How Do I Poeticize? Poem by Odey Patrick

I cannot play deaf
to trumpeted gossips in the market place,
from the very traders I patronise.

I cannot blunt my feelers
to cheapen my ingrained anguish,
look the other way
to the faces made on mates
whose smiles are but masks
carved on envy.

All devouts cannot be matyrs
so I bear these stones with pride!

Yet how do I poeticize
when you strip my words of meaning,
tie and club in open sight,
mock and scorn with religious spite?
How do I share the baked philosophy
from nights of thorough thoughts
when rheum lands on the bread prepared
and phlegm your preferred jam?

You have held to my mouth a gourd of grudge,
do I refuse a drink?
Perhaps, a litany of vulgar lambasting
the lines your thoughts are spread
whose knittings,
loose like confused grits,
time's test will assuredly fail.

Again, how, in your myopic sight
can you see the meaning deep?
For behind the morning fog always
is the Sun burning bright!
Such, behind all layered words of mine
are meanings wide and great,
know beauty is of various sort
substance not form is all!


I write in open gasp
at the hypocrisy of frien-emies,
whose mangled voice fail to forth
the keys for my mind's fine songs.
I write to vent artfully
my brimming spleen on paper
thus save myself some pus
and alert you to your need of lens.

Know all devouts cannot be matyrs,
so I bear these stones with pride!