper faults we strain to find what gold we can dredge from this pagan swamp this fetid pile of rotting dung sifted only by our suspicion sickened only by our ignorance we look once more for the garden to bring our children there to drink to see where we once might have been but there are only ashes there today and eroding bones I think © Will Patrick   Tom the Giant when he  was small and lived in the prairie woods near old Sauk trail you carried him in his silent world to places only you knew how to tread especially in spring where the giant jack-in-the-pulpits were, where the creek could bend moonlight and the eroded roots of time had been  there was almost no way to understand him as he told you his stories trying to say it again and again and how he lived in your long shadow each year, and still to this day, as you followed him to other creeks and streams past hickory and black walnut and white oak winds, hearing only faint hints of that world today in his hesitant voice and dreams yet we come to celebrate that path you took him on, that look in his deep eyes that you too saw, a little brother I knew then to see now in the hands of the new staff shaping the carbon rich world to renew a dream you kindled in that kid from Crete who now lives in the holy clouds of your simple dream, and gives birth to wonders that never cease © Will Patrick   There are no words for this I sit on the porch for weeks watching sparrows clean their beaks on the silver fence claiming shrubs for nests sharing arrows and dust with others that fly as the ants come to feast on those who have died. These words are still dusty inside my pen drawing out this poem line by line, leaking out the end in a different flight, light by light, turn by turn, made into words I’ll later tear from the shreds that seem no longer firm. There are no words for this. No line that lasts long enough to stretch from here to there, or could continue if it would to only say what you want to hear or peel the fruit that I should eat. No, not the coyote stalking at night. Not the stray cat half eaten on the lawn, not the fur near the attack, not the wild parrots tearing at the seeds, not the lesson of the morning dawn, but only this to measure what I lack. ©Will Patrick - 11/03/11   Elegy on 9-11-01 The skies are silent today. The smoke still lingers in the east as death sinks beneath our souls. Welded to the molten steel of these fallen towers are dreams now gone, our children in tears, mothers lost, and our fathers burned beneath those tragic flames. The weeping will not stop, even now as the sirens bring more pain, This loss so great, the toll will remain uncounted for days. Evil seeks nothing but hatred to make sense of this cruelty done to innocents this dark day. The moaning goes on, yet we cannot reach them from here. I will not dance tonight, seeing this pyre of death at my feet. Bleak and dusty, the smell of loss still lingers Through my breath, choked with fallen dust. Even my tears will not dry into the cold night. There is only broken steel mixed with ancient blood and I cannot set it right with these pale words. The world is not the same today, on this black Tuesday where innocence was taken back with treachery and fears. ©Will Patrick – written on 9-11-01   I’m Late Again I’m late again; I must have taken too long to watch the sparrows in the yard taking their dust baths under the shade. I’m late again; spending too many days wandering, waiting astride silent stars and the shards of song, waking alone in my bed unmade. I’m late again; a dead battery I cannot charge, raking marks on the lawn from cat fur and coyote snarls, with no sparks to ignite the coils of that carcass. I’m late again; the corn tassels drying - waiting for the kernels to plump and ripen near the ant trails, spikes of pollen dusting the wind, lusting for ripeness in my August nights. ©Will Patrick  - August 2011   The Fall It’s just a lot more of this and that of late the weight of ancient stones on the cold banks where gold once flecked into crevices, where dry bones beneath old, old roads are now ground over runes too distant to care about for now. This is a design too deep to stay aware of those lost years disguised in dread in the days of our old genesis, the scrapings from those old fates of fear, outcast with Eve though so remiss, are now surmised by tears already shed. How reckless now this world’s become without your voice, and luckless, we rise aghast without despising that poor choice that sent you from that garden long ago, yet we still now surmise from your disgrace a newer race to now endure that Eden once forlorn © Will Patrick   Owl Lake Hiking with our dogs in early spring we trespass in innocence to this mythical place. Past the catfish reeds where we captured time and snapping turtles too large to hold alone. To vistas where our boyhood eyes exaggerated into cathedrals the white oak forests of our summer dreams. We come to this wondrous place like new pioneers on the old Sauk Trail hunting for arrowheads we were told were here. We listen for owls and watch for frogs in the marsh and select the flattest stones for our contest. Will Patrick ©   To My Father You went gently into that good night finally taking leave as a soldier home from war, your occupation given a final breath as lullabies dreamed you into the light. “This