Patti Masterman Poems

The ground is from the dead,
From their bodies; it's their bed.
The fragments of the crust
On our soles, mix with their dust.
...

I dreamed one night about the newspaper
How it had become pages and pages
Showing only people's altars;
Their shrines, pictures of their gardens..
...

Let me be still, let all things close
Their weary eyes, and dream awhile.
Let us dream, let us float free
Along soft-flowing mountain streams.
...

I know I was a child once,
Long ago, when love was just a cry
Away; and why I had to grow
And stretch my wings, just so
...

We imagine that death leaves no victors,
That all the spoils stay with the kill;
The voices hollowed out, by the echoes,
The blood running in hapless spills.
...

You've got to have all the love and desire,
all the angst and craving, beat out of you.

You've got to have all the shyness and dreams,
...

Get the warm fire roaring
And bring all the blankets too;
Shivering's too boring
And the Winter makes me blue.
...

Never a love, did his heart contain,
Never; whether sunny or grey-
Never sang one, of his own refrain;
Not in the night, or day.
...

The past is a finer place to live,
There are miracles, fit to give
A martyr goose-flesh,
A pope a stroke;
...

She dreamed of Daisies in the nights
After crying herself to sleep again,
Wondering why Daddy didn't love her
And how many daddy's did most girls have;
...