Patti Masterman Poems

Crumbs of you
Are all that remain:
Muddy boots of toughened leather,
Sinkers and lures, under the bed.
...

Snow White had a pain one day,
She called for the court physician.
He checked her pulse, he felt her head
Said she had a strange condition.
...

Your words, they doomed me to oblivion,
Yet not your words it was, that forced the pain;
The seeming doom, was just some broken syllables
Kept circling round my ailing mind again.
...

The mourners filed in single file, hats off
Tissues in hand, eyes averted from the sad sight.
The coffin was closed and a simple spray
Of red, white and blue carnations
...

Pain you won't own,
Owns you, in the end;
The dark water comes
And you forgot how to swim.
...

Touch me with silence,
Touch me with tears;
Reach out your hand
Across the years.
...

Dance with your shadow
At the end of the day,
When the fields go to bed;
With the moon on the hay.
...

When everyone goes away from me
And I find that I am alone then,
Everything seems to go with them; culture,
Society, understanding, patience, memory-
...

Ascendant solitary starlight,
Unanchored symphony of collisions;
We meander you into strange constellations
Of dignified, but well-meant conflagration.
...

Take all the pallid, preternatural words
Shrunken from known hungers, in plain wrappers
That everyone skips over, as not becoming-
Not for sophisticates; not the literati.
...