is terrible,” you said, almost drowning as you breathed waiting for some solace from this cruel misery. Finally resting, a bearded old man listening to angels, seeking the fresh air of your new life, tethering yourself to a tomorrow where cannons are silent and new roses bloom. I tell you stories in the darkness, of caves we explored, and rains that turned creeks into rivers, with dark, clear nights shaped by your once dark hair, now white like feathery stars clipped into a child’s memory to bring you closer as you might. You’re gone now beyond this grave, a new man draped in the mantle of eternity. Wiser now than any words or moons, driven through this storm you faced as the ages waited for your songs, asleep in the deep oceans of time, a royal line brought into our lives in this brief time. So swim in our tears as you tread your soul to the mansions you will one day know. You are welcomed well as we say our last good-byes. You taught us the wisdom of other sages, and now we learn again, the lessons that you lived, and sing to you the song of all the ages. ©Will Patrick – 4/07/03   A Gift of Owl Feathers There is an old owl that roosts in a large Aleppo pine in front of the house where I used to live. It eats roof rats and mice; perhaps baby birds if he can get them through the murder of crows I only hear stories of. Sixth graders dissect the pellets. Mostly rats I'm told. They can tell by the bones. My Polish mother finds two wing feathers and gives me one in exchange for flowers and Indian songs. I sing in the morning in a Jewish temple near the old fire road. Across town in another garden, I dig out old roots, and sharpen a father's shovel and adjust the chain on the saw while she watches. I stack wood and weed my garden paths, Spilling kindling beneath the whitefly hibiscus outside my bedroom window. I watch the beans flower in raised beds. The small tomatoes are still green. Together we sing hymns of praise to an unknown god, eating forbidden fruit in holy excess. Yet, I want to taste you into this ecstasy, longing to hold you closer in everlasting arms, and drink from your fountain until I drown, you, my mysterious lover, who will ever remain a familiar stranger, silent, close only in sleep, wings adrift on the soft darkness of night. ©Will Patrick   Taken Hostage Like a hostage in the night, I was forced down a dark corridor into a small alcove near the stairs that led down to the basement. Not wanting to create more chaos, I did as I was told, and grasped the splintered handrail down to the damp cellar. I felt through the air, like I was batting against gnats, to find the string that pulled the switch to the only bulb that could add some light here. An old hatchet was buried an inch deep into a stump that must have been used to chop kindling. A wood thrush had built a nest near the window well, and I could hear a frog croak somewhere close. The cobwebs were thick. The chipped concrete floor was littered with dried alphabet soup. The sump pump smelled like an old abandoned sewer. The paint on the windows was a dark olive-drab green. The window putty was cracked like the bottom of a dry mud lake after a flood. I kept turning back to the dim light shadows that the wind pushed against the weathered walls. There were traces of floods here. The moldy smell of old papers reminded me of Chicago. A rusty chain was clamped to an old metal rod. A wooden ammo box full of pulleys was shoved hard against the coal fireplace. Spiders ate horse flies. A hint of sweet pipe smoke filled the damp air. Books were littered everywhere. In a room just to the east, a goddess waited for me to come to her and fill her. A dog was barking across the alley. The wind kept howling. The bulb burned out in a quick flash and the only light left was a new-moon darkness. Suddenly, I felt her kiss me behind my neck with her soft lips. We slowly turned to an embrace. that lasted a hundred years. I never awoke. I knew it wasn't a dream. ©Will Patrick   The Opening Door Let me get the hinges loose first thing in the morning as you wave from the stoop meeting me there in this wellspring we weave from our well-worn worlds This is not the first time for us. I’m the one you left there waiting. You’re the one who could not say yes or no, and didn’t know why except that it just was not to be We are the secrets we choose to reveal to drink from a common cup to paste the past onto the ash field of our evening fires and morning embers to rekindle anew to keep it alive Turn me around and lighten this load dry my back where I can’t reach and add gravel to the road for traction where the wheels spin and we sense that this is only a fraction of what we could have there ©Will Patrick – April 30, 2011   This Illusion The walls are empty in this room. in another place, sheltered in a cave, I drifted into captivity, looking for you. But I could not reach you there -- it was too much for me to wait, endlessly, hour by hour. I scratched against the edges of time. So, alone, I closed the doors and found my own way. I hid myself behind that dream, soothing the moment, slipping on hope. I reached into my silk hat for some magical potion; disguised, I opened the page to bring it to a close, writing the story as I went: Without naming the characters, Without calling out in my sleep, Without moving inside another's