Patti Masterman Poems

Gods and clowns only do our bidding;
One we fear, and at one we laugh;
God hears our secrets, to judge us our errors;
Clowns keep no secrets, and thus yield no wrath.
...

Somehow a single word can miss things
He drank all the water from my aquarium
Said a conscience was too much weight to carry
He said my mirrors were full of dark water
...

My soul is not poetry inside of it
and it is nothing pretty;
My insides are dead, rotting rhododendrons
beside a rusting pitch-fork
...

Regret sings loudest, at the end of days
When we've learned all the stony declensions of sad
Grown new lives; but discarded grown-up ways
And can someone tell us what we just saw in that play
...

I can't read your words anymore
because every time I read them,
it spears me all over again
...

Somebody dies in the night
Somebody falls out of favor
Someone divorces the light
Someone cries now, and not later
...

You're far away;
Too far to say
'I miss you more'
Each endless day;
...

Words are ambivalent tools
They are a driverless car
Until taken control of
Nobody can drive to the same destination twice
...

Shoes walk shuddering through skylights
Whose soles trip thinly over tinpan words
Trussed and tucked into frayed tangled laces.
...

I like how the sanitary graveyard,
Hides the fertile rot beneath;
Above though it be pleasant, quiet-
What is that strange brown peat?
...