Patti Masterman Poems

I'm a word slut from the get-go:
Like giving word snobs the heave-ho
Read poems fast forward and slow-mo
Like word association free-flow
...

When you first wake up after sleeping
If you will hold very still,
You will realize that you are holding in your mouth
An exquisite glass form of a dream
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Words only are our weighty matters of the day;
we carry them about, small piles of stones
boulder-crushed and river-smoothed,
filled with our intention,
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When you laugh, I hear others laughter
And when you cry, there are others tears;
Though you are your own calm symphony, that's breaking
Close to the strange, sweet shore of ravaged years
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Life contains within itself a strange lack of perspicuity;
We are all strangers by default,
But become sworn enemies by contagion-
Like unknown varieties of some strange new weed,
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I cleverly crafted you into a hangman's noose,
And then I went and hung myself-
It's not your fault that I'm so clever;
Industrious even, at ruining my life
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We came together at the window,
Through which, we watched the days unfold;
So is this our ending; merely syntax
At the cusp, where winds grew cold?
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Lost in the belly of the beast,
We look up and see all those curving arches,
And we think then that we're in some majestic cathedral;
But the next sloping corridor takes us down to the mortuary,
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I die in bits and pieces, starts and stops;
A puzzle never to be completed;
The wrong answer, to no known question.
...