Welcome to Your Long Dying

Welcome, to your long dying-
Unsaid words, empty gestures
The substance you always searched for
Was never real, and you discover
We will all be dying alone
Of grief, of the faux, negligible existence
Everything taken away at the end
Dark holocaust swallow us whole
And strangle the last sound we make
Welcome, to nights of tremulous tears
Inside the winding cloth you've made:
The teeming brain's multiforme emotions
The day you were born, an empty place was created also
You were never too rare or special to die
The train whistle announces you've been left behind
To contemplate your impersonal end
We are clothed of the same dust
All arrows point in the same direction
Both the high and low road are a mobius strip
Eternal life, but a dream of dimensional matter

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poem by Patti Masterman
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Love's the Only Thing Worth Dying for

Love's the only thing worth dying for, bleeding for:
From out of the whole world's total comings and goings,
The only commerce can absolve finally the emptiness
All the saints knew this: that to truly live abundantly
One must give oneself over to that slow, flameless burn
Renew the undying heart of love; encompassing holocaust
Then the purified heart becomes a hidden sun
With the fearful power suns contain, secretly within
Which the eternal mind of creation can combust;
Exhaust, the continuous machination of it's universes
Whose very cores ignite, when that unmanifest potential;
Of Love becomes too great, too strong to bear
To be resisted for one more instant out of time
The force borne toward and away from love, unbalanced
Creation's exigency bursts forth into being, out of fullness,
From a single dying exhalation of breath, either side of the fulcrum
Lit by the single fuse of one who once died, blossoming into love.

poem by Patti Masterman
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Always Another Sunday

There is always another Sunday,
From where do Sundays come from?
Do they sell them next to strike-anywhere matches,
Can you buy a three-pack and get one free
To make a perfect month, of Sundays?

Sunday afternoon might find you sitting at table
With some people you don't know too well,
Trying to make polite conversation
While slicing up some shoe-leathery beef roast,
That has always been the hallmark of the day.

Is it the first day of the week
Or effectively, the last?
How can the week start without any work?
Because it seems to make a better ending, instead.

Will we ever run out of Sundays?
Not unless we run out of football, baseball
Basketball and soccer first; it seems evident

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poem by Patti Masterman
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Words of a Freeman

Let the poetry of others repose in majestic halls:
My poems are filler for paper shredders,
For packing in shipping boxes,
And backing for flypaper sticky strips;
To wipe the muddy soles of shoes
That have seen too much of springtime
In the garden.

Others poetry fills the airwaves, and sits between the covers of books;
My poetry is for grocery lists,
And sudden messages you need to scribble while on the telephone,
And maps to undiscovered geneological treasures
That are only a township away-
To trace the faces of cool tombstones
Under a mid-day sun.

You won't find my poetry near any other kind of list
That doesn't say get bleach, dog food, and toilet paper.
Still, my poetry is from a well lettered life-
I have written all my heartbeats, and most of my sighs

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poem by Patti Masterman
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An Overcast Day in June

Speeding along the highway
There's suddenly a bright
Explosion; unruly color
That calls to you from the passing blur:
The unexpected purple house
It's almost gone before you see it-
As if a river of lavender
Once flowed down that street
Left it's mark only on certain
Vulnerable things
One house coated on all sides
The house next to it seeming to sport
Only a single lavender door
I'm certain that if I could follow it closely
Look for the tell-tale lavender shoe tracks
I would note the lavender trace
Gradually wear thinner, house by house
Dwindle to a trellis or a shutter
Until it was just a slight stain
On a solitary front porch-

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poem by Patti Masterman
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The light's in my head - Villanelle

There's a light in the sickroom that never goes dead,
Though daylight is dimming, through the still open curtain-
But the light's in my head; the light's in my head!

He lies in a stupor, but calls out from his bed;
And he never complains, but you fear that he's hurting-
There's a light in the sickroom that never goes dead.

She doesn't sleep nights, but sleeps daytimes instead;
Her breathing's still even, but death's near for certain-
But the light's in my head; the light's in my head!

First they said stroke, and then heart attack- dread!
With the new diagnosis, with death he is flirting-
There's a light in the sickroom that never goes dead.

There's cancer and heart disease, so lightly we tread;
It's bad news for sure- her aneurysm bursting! -
But the light's in my head; the light's in my head!

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poem by Patti Masterman
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To Preserve Something, Just Cover It Up in Dust and Cobwebs

The house had a secret life concealed within
Though externally the surface was drab and plain,
Nothing to draw attention at all-
Dusty and dank, with every sort of stain.

But at a certain season and hour of darkness
Punctuated with rays of random moon:
The inner soul of the place came apparent
The greyness fell away and took with it the gloom.

Then the walls would blaze with a turquoise hue,
The kitchen had a lively checkerboard tile.
On the bathroom walls in the muted blue sea
The red fish and mermaids began to smile.

The scalloped mantle was glossy and white,
The wood floors shone to refect the rays,
All the crystal glass knobs and findings
Collected, throughout the long, polished days.

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poem by Patti Masterman
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Whatever Makes You Mine

On a hill by a church
One warm summer day
I saw a man with a child living,
In his eyes; but he couldn't say

What he saw in the world,
What he wanted to claim;
He couldn't say the truth,
Could never say my name.

My chest is your grimoire,
My tears are your wine;
Go ahead, kill the animal
If it makes you more mine.

He wanted to own me,
To gather me close;
Wanted every sunrise thing,
But could never make that choice.

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poem by Patti Masterman
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Another One

There he is on the television,
Another killer:
Small, shifty close-set eyes,
Low forehead, though they say
That has no bearing on intelligence.

Why they bring them to us,
Day after day, like beaming mothers
Offering up their offspring for compliments?
This, the nativity from our country,
This, from our culture, our debasements..

The harbinger eyes of death,
Of another's pitiful death;
But what does that mean to us?
Still, do not look too closely
Or the knife may stab you too-

Be calm and indistinct, instead
Don't return his gaze,

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poem by Patti Masterman
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A Story of Two Soldiers

A story of a soldier, with a heart
Who came upon a dead Japanese soldier
With a letter sticking out his pocket, in the war
This soldier took the letter, obviously
The important treasure of the dead one.
He framed it and stored it;
Another man's most prized possessions,
Of a child's colored picture, and a baby's photo.

Years later, and someone notices
The framed paper, and suggests
Trying to track down the original family
And though it seems impossible:
The impossible is accomplished,
Through another soldier's care, though he was
A stranger to the poor dead soldier
He must have felt their close brotherhood,
As two soldiers engaged in a difficult war.

And there is a woman now,

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poem by Patti Masterman
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