Patti Masterman Poems

It seems the English got it all backward:
Short teas, and long narrative poems
Until your teeth fell back into your skull
And the sun dipped deep into the Thames.
...

A whistle through my heart
Another dawn comes calling
The rosy clouds all shimmer
Outside my room.
...

In hope, I had a poet friend
To tell my dreams about
And find in him the words I missed
In other talk, without
...

I'm torturing my words now
They are the woeful ineptness
That's kept me apart from you:
A needle filled with fake pain.
...

I hear knocking at the door
Maybe a visitor? I run, look out the front window-
And then they see my face: now they know I am here:
They begin to pound on the wood furiously
...

Doesn't everyone have to forgive themselves
For the half-formed, maladaptive masks
They once wore in youth? In school, I lived for years
Underneath a knitted navy blue cape
...

People tell you how to write
What to think, who to fight
Which rules to break, which laws to void
If you object- off to Freud.
...

A face is looking in on some words
Which I have left in a certain room, hallway
Down three doors and to the left
...

There was a little girl once lived in a little house
And she feared boogie men lived inside her closet
And underneath her bed and in her big tall chest
Of drawers with the two little cabinet doors on top
...