WRITING ON THE INSIDE OF MY EYELIDS
POEMS
Patrick loved to write poems. He liked to write poems some to people and some for himself. As his shadows lengthened and his struggles grew more difficult his poetry became the crucible for his pain.
This collection is divided into his earlier poems written before he retired from the workforce and his later poems written during his last five years.
EARLIER POEMS
The Beach
Take me somewhere that is sunshine and bright,
And silly and laughter,
And running in water,
With beach towels and sunscreen,
And floating and frisbees,
And flip flops that go slap, slap, slap, on your heels when you walk.
Take me to the past the funny long grass
The Coup de Grace
"I met someone," she said to me.
"You don't look so good."
I thought,
Go look at the worm in a bottle of tequila,
Go look at that worm,
Go see how it looks.
No prisoners taken between love and affection,
"No" can be rolled in a kiss,
In a gesture or moment,
That can be quite chilling,
That'll pin you immoveable, frozen.
"I'm fine," I said.
"I hope that they're nice."
But she inhaled my thoughts,
All so different.
A Little Something for Eleanor
This is so presumptuous
Wrap me all around your belly
But don't get the wrong idea
Well, maybe a little I'm coming on
Biology is exclusive
I've no way of getting closer
To the actual and the moment
The hidden presence of the spark
My father walked the girders
Of our surburban enclave
Tall stooped, in gathering darkness
Gently, his hat in hand
Presuming on affection
Accosting unfamiliar neighbors
With "Can I see the baby?"
Warming something by that spark
So here I am, a repetition
With a heritage of intrusion
A collection of compulsions
Bound to mysteries still dark
The wait before the greeting
Will be saved in your remembrance
I grieve for my lost presence
Wrap me closer to your spark
Feigned
This feigned face
I've worn these emotions
Ten thousand times over
All the dies have been cast
Sincerity's eroded
My honesty's abated
A face become a light bulb
Contrived - I am aghast
In her jolly jumper
Rebecca's a space explorer
A pirouette of the instant
Weightless without a past
Each moment a conception
Unique to all existence
Her face a barless conduit
To a place so young and vast
And in the moment of recognition
Between soft clay and stony impasse
A gift is given, so strange, so vital
Rekindling faith, it binds it fast.
Mountain
I wanna be a mountain,
A great big zit on the face of the planet,
Totally repulsive and ancient and angry,
Uncaring and unchanging and a blot on your horizon.
Purse
I will be a genuine purse of soft leather
With gold coins of true value nestled inside,
Partaking of raindrops that will wash me clean
and providing for the souls on whose bodies I ride.
Susie
It's a little more complex than that
Her ready recourse to aggression
Violence as a sort of caress
With its strange undertones of affection
The sudden burst strike of the instant
Holds her anger, assertion, and teasing
A physical telecommunications
Of a threshold beyond gentle seizing
At war needy love and independence
Where actions speak louder than words
Her life fluttering in gilded cages
Like the buffeting of terrified birds
Undaunted, inviolate, and trembling
Worlds watching with reservoir eyes
Space defined by the arcs of her dimensions
Toward a future before which she shies.
Privileged
I stared into the face of bliss,
Or nearly something like it.
It smiled, "Not the first time...
But the first very very best time,
Six days of wild abandoned,
Mindless kabouki sex."
Awed before this magic presence,
Face and irises wide wide open,
Sated and simply joyous,
Silently proclaimed.
Before such scope and grandeur,
Resolve and resolution crumpled,
Welcome, with this pleasant passage,
To the second age of innocence.
Circular Motion
Fragments of phrases and snatches of song,
Are wrapped 'round my memory,
Like strands of spaghetti,
Cling to the boiling bowl,
Or flung to the wall,
To hang incomplete,
Like a naked librarian,
Caught without trousers,
(His wayward nightmare),
Who wakes up enchanted,
With dreams of perfection,
Riding a breeze
Of rosehip and burritos,
Which land on a platter of Thanksgiving turkey,
To lie sodden and doggo,
Like a chow beneath the table,
Dreaming of rodents in fields of clover,
Where butterflies flitter,
Preening their excess,
Buoyed by beauty and insectoid muscle,
To shine in the sunlight and bounce on the moment,
Like fragments of phrases and snatches of song.
It took a while
On unsteady legs
I was swept away
By a force of nature.