fate, Without dancing with the dark, Without consuming that fruit, Without taking any route home, Without hinting at the plot, Without directing the play, Without forming the words, Without telling anyone else, Without seizing lost booty, Without waiting for time to begin, Without keeping secrets shelved, Without seeking hidden wrecks, Without finding all the forms, Without opening locked gates, Without wearing worn shoes, Without speaking of this, Without ending here. Without words. ©Will Patrick   It’s About Time It’s about time you saw through this, winking dimly, somehow circling the sun you orbit, this light just enough to reflect a thin glimpse, an inkling that you passed through here once and left this dust in your gravity’s wake. I’ll keep looking and looking so there will be more than one of us with our focus glanced beyond that echo of your stars, our worlds drawn in this simple space a chance to think away the years. No single dawn will bring your light here, no evening left to frame the night, but no midnight moons are enough for sight, still no winter drifts will make it right. This summer warms the world unknown To help us draw our shadows home. ©Will Patrick   Passages Now that the deeper folds are drawn and the winds and rain are pending the moon so near as light will know the passages never-ending The songs of lore prepare a loom to stitch and weave this pattern less glow in night to form this soon to leave this grain a’ scatter Look again and frame the dawn awakened by the ruin to meet the sea in waves of fear a prayer is lost unburdened I’ll wait as words define the years but speak to other tatters spending only dreams that died and reaping deeper matters ©Will Patrick – 3/19/11   There is a Margin at Fortune Failed There is a margin at fortune failed, Of longing left against darkness doomed, A stone circled below rustic runes, our lives Impaled on the edge of time. You spoke of a different destiny that winter, Solstice starved of song, an octave below A chord of chaos, harmony unhinged, Refraining from a senseless segue Leading to another chorus. Failing this, I assume no pretense. But even from a distant range, I extend The stanza past a point of no surrender. Awakening, yet reaching to touch A new tenderness, building a form That has no foundation, teaching a shaken Morning into sunrise to reach the daystar light, I retreat and lock the door to this room. Even if you do not care to enter this pact, Someday the last light will draw enough of hope, That even by the next moon, I’ll remain until The midnight of my passion has been emptied Of all those desperate dreams Of which we sometimes spoke. © Will Patrick   On Both Sides of Light I paint on both sides of light Lift the worlds to the night fallen From flight, astride the dreams I buried in spite, or so it seems I might I’ll waken earth before you sleep too much and Shake your head in grief for all your dead That loss will keep you in His touch Yet weep, yes weep for all is finally said There is a song in the darkness, marking A newer wrong, wrought in stark chains Straining for a voice, yet this choice is ours Pierced by that long glance, a new refrain We come to chasten your old ways, even now As I grow weary, as the days follow below And grow past your tears hastening the fear In this our wind we claim the moment near ©Will Patrick – February 2011   The Old Drain I’m leaving behind the old drain the world beneath the conduit I need for this refrain Corrosion from loss with each slow drip of rust I’ll wake each dawn to keep the motion brief The imminent form to measure the last decay, one by one as walls will beckon us to taste the dying dust Peer down the line to pattern the new world the spent ages of ebbing winds to awaken from the drone Less loss now, the marks align to tune the winnowed rain and wait with waning moons to see the light unfurled ©Will Patrick ~~ February 2011   This East Wind This east wind greens this ancient dance As if to change our circumstance From dust and fire reclaimed in ash, I seek your sun almost by chance. Our years grew tired, our life now past Those memories that never last, Yet solstice brings the balance here Eclipsing moons in fullness fast. We ached to hold each other near As breezes drifted, silent fear. But now these orbits fade through time Where gravity is lost in tears. Beckoned by this simple rhyme are silent voices, light sublime, No longer ours, I sleep in fire with distant galaxies to climb. A simple chord in deep desire Is our refrain in spirit's choir. The harmony we almost knew is left behind in funeral pyres. Yet through this end, we grow anew A different love, its fragrance true, To last beyond this ancient soil, Eternal hope in light renewed. ©Will Patrick   A Necklace of Galaxies The magnolias are not in flower now but the bees drone in the golden rain on this hill of October blooms. They seek no elusive nectar here. These places spin among many other closer stars. The waters warm the children. We brace for winter storms. Piers tremble in the tide, surfspun Sheltered in cautious symmetry, we align with distant planets in other conjunctions on distant shores. Victor talks about cobras. I sift the castings to remove the rocks. Occasionally I find a gem among them. I seek solace in the ancient sun. I sing of paradise. I wear a necklace of