Patti Masterman Poems

He's always in there
Flying his lonely solo's around the four walls
Practicing advanced aeronautical maneuvers
While veering slightly off course, to miss the vanity,
...

Holy, holy, holy:
The clothes agitate in warm baths,
Precise increments of suspension.
Ineloquent soaps do the heavy lifting
...

Some only love cause they need a victim
And it's not really love; more to torture a fellow:
And a martyr, willing to sell out for love-
Often gets much more than was bargained for.
...

Fine ceramics now hide your gaze;
Where is the face that I knew so well,
When as children, our spirits dwelled together?
...

Only the sound of music
Echoes from far away;
Happily ever the turning heart
Is cleft, from its broken quay.
...

Bloom where born, though candles light the trees,
Though fire consume the census, in all the least of these.
Bloom where born, the wick grows black with soot,
The fire is climbing higher; some mischief is afoot.
...

In the heat, old smells rise up to assault again.
In the old house, I could smell old wallpaper
Buried under layers of yellowed paint,
Old wood floors, the varnish and glue mingling
...

Life gives us bouquets of light,
Arranged in lovely visions,
That everyone with eyes to see
Receives like luminous kisses.
...

A dour witch casts a wave over girls lying on beach towels
But the girls are not real they are more like scarecrows
As immaterial as seaweed feels, and more salty than tears,
And the witch is more like a surly ocean
...

They herded them in the cellar,
like dumb animals to the slaughter,
at the bottom of the stairs,
and into the lowest level of that house,
...