A sooty ember
Burst aflame
Fanned by a force of nature
The earth moved
While the air stood still
To the whim of a force of nature
There was a cry
That brought another
To replenish the force of nature.
I am bound by my choice
And by my being
To the force of nature
My elemental
Both inside and out
Rejoices to the force of nature.
Writing for what?
Condemnatory dilettante,
Withered weird compulsion to engage,
A rigorous exacting science
No social profit,
No shining glories,
No filthy lucre for my pains.
But the silence of those voices,
And quiet inside, inside my brain.
MS Before and After
Vitality, energy, strength, and conviction,
In a here, there and everywhere
Explosion of myself.
Nothing done, and done so badly,
Wanting it all, wanting it all,
Time infinite and elastic
All the flowing vista’d horizons
Squalid salad days lived through,
Redeemed to the someday promise
Not age stolen,
(That strange embrace of life’s enhancement)
Nor the shrinking of soul or private capacities,
But random chance and absurd irony.
I thought I had so much time.
Summer ’93
Unremittant deluge, I’ve been drowned by your drizzle,
Excised in the excess of Pinatubo’s gift
No soulshine, no glowing where’s the glimmer inside?
I staggered and swaggered through the external core
While critics complained, my ignorance was bliss
Until ducts rose in the river of Pinatubo’s gifts
Every patter has sodden my vanquish inside
No choice and no denial, this suppression of the self
I would rewrap the paper and return for refund
This torrent of teardrops called Pinatubo’s gift.
If anyone ever likes this
Sorry, I’m no guru,
Just an apologetic apoplectic,
Aghast at the mental gymnastics,
Of the things I need to say.
So here I sit a-scribblin’.
Wronging what’s write and righting no wrongs,
Codifying my existence in alliterative prose,
And praying you’ll take no notice,
Of the things I need to say.
If you like this, well and good,
(I kind of like it, too)
But it’s resolute as marshmellow and stalwart as a flea,
So please no soaring adorations and immortal affections
For the style and the substance of the things I need to say.
Fourteen
I remember Fourteen
Perhaps you weren’t idealistic,
Just a little bit too wasted
To remember where you walked
I will not condemn you
We’ve strode that shore together
Drugs, like desire, are a heady addiction
One way of coping with the vertical chase
Goodbye Fourteen
What’s true and what isn’t
No longer matters
Your act is now fodder
For the concentric mills
And the uncomfortable half truths
And the need for understanding
Myself, I went there with them
We did not give you your fair due
Rest now fourteen
Who you were will be remembered
By a select and quiet few
For the rest; the fall and for what purpose
Dismiss the questions and misgivings
They need not trouble you
In the place between dawn and mourning
Is the large and final quiet
It is a gift
It is a blessing
It is the chases’s simple truth.
My Carapace is Wearing Thin
Stop battering me,
My carapace is wearing thin,
I am losing my defenses
Before your vehement emotions
I have just strength enough for Jeff
The maelstrom inside,
The grinding gears between,
My head and heart.
There is no more support here,
And no more condemnation,
Even love is gutting,
I need more energy.
Go fight the battles elsewhere,
Ephemeral conflict is depressing
I taste complex reflections
And the joy of touch.
Prayer
It was cold today
So cold
Not a subject for poem
It was cold today
So cold
Not a subject for a song
It was cold today
So cold
I didn’t want to be out.
It was cold today
So cold
I wanted to rest inside your arms
Curled with you beneath a blanket,
In that expanse of warm and self,
Limbs entangled all together,
Magic toys on a hidden shelf
But it was cold today
So cold
On account of the bad weather
It was cold today
So cold
On account of my bad clothes
It was cold today
So cold
On account of my bad feelings
It was cold today
So cold
Feed me from your mouth
But we were not together
Cramped in a space so far apart
It iced my skin and clawed my gristle
It chilled me to my heart.
And it was cold today
So cold
Dependent on another
It was cold today
So cold
Dependent on my self
It was cold today
So cold
So dependent on desire
It was cold today
So cold
Take me in and save this shell.
The Jury of my Peers
I feel like an ugly old troll
Fat and wretched, repulsive, depressing,
Driven to bitter sweet agonies,
From the wounds that I’m roughly caressing.
My psyche, esteem, and desire
Enshrined in sharp cruel broken glass
The cathedral of my own condemnation,
I, the penitent, returning to Mass.
