Tag Archives: poems

W E Patterson's avatar

like I need a hole in the head

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“Copy editor, must work nights”

That’s not the job for me,
so I tell the
lady at the
New Jersey agency
that I have the flu
and I can’t call
her back until
next week

I am not worried…I have
687 dollars in my
checking account
and at least
a dozen
unread poetry
books on the
wicker table by
the back door
and I quit smoking
last week…

…there’s a case of
unopened port wine
in the basement,

…and the lawnmower is torn apart
on the workbench
in the garage

So
I need night work like I need another
business trip to Seattle
…like I need another meeting with
that senior manager from
San Jose who drives
the Audi and
smokes clove cigarettes,

I need night work
like I need that waitress
at Wranglers’ Inn
in Missoula
with her attitude
about “last call customers”
…
I need night work
like I need light yard work

W E Patterson's avatar

sweet sanity

. Poetry . , , , , . 3 Comments

…remember Sanity,
she was a cheap date

you left her on the
dining room table
at your aunt Loraine’s place
in Grand Rapids in ‘73,
(the summer you turned 19…)

…you abandoned her like a
bad tuna fish sandwich
wrapped in waxed paper,
at a bus depot in Moline
two years after that…

… you gave her away
to that girl with the wayward smile
when you had 57 bucks of
credit left
on your visa card…

…you welcomed her home
in ‘83 and again in ‘84 but then
you decided that there weren’t enough
wasps circling the moon…
…not enough flies landing on
the butter dish…
…not enough hounds barking…
…not enough moths playing the violin…

…you threw Sweet Sanity in the face
of that micromanager
that you worked for on The Street
in 1985 – Mr Plaid with the
tinted glasses…

…you prepared for meetings
…you called in the gamblers
dismissed the whores

you called the guys in the West Coast Office

when all bets were off…

…you lost at the slots
you drank at the bar
you bought the house
in Mt. Pocono…

…you traded the shotgun
for three cords of wood…

…you drank cheap vodka
in a smoky glass
and you sat in
poets’ bars…
…you stood up for
a cause that
won’t exist for
another
one hundred years

Sanity, don’t bet on her
she’s a dangerous ex-wife
she runs from you
then
she ruins you,
but you only know for sure
that she’s
left town for good
when you sit
upright in bed at
3am when the
dogs howl and
the wind is evil
and north has become
south and
the moon is in bed

AND

sunrise isn’t for
at least 3 and a half more
hours

W E Patterson's avatar

last day

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reel them in fast
before they sink
don’t let the
bobber go under
too long before
you yank the line
don’t tell them
that you have
that job nailed
in K.C. and don’t
let them know
that you quit
six weeks ago
don’t let them know
that the last time
you called Corporate
was last july
don’t talk to the
guy in the elevator
who says he delivers
the best pastrami on rye
don’t make eye contact
with the girl named
Natalie at the desk
who says she
has your keys to
your locker at the bus station
don’t walk downtown
without buying a
lottery ticket
OR
without placing a bet
on a fast dog
at the Sioux City track
just
don’t bet on any
of it working out

W E Patterson's avatar

The Axe man

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the Axe man flies business class
from the West coast
and he takes his humble place
in the little room off the kitchen
at 8AM on Monday morning

He wears a paisley tie
right out of nineteen seventy five

but he carries himself with
grace through the
morning coffee clatter

…all eyes are on the
guy from
the Bay Area
nobody speaks to him
nobody asks how his
wife enjoys life in
Burlingame or if he
has two kids
or three
or if he drives a Volvo
or a Land Cruiser

…nobody gives
a solitary crap about
UCLA…

…you don’t care that much
about the Axe man because
of the numbers game
and you know it’s
just a game
for the ball-busting
number crunchers

…the Axe man takes it all
in stride – he has figures
on his side
temperamental figures
ephemeral figures
workable figures
undeniable facts

you want to ask the
Axe man if he takes his
work home with him
if his wife ever tosses
a dinner plate in his
direction, or if
he has a sister
incarcerated somewhere

of if he has a brother
who drank too much

most of all,
you want to ask him
why he hasn’t bought
a new necktie
in this century
but you don’t

…you have
to pack.

