He Tells Me About the Tar Monster

Another new poem.  We shake our head at the tales that our Connor spins here and at school.  They are a combination of reality, Connor's reality, fantasy and facts he's read or heard. 



He tells me
about the
Tar Monster
who eats kids
whole.
One
was seventeen.
It ate an entire village.
I question
and he tells me he
Googled it
but it’s no longer there.
It scared people
so they took it away.


Columbus
and Presidents
people
his family
tree
so a teacher
informs us.
There are details
only he knows.
Nessie is real;
it’s a fact.
I learned of a bird
at our feeder
that is not