galaxies. I live in eternity here. © Will Patrick   Evidence I’m going to pretend that the whorls and ridges of your fingerprints on my heart didn’t leave impressions or was it more like a hammer pounding and pounding again and again to put out a fire finally you’re ready but even the last bit of hammering of pounding finally left a shadow that appeared only once the place was dusted for evidence and there it was as plain as day © Will Patrick   Pandemic We’re staying away from each other; we’re all outcasts now. You could be carrying something more than your bucket of water or hand-carved cane. I won’t ride in your elevator, just to be safe. The locals want something in exchange for this. The Zocalo is empty. No one buys the fruit. It rots and draws flies. Sartre said hell is other people. Now we are sure. ©Will Patrick   The Cold Moon This is the cold moon a mere silver sliver bow in the evening dusk Streaked by stardust and wounded By the rust of night Soon to grow so solstice full, A total eclipse to end this dying year Past Geminid streaks of Phaethon dust to heal the umbra shadow death so near This is what’s left, the Daughter of Pallas Spitting a mystery into the night The radiant bloom unfavored by light Pressed by time in the dark at last We weave these darts into future dreams Clothed by cloaks of midnight streams Weathered by time in orbits rare Adrift in space with time to spare. ©Will Patrick ~~ December 2010   The Last Act There’s just a cold dark stage now, drawn without form or shape, wordless, lifeless, curtains tattered and draped over the empty space that’s left behind and never seemed to matter A stark gray night, your life lost, days marked away, crossed out one by one, until you finally could not stay shouting out the cost you somehow never paid You exit the stage, dimmed of light, draining away your lines, still pretending to know them; now there’s nothing left, no memory to fill the dim storm tide arching to claim the steep winter shore Those of us left now can move without design away from the broken kliegs pretending to make day of night, the unclaimed clatter of all the cluttered props set aside for another play, unmasked to face a world bereft fear and spite ©Will Patrick -   You Don’t Belong Here You don’t belong here. Look at your eyes the way they stare unevenly so that each pebble or stone kicked up by the passing dustwinds of time leaves you in disguise. Even without that mask, your necklace of bones is all twisted and broken unwoven like a ragtime piano out of tune. No strings can attach you to the small world you live in and you tremble and jump at every rock-fall and cannonade echoing thorough the canyons driven alone surprised by the sunrise as the sound crashes over and over bouncing back to the east where the sun is no longer rising for you. ©Will Patrick –   These Are Not My Goats These are not my goats and these are not my dairy cows or my carob trees and this shadow is lost with frozen boats and the wind does not belong to me nor does this air or this dark water It’s not mine, not mine There is only a shallow heartbeat left for chance, a thread of waiting until there is a drum dance that leaps freely, wild and gray like this turning time today draining into this light perhaps only somewhat bright Leave me nothing I can keep except the breath of life and the breeze of hope warmed against the long decades we have spun into this dream It’s barely mine, barely mine drafted by the wars of old Take me over that cold river there show me the slow Pavane of eternity blended into the cloth of naked bones, a testament that no longer warms me, but shivers into a still uncertain winter, yet still aloft, and quivering into some newer world we wrought. ©Will Patrick -   Outside of the Circle You were never meant to see this and yet here it is perched on another world with nights of weeks filled with old stale weather, and two moons, both half full, one waning and one anew, each alone in a foreign sky, in a spiral sundown tethered to deep pale shadows of midnight runes Carry me there then, without looking away, don’t follow that path that crossed the canyon cliffs or the ancient shores resting to the east along the hills where the sea once lapped away the stone tide and left behind traces of wind along the fossil sand landing here now looking for you outside the circles of tears the wind grew, soaring and soaring over that promised land Tear my cowl from the longing light then take a good long look, move into it deeper and deeper as you wind your world around the worn strands banded in the sandstone traces of that far away spell, bring me to the morning stars of that distant hill, light the steps so we can go down one by one, and keep the distance far where we grew so when we leave, we can savor all we knew. ©Will Patrick   The Circles Are Dry the circles are dry. deer graze and startle in the sunset. wolves drag elk hooves to the frozen lawn, the night wind molds the evening sky. the low hills grunt above the furrowed land, adobe castles shadow fallen down sheds, an angus field near wetland flocks of cranes feeds in the frozen refuge swamp. now we arise, drumming in the light painting our lives away from there, weaving on new looms braced by canyon trusses in the night. she seizes my world and knits our lives into a new-spun dream to build