W E Patterson's avatar

The dilemma

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life is habit,
most of it…

some bad
some good
it’s
like that girl
Louisa that you
hung with
when you were
right out of
high school
and filled
with habit-forming bravado

when you were

dreaming about,
flying airplanes
and moving to
Honduras.
And you spent
hours discussing
your future plans
with her over
Grain Belt beer…

She was habit.
When she left
town
saying that she
had no time
for Honduras
and was scared
as shit of flying,
you continued
with
the next
habit…
…the Chesterfields
and chilled white wine…

those two saw you through
mid-town and on
into the outer-boroughs
until you found yourself
clinging to a capsized
dingy one night
in the center of the Hudson River

life is habit,
most of it
some bad
some good

you spend a lot of life
at the Publix
in the produce aisle
inspecting romaine lettuce and
limes,
you spend a lot of life
at the convenience store
weekday mornings
at 5:45AM
pouring black coffee into
a scalding
paper cup…

habits all,

and now
you’re pissed off that your
middle finger is
burned and can’t be used
for at least a week
and you think that you will be
doing this

every day… from now
until
the next century
and you can’t imagine
it any other way
…that is habit

you’re an old
wrangler herding
cows
you’re
an old surfer
looking for a
50 foot wave
you’re an old
farmer waiting
for a summer rain
you’re an old poet
listening to
the dogs snore
under the table
as Chopin plays
on the stereo
as you
stare at a
page on your
yellowing legal pad
waiting for
a scene
so you can
give it life

it’s habit
SO

you
think that you will
be doing this until
the day
that you die

and

you probably will
because
there’s no
way
out

W E Patterson's avatar

under my thumb

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the poem that almost ate
my brain
began as a flashing
cursor on my laptop computer
at 8 pm one night,
long after the
Government office
where I used to work,
in Washington, DC closed
for the day, and a poem

…one that I had thought about
for at least ten hours
took residence under,
my left thumb

THAT

worthless left thumb

THAT

good for shit left thumb
the thumb that has no
meaning for a right-handed
senior technical writer
the thumb that sits on
its lazy laurels all day
while the other 8 fingers
and 1 thumb (the right one) do
all of the work

that left thumb couldn’t even hitch
a ride out of Shawnee Mission,
Kansas in 1977, when sister
told you that you’d worn out your welcome

(yeah, Rightie did all the,

serious
highway 169 work didn’t it …but
you got you a ride anyway, with those Mormons

headed for Topeka)

left thumb thinks
it’s entitled to special
treatment
because it’s connected to your left hand
damned appendage hasn’t done a decent
day’s work in its life.

b.s. I call it
let a finger do a fingers worth of work
like everyone else
call in your markers
pay a finger for a finger
forget the hand
anything less is —
…hand-socialisim

just

make sure that you,
open the hood
jot it down carefully, then
add poetic antifreeze
before you
pull out that poem
that is eating your brain

after that
let
the chips fall where they may
and
when it’s done
nobody cares whether
your left thumb had
a hand
in it or not

W E Patterson's avatar

the Florida panther

. Poetry . , , , , , . 2 Comments

there is a panther lurking
around the shed behind
my house
I saw him last night
his

hungry…killer eyes
glowing in the
Everglades night
like twin lightning fires

in the sawgrass

I hadn’t spotted one since
’08, but there he was
a big, two hundred pound male

…a panther lurking,
waiting for his chance
to move with utmost
grace toward unsuspecting prey
he wants to
…take his name off of the
Endangered Species list
…so he can say to hell with
the environmentalists
and the tinhorn developers
and their lapdog politicians…
AND
when they are gone
& their carcasses picked to the bone
he’ll call everyone he knows
in North Jersey
and in Brooklyn and in Staten Island
and in Philadelphia
and in Grosse Pointe
and he’ll even call
his cousin Rachel,
that poor lost soul who
hangs her palm frond hat in
Panama City and he’ll
announce that
Panther Valley South is alive
and well — and open for business
and he’ll
charge them just two and a half a grand
on their Visa card
for the down payment
SO
don’t dismiss the experience
lightly
…don’t wait for the 18-hole course
to open sometime in the
spring (someday)
…well maybe, wait for it
but don’t plan for it…

you thought that fucking panther
was endangered
didn’t you…
but he lives

JUST

don’t bother to look for him
among the gators
and the snakes –
get out your binos and look for him just before sunset
that’s when he feeds

