Patti Masterman Poems

In dreams the dead are never done dying,
for they are never fully alive and never truly dead;
their chests still rise and fall imperceptibly,
movements not measurable, not synchronous
...

The blood of your sigh spoke through me,
The ink in the stain cried your name;
The longing of love soon immured me-
Immune to the loss or the gain.
...

The Whippoorwill has secrets, in the wood,
But none that he can keep;
Should I tell him a secret, if I could-
As he flits from tree to tree?
...

We bump space out of place with our surly atoms
But space remembers where we jostled it before;
Space fills in the wounds with newly becoming emptiness.
...

We used to travel miles just to get there,
On bumpy dirt and gravelled roads;
We'd cross the bump-bump bridge, now retired-
You knew you were on it, by the bumpety-bump rattling your teeth.
...

We are the animals with a human face;
Our ancestors far away now, but we are still young-
In the totality of things, a hairless breed of upstarts.
...

She lay eyes closed, on gleaming steel,
Summoning every ounce of will;
But was not enough to overcome the drugs
He'd given, with his fateful hug.
...

Silvered the woods, with infinity in the midst,
The flowers all drowsy and bees circling clover;
And mute the shore’s wind upon standing gravestones,
The minstrels of earth have other duties to attend.
...

The children know things that they cannot say,
Can't put into words, far beyond their age;
It's knowledge they have, but ought not know-
They may stay quiet, but their eyes say so.
...

People always talking, voices never quiet,
Talking over beauty, messing with delight,
Gossiping their lives away, caught up in the lies-
People talking years and years, until they finally die.
...