our fire lifting the logs and stoking the coals to finally meet our true desire. a breccia gathered for another life. the ashes are shoveled into the pail we leave the strife that was our world and spread the limbs to feed this fire. ©Will Patrick - 11/14/10   Daggers in the Lion's Mouth In moonless darkness, we travel down Red Cloud Road past Chiriaco Summit, kicking up dust in the desert wilderness barely out of range of bombs and lasers. We set up camp in the dry Salt Creek wash z south of the Orocopia's, watching for sky daggers in the lion's mouth. The old railroad keeps us on the path, rails and mineshafts rusted in the dry desert caliche. Ursa Major rising to the north, starlight barely dimmed in the cool night, coyote-less, a jasper silence muting mudstone beneath the ancient creek. Orion watches, quiver full, flirting with the seven sisters as we team up for alphabet games, waiting for the promise of Leonids in the darkness, sipping our ale by dimming firelight. As darkness deepens past midnight, Leo spits his daggers across the sky, leaving brilliant wounds in the western night, slinging brilliance into the darkening calm. We orbit through Temple-Tuttle's wake, telling our stories to the tribe, remembering the gods of old who kept the fire, and brought us wisdom's gold with ancient rhymes, panned by the moon and sluiced by time. © Will Patrick 2001   These Poems These poems crumble in my hand like raw wind spoken too loudly for winter They wrinkle like sawn wood too wet for cutting by my rust-toothed tools They break crystal with wafer-soft decibels I can’t hear and yet I do ©Will Patrick   Here’s What’s Left I wanted it to be more than a dream with no creaky wooden stairs or wilting smoke among the gauze and haze that was left in my eyes, and yes, the broken mirror and torn moonlight still echo inside you. So here’s what’s left. The mist of a late rain creased along the edges of the dew, folded into neat pleats for the time that’s still left on the clock; I moved slowly from the window sill. There isn’t another speck left to sweep; just a box of old seeds unplanted, waiting there; maybe they were sorted alphabetically or sifted by the broom moving the air across the floor, back and forth, back and forth, with nothing left but this. ©Will Patrick – August 2009   Old Words This dried up in my head Waiting for some good reason To make it into something With a long, long life. But it’s not the season, not enough For that, it’s not enough to just be dead, To go about in the dark dreading light, With nothing to bring to bear but strife. My feet are not even in this. I try to make rhymes with steady beats Yet I trip over this again and again Keeping it all in sight, shaped by dread. There’s not much more to say, To feel my way through it, To strain as I fall with no release, Over and over, the line repeats. But this old, old world will never cease. There’s just these bones, whitening, Seared against the heat, bleached Old words beyond my reach. ®Will Patrick ~ December 2008   These Are the Words These are the words to this poem I’m writing, these words in this line appear as I wait for something… in time I’ll know the words that belong here, like these, yes, these would be fine here. Here are the words to this second stanza Here there are words like extravaganza and minuscule ~ sadly their not words like pretentious, or calamity or dreadful or badly. Let’s look for some words to fit in here; Maybe diameter or William Shakespeare would work if this poem was about circles or bards. It’s hard to find words that don’t break into shards or hemispheres. Let’s get back to square one. How is this going to end? What will I forget to include? What words go here at the end of this line? Am I done? ©Will Patrick ~~ June 2009   A Plague of Rats You won’t like this poem. It’s rusty and moldy, a pile of black rat tails twisted like thorns in a thicket of briars; a plague of pests nest in its stanzas. You read it looking for something edible, a meaning, a rhyme, something you can grasp that wont slip away, far, far from your made-up world. You look for it in a deep, empty cavern endlessly looking, calling down to the bottom of the pit... Are you there? Are you there? But there is no answer. Yet you keep hoping that I’ll write it your way, with pink pasties covering its nipples so that you won’t have to look at what life is really like. The bamboo fruit that falls twice a century keeps them breeding until they eat everything, all the rice, all the corn and leave you with nothing. ©Will Patrick ~ February 2009   Vultures in the Backyard after an Earthquake the phone lines were down ‘cause workers boring a gas line on the other side of the street cut through the cable the earthquake sounded like a gust of wind had come up and tried to move the house off its foundation of Indiana clay it was all the talk for awhile and reminded folks of the big one that rang the church bells in Boston back in 1812 only it wasn’t that big there were two large vultures drying their spread wings on the peak of the roof and a blue jay just sat there in the tree long enough for a photo in the meantime, it's time to get the Dahlia tubers out of hibernation and put them in some warm, moist soil to see which ones are going to sprout and which ones aren't ©Will Patrick ~~ April 2008     Website Home Page