…look fast and you’ll spot him,
coming out of the grey, twilight mist,
steaking up I75 North, then
pausing momentarily
at the Alligator Alley
toll plaza, before pointing
his leased BMW west
into the
setting sun
toward
Naples

W E Patterson's avatar

The 4th of July

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a couple of years ago
I spotted the 4th of July sitting
on the beach
talking to Memorial Day
both of them,
about fifty yards south
of the Pompano pier
The 4th looking worse for the
light of day
his feet propped up on a cooler
packed with Ice House beer

looking bleary at ten am…

he’d had a long night
and
… I’m thinking he’s looking
a little thick in the thighs
long in the tooth
the years are taking
a toll

…but Memorial D., after all these decades
…he’s still
trim as a race track dog
he’s
sipping an orange soda

…he’s sober as a hanging judge
sober as a Baptist deacon on Sunday morning

Have you been to The Wall lately?
Memorial D. asks The 4th,
4th shakes his head and says he ought to get there
Sometime before end of summer
but he says he’s been busy
with the
Big Holiday
he reminds Memorial D. – there are
ribs and chicken wings
to slather on the grill
and he says that he has
a couple of
surplus
M-80s to toss into his neighbor’s pool
later on — after the sun goes down
“they’re simulated artillery you know
those M-80s
so it’s almost a Military Maneuver
you gotta love pyrotechnics”
The 4th coughs,
lights a smoke

How about you? he asks Memorial D.
You get to The Wall much these days?

I’m all over that place, says Memorial D.
I’ve read every name…I know them all

Every one?

Yeah, every one.
I know them all in Aisne-Marne too

and in Meuse-Argonne

and Ardennes, Belgium

and in Oise-Aisne

and in Manila

and in Gettysburg

and Mexico City

and dozens of others

The 4th pauses
shifts in his beach chair
squints into the late morning sun
(…he has a glass eye
and sometimes it turns inward
and
it wobbles in its
socket when he’s had a few – left to right
right to left)

…you get around don’t you? he says
to Memorial D.

Memorial D. answers slowly
Cautiously
because
it’s the 4th of July

W E Patterson's avatar

corporate ladder

. Uncategorized . , , , , . 2 Comments

“don’t worry about your place
on the corporate ladder,
there’s always some fucker
down there, two rungs below
…rubbing two sticks together
– trying to start the fire
to burn you down”

or so says Gus, the new bartender
at the Los Lobos Bar,
but what does he know (I tell myself)
damned bartenders
and their sage words,
all of ‘em
trying to sound like they
know things the rest of us don’t
trying to act like they
have done it all about two
weeks before the rest of us

…they think they’re a sounding board
for the desperate
and they think that we have no place
left to go

Gus asks if I want one more
before he gets busy
with the lunch crowd
but I wave him off
saying I have to get
back to
the office.

W E Patterson's avatar

wine glass in winter

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there’s a wine glass
on the table
on the back porch

by the swing
beside the flour bin
beside the feed sacks
that the cats sleep on

Sadie left it

one afternoon
last fall
when she stopped by
to drink
port wine
with me
and to tell me that she was
quitting drinking
in 72 hours
and to let me know that
she’d decided to forget
“the regimen”
and she was going to tell
the doctors in Philly
that she was going to
move on with her
new life
…in Scottsdale

and
when she left
that day
..she didn’t
rub the tummy
of the Buddha
that sits on the shelf
by
the back steps
and she didn’t
pick up
Lancelot and kiss him
behind the ears
or toss her hair
over her left
shoulder
or remind me to pay
my phone bill…
…I knew she was
gone, so I
left the wine glass

…on the table

where it collects
winter light
at half past three
in the afternoon.

next month
I’ll bring it in
and wash it
and put it away
but for now it is too
cold for me
to leave
the kitchen
and the
cats

So, today
I’ll think of
Sadie in her
sundress
drinking
saying that
if she had another year
she’d
go out to Michigan
and look up her old man
and her daughter
but at the present time
…
she didn’t think she had it
in her