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Kenneth Patchen (13 December 1911 - 8 January 1972 / Ohio)
Let Us Have Madness
Let us have madness openly.
O men Of my generation.
Let us follow
The footsteps of this slaughtered age:
See it trail across Time's dim land
Into the closed house of eternity
With the noise that dying has,
With the face that dead things wear--
nor ever say
We wanted more; we looked to find
An open door, an utter deed of love,
Transforming day's evil darkness;
but We found extended hell and fog Upon the earth,
and within the head
A rotting bog of lean huge graves.
Read poems about / on: fog, evil, house, time, love
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it seems my head explodes.
private sledgehammer,
you haven't a bash in you.
heavy and loaded with grief, good,
the way angels breathe.
the way it ought to be.
illegible, scrawled with disbelief.
in come the detectives.
fit with bow-tie.
they use the school, search for clues.
this could be the work madmen...
this could be the work of genius,
this could be no work at all.
Simple faucet drip to someone inside.
In shirt-sleeve, pant-suit tieing his life
around her finger.
Slowly,
the way the noose does.