In the bile of my own gall’s production,
Tormented, I’m determined to swim,
Raging to a far distant shoreline
Another god before to raise up my hymn.
Before you, the outward appearance,
Inside me, self hatred complete
Despising my self defined failure
And reveling in hell-fire’s heat.
Changing
Ptolomaic elements
combined in
alchemical manner
to create a change
within and without
ourselves from
the commonplace to gold.
LATER POEMS
Primadonna
(On hearing Anna Russel on CBC)
A Primadonna on a moose,
It was a sight astounding,
She hit high C, he hit his heels,
And off they went a-bounding.
Truth to tell I cannot say which was more afeared,
She of the vibrato and really loud voice,
Or he of the antlers and beard.
Requiem for a Radio Host
(on the death of Peter Gzowski)
It was the ridiculous glee over living,
The exploration of ideas and people and stuff,
Like a kid getting to open a treasure chest,
Getting to look at anything he wanted,
That moment of eyes wide-open,
Of all the way in and not coming back,
Until you've got it, until he'd got it,
With confidence that it was there,
Provided the right key was put in the lock,
Provided the right question was asked.
Litmus test
I am a litmus test,
The world's woes are scratched upon my parchment,
I protect my scabs with brazen utterances,
And calk a bleeding heart,
My own,
Move on, move on.
In this whirling backwater,
Jostled by eddies of information overload,
I am indulged to carp or create,
And scratch at the edifice of culture,
Stupidly,
Move on, move on.
There is nothing in my head at two in the afternoon,
Except bilgewater and abeyance,
Which takes us nowhere,
Peevish author's thwarted reader,
Be gone,
Move on, move on.
Report on Planet Three
(with apologies to Arthur C. Clarke)
A Martian scientist once wrote:
The atmosphere is poisoned with high concentrations of oxygen,
The lowlands are flooded and dried depending upon the pull of the moon,
Clouds blot the sun from view and pour water like tears on the horizon,
And, occasionally, "fire" erupts, searing everything in its path.
Sadly, the following conclusions must be drawn:
The environment will never support intelligent life,
And, it is doubtful in the extreme, that even life itself could exist.
On this tiny mottled marble,
Lost in the ocean dark of black,
Huddled for warmth against permafrost,
And overcome by everyday demands,
Our only shelter is the vainglory of love,
Like a rose for Ecclesiastes.
Will you be my valentine and help prove the neighbors wrong?
The Price of Admission
Writers write about things they’re scared of,
At least, according to author Margaret Atwood.
Well, she ought to know what she’s saying,
She’s written a lot of novels.
I’ve even read one or two of them myself.
I just wish she hadn’t ended her assertion with a preposition,
Because if there’s gonna be bad grammar in this poem
I want to be responsible for it myself.
That way, when the poetry police start shrieking,
Screaming that they always knew I was just an imposter,
I can say, I never told you any different;
I split infinitives with a little axe.
W. O. Mitchell wasn’t ever scared by the subjects of his stories,
He was a small town prairie humorist who made everybody laugh.
Unless he was actually afraid that someone would stop to
Accuse him of being small town stupid -
Woo, this is getting heavy,
Better watch out before I strain my back.
There’s a lot of things that scare me.
There’s a hole in the ozone layer,
There’s environmental degradation,
There’s everything American,
And now there’s SARS.
Because I know I can’t protect my children,
I can’t even romp around with my children,
If that SARS ever comes a’calling,
I’ll be the first one dead and gone.
Now I’m not afraid of dying,
Any fool born can do the other,
I have a different deep and darkest that I’m ashamed to drag into the light.
I always thought that life was just for living,
Maybe I should have climbed out and started pushing.
That way now I might have had more satisfaction,
Known I was of a little more use.
Because I want to be remembered
Beyond the memories of friends and family.
I want to be remembered even by
People who haven’t met me yet.
So, in this you can do me a little favor:
Should I happen to predecease you,
Hold this moment in your memory,
Think of this as a little poetic kiss goodbye.
There are things that hit me closer -
That I can’t protect my children,
That I can barely even play with my children,
Or wrap my arms around the woman that I love.
Now there’s SARS and I’m really worried.
Because I already have ‘an underlying medical condition’
- I’ve even had pneumonia - so if SARS comes a calling
I’ll be moving from dead slow to dead stop.
