Kenneth Patchen Poems

Let us have madness openly.
O men Of my generation.
Let us follow
The footsteps of this slaughtered age:
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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 -
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That should be obvious
Of course it won't
Any fool knows that.
Even in the winter.
...

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
...