Patti Masterman Poems

In the midst of all your dreams
I tiptoe through your heart
While the stars about us gleam
I put to work my art
...

Music kisses your naked soul,
Speaks the same language
Without the hole.
...

My lover's gone to sail the sea;
The frothy waves like millwheels turn-
Blow wind, blow him back to me.
...

He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon,
From drops of peridot scattered at sea,
Hidden beneath a moon-shadowed ruin.
...

I had two rats, to fill my days
Through spines of books and bed clothes
They chewed their lazy way
And when they saw you, froze
...

I looked through eyes, were never cruel;
O, but their looking long was naught!
Though people may have thought me fool,
I looked through eyes, were never cruel
...

We drove by the cemetery in a different part of town
Searching for another restaurant where we didn't really want to go
And suddenly I remembered you were there; that is, your clam shell was there
Carefully wrapped and placed underground, somewhere among the thousands
...

Mother died in the bed in the small, single hospital room
Beside one tall window which revealed
More concrete windowless walls, opposite an asphalt ravine
Where sometimes perhaps, ambulances
...

Proximity-
My knee touches yours under the table;
Adults we are, a knee excites no molecules
In our experienced repertoires.
...

Well now I'd sell my soul for a pound
Of words: all picked clean of ambiguity;
Rocks and detritus removed,
Preselected for clarity of meaning
...