Cathedral
I sat staring at the ruins of an old burned-out Cathedral,
Thinking about the bursting of distant bombs,
Because fires make such pretty pictures,
With their whiz-bang and their crackle.
They’re always someone else’s problem,
Unless you stand too close.
The fire can shoot out and singe you,
Seeking oxygen and freedom,
In the moment of transformation
Making relics out of shrines.
What is left?
The need for salvation
And the hope of resurrection,
While the smoke of human sacrifice
Still lingers in the air.
But the aftermath is often wanting,
Needing more than just intentions.
The final text of misadventure is writ
on human soul.
The consequence of insufficient is the choice
of alteration.
Tearing down burnt wood and garbage,
All scooped up and hauled away,
A coat of paint for brick and mortar,
A monument created
Of striking grace and beauty:
To the devotions of past souls.
Chez nous
Tuesday night was tofu
Now it’s chicken, maybe stewed.
An angel fed me supper
She left feathers in my food.
You looked so cute, you wiped my bum
- I’m sorry if I got crude.
Us old dudes think we still got stuff:
Actually we’re just lewd.
Wednesday morning controversy – John’s dentures lost;
Better find’em quick,
Janitor gets’em they’ll be tossed.
Parrot at my lunchtime table
Squeaks real loud if she gets bossed.
Nurse, she keeps her bottle hidden
- Man, I sure wish I was sauced.
Thursday afternoon it’s Bingo,
The moon I’ve just gone over.
The fun is never ending with the numbers called by Grover,
Friday night it’s Bingo and people all in clover,
‘cause everyone knows the words to the White Cliffs of Dover.
But it’s all fun and games here in the land I call Chez Nous.
There’s a cold room in the basement and dark drawers without a view.
My complaints are miniscule, ancient words that ring too true.
There was vision and strolling, little things that I once knew.
Their aging eyes all pleading, screaming, ‘What am I supposed to do?’
I don’t know,
I’m just a little animal without choices, a resident in this - the human zoo.
I Didn’t Know
I didn’t know I needed beauty,
till I felt its absence in my life
Didn’t know it was my cradle,
till my ropes were sawed by that sharp knife
Didn’t know I’d hit rock bottom,
till I hit those rocks with my head
Didn’t know that I was damaged,
till I felt those wounds and knew they’d bled.
There is nothing in my head at two in the afternoon
Except bilge water and abeyance,
Which takes us nowhere.
Peevish author’s thwarted reader,
Be gone,
Move on, move on.
Memories
Another corpse is buried in my bones
Another ghost to haunt my memories,
To shamble through the misty shadows
Behind the tombstones of my much cemeteried past.
They are not what they once were
Nor were they that then.
They’ve been gloried by the dusts of remembrance,
Faded wanderers in a fantasy might-have-been.
Moted sunbeams on cobwebbed horizons
Shroud the harsh bright into memories surreal,
Entrap images of delicate insubstance,
And protect me from the damage I feel.
Words for Time
Time weighs heavy on my hands.
Upon my arms,
Upon my shoulders.
It leans upon my forehead,
Carving furrows in my brow.
I wish I’d used it to more constructive purpose,
But these words keep interfering.
I would that they were better,
But they will have to do.
With Thanks to Charles Taylor
No path blazed up this strange ascension,
Each of us finds a private route alone.
Would there was a map of more than
word of mouth
That might gently open weakened eyes
to see.
There isn’t.
Instead we follow Alice’s beckoning finger
And tumble down to Wonderland together,
Hoping to take up Residence and
Refuge in Plato’s Cave of Allegory,
Straining to discover that we are more
Than mere shadows of what once we were,
Clawing upward to the daylight of that Good Life
- Fat chance.
Once there, sunlight exposes our
stigmata to the scrutiny of public sympathy.
Embarrassing to both the purveyor and the purveyed.
Caught in a geography of rigorous no options
Some slide into a private sinkhole of miserable despair.
Such waste.
Let us make a space where justice
Is intermingled with mercy, where
Every answer deserves a question,
Diversity cohabiting with respect.
Every answer deserves a question
Until everyone gets to climb that lonely
Hill together.
So that Hamlet’s plaintive cry
Is answered in resounding triumph:
To be – Hell, Yes!
Anyway, let’s hope.
(Note: Charles Taylor is the name of an African dictator and Charles Taylor is the name of a very profound Canadian moral philosopher.)
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