Patti Masterman Poems

The peace that war knows
Wasn’t purchased with dripping blood;
The war that peace knows
Wasn’t punctured by artillery sounds.
...

The lathe of heaven's spinning, spinning;
Now the web of time beginning,
Time the holder of the many secrets
We must someday learn;
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Vast leaped the candle's flame,
Kissing grotesque shadows.
Blinking eye of the holocaust
Enshrouded by shards of night.
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Love is a mannequin dressed in rags,
Desire’s the streetcar, that left you in drag;
Time is ephemeral and can't be touched;
Distance is as far as the eye can see,
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Love's the only thing worth dying for, bleeding for:
From out of the whole world's total comings and goings,
The only commerce can absolve finally the emptiness
All the saints knew this: that to truly live abundantly
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dreams in which
they come again
feel that love of them
living presence that never left
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Do you ever look back on the happenings
Of this forty, fifty, sixty years of living, as though
Looking back into time at something
That no longer exists as you now recognize it.
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“This is a subtle art, ” says she;
Her old eyes gleam with secrets rare.
“It’s not the boiling cauld, you see,
That puts the magic in the air.
...

there are holes
near my soul;
you put your laser on beam,
straight through my seams;
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I used to like a drink of drink;
Of fermented grain, and hops, I think
It looked like beer; but tasted great
But my hand was killed by fate:
...