PATRICK HERRON

CONTENTS

A Picture of Joanne Kyger Before the Buddha | The Voice of American Family Values Cast as a Critic of Ancient Cultures | Winter | The Bottom-Room Asleep | The World is The River Loire Mon Amour | O x! O Bordered Sea of You and Only You, You Dash the y! |The Ballade of the Career Search |

A Picture of Joanne Kyger Before the Buddha
(about a picture of her but not about her)

the picture can be viewed at http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/kyger/images/kyger.jpg

when she stands before
the buddha, her head grows bam-
boo antennae e-

rupting out from her
vestigial ears like a
grasshopper annoyed,

teeth as blinding as
blank paper. does that buddha
offer you emerald lawns

or a loaf of bread
or is he taking the roll from
you or taunting you

or does he sit still
watching humans develop
segmented grey eyes?

The Voice of American Family Values Cast as a Critic of Ancient Cultures
In memory of William Burroughs

I left the feathers. At home. For the birds, all that stuff, the wax, too close to the sun. Daedalus, ridiculous. Irresponsible, really. Never met a Greek for responsibility as I consider it now. Achilles was such a heel, slashing about, busied too much by clearing his line of sight. Funny how you had to get him from behind. Irresponsible. Dreadful, like that marmish Persephone, always so doomed, so negative really, she could have just bootstrapped herself back to sunlight, all that sin and pomegranate. Rather. Or that naughty Zeus, always sponsoring some violation of decent American family values somewhere or other. I mean, can you believe all of those illegitimate children? Well, I suppose he could at least afford them all. Who needs the feathers? I mean, keep them in the bed. Why fly when you can walk, don't you say? Why look at the sun when you should be watching your step? Mind your own footing and you'll never have to see them fall.

Winter

A heap of lime, you borrow.
The fallen down snow is neat
white sackcloth of maced ash. Still ears.
You iced your cane & cracked your lip.
Go forth flat cart, sew seed for sorrow.

The Bottom-Room Asleep

St. Eulogius' Day for the Tosher,
St. Fina for the Sleepaway,
St Louise's, for the Dower-house,
Mothering Sunday, the Double-sib.

To steal the Copper in Praise,
to die by gentle Violets of Sleep,
to be born Brother and Sister of one Mother;
at Rest: you in plain Presence, ablaze.

To Putter-out on a wiredrawn Journey,
your bank Void upon Return,
your Houseleek grows on your Toft,
your Floor spirals Leagues adown.

For such Holidays I do to thee pray
O Lord of High, Lord of Deep,
Lord of Creep and Creampuff,
Lord of evergreen Release.

The World is The River Loire Mon Amour

Part I: The Motoyasu

Under Sadako streams the Loire.
Unnavigable & empty course, irregular
light and soft pad on that harsh bed.
In the cellar and then the dead.

Bearing confines of paper cranes,
hands are bound to fade and shadow.
But what of that flash of your bright skin
buried in the tumble of that dark murk?

Part II: The Loire

Yes, it's a beautiful day. Kotira koso will ask you thrice
was twenty-two and stealing photos. A noisy swarm
of propellers buzzed through our film, over Sadako.
Dubious morals and the feeling of life in words
returned, no, not to Paris, not Nevers. Please help me.

Madness, o doubled flowering, is like intelligence,
but when it departs, its reasons taken with.
Kite kudasai, we are not close enough.
Ghost on the TV burns the glass, shadow, gone.
We are nearing whispers, a fading plane in our frame,
during the war, like prehistory, fell, asking the past to return.
A fifth season sun sparked here, a blister that consumed.
Kuroi ame and my daughter's womb betrayed.
Your name is Hir-o-shi-ma. My name, Ne-vers. The spiral of the end
does not end, workmen in Peace Square dismantle the stands.
A blade of grass, hollow out a city, we are not here for the new harvest.
Yes, it's a beautiful day. Oh please help me, someone, please,
it is bright here, infernal; in this sunshine I will fade. Witness
I am aging, white flash, I am no one. I join the forgotten. Please help me.

(Sadako - as in the Sadako Statue, or the Children's Monument, in Hiroshima's Peace Park; Kotira koso - I am the one; Kite kudasai - Please come; Kuroi ame - black rain)

O x ! O Bordered Sea of You and Only You, You Dash the y !

Your space here is not your holy vault. Do not exalt o bordered sea of you and only you.
With stratagem, fence, and rampart retort, you offend, you command x, your self, to defend.
Add solemn song and sharpened tooth for cool o sledded canis lupus. Your fleece pretends the honest ruse
of be. Ayin, x, you eye. Your cloudy pool is airless. No breath no pipe of light no weighty smoke of Parsifal, aleph, the y.

You dash y, rock to sand. Oceanic gesture drops the sledge. Oil rig platform bite of a gem.

Unknowing you may be reading by sleeping in dreams unowned, no ending in a fool and y thanks you and only you.
Promiscuous jest. Aleph knows the fool is the sun is death is fish is ox is y is strand and glass and open flame between

The Ballade of the Career Search

Father wanted me to join the army,
Mother said I should heal the sick.
Uncle asked if I could foresee
My life in the body politic
Or my bare ass out in church, a heretic
Without shame, embarrassing the righteous,
My mind, a headstruck matchstick.

Pursuits, out of madness, we discussed.

A librarian read I should kill for money.
An astronomer scoped me composing music.
A musician noted I should improvise cosmologies,
Before an assassin shot me with arithmetic.
A mathematician proved I must read until I am sick
Of empty war-torn dreams within us,
Of all the nightmares shared by medics.

Pursuits, out of sadness, we discussed.

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