Kenneth Patchen Poems

Let us have madness openly.
O men Of my generation.
Let us follow
The footsteps of this slaughtered age:
...

As we are so wonderfully done with each other
We can walk into our separate sleep
On floors of music where the milkwhite cloak of childhood lies
...

Speak softly; sun going down
Out of sight. Come near me now.

Dear dying fall of wings as birds
...

We go out together into the staring town
And buy cheese and bread and little jugs with
flowered labels
...

I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a
temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest.

For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the
...

That should be obvious
Of course it won't
Any fool knows that.
Even in the winter.
...

when we were here together in a place we did not know, nor one
another.
A bit of grass held between the teeth for a moment, bright hair on the
wind.
...

So it is the duty of the artist to discourage all traces of shame
To extend all boundaries
To fog them in right over the plate
To kill only what is ridiculous
...

Wherever the dead are there they are and
Nothing more. But you and I can expect
To see angels in the meadowgrass that look
Like cows -
...

The Orange bears with soft friendly eyes
Who played with me when I was ten,
Christ, before I'd left home they'd had
Their paws smashed in the rolls, their backs
...