Patrick Dennis Poems

Did I ask for this? I who, before we met,
scratched the surface and sowed the weeds of my time.
What charms, what magic, what enchantment did you have?
You with the tang of fruit - sweet-half-ripe -
...

What wild triumph of nerve and bone is this!
To drag by your hind foot my steel trap
and the heavy anchor log. And, so encumbered,
in your last frenzy of escape to scale
...

Freedom is the soul's right to know itself.
Freedom is the soul's right to know beauty.
Freedom is the soul's right to slavery
in the Kingdom of Truth.
...

Christ at last was dumb
after the forsaking cry.
Who am I then to make noises
or score words on a blank page?
...

Words, transcending themselves,
may not sound well. Being torn and pierced for meaning
they cry their abandonment into the black hole of silence.
...

The fondling soft ears of a dog,
the hand slap on the sweat-lathered neck of my horse
or my daughter's clasp round my neck
wire my heart
...

I sing at the death of poetry and song's silence;
at the flattening-out of the seas,
and the pure light of the gathered-in colours;
at the blank of the dimming sun
...

There's a nerve twitch between thought and deed:
and between what is and what is to become.
...

Oh, give over, you naysayers,
you who war words point blank.

The confluence of words
...

Failure is the spur
that smarts the hero's flanks
and drives him on
to spirit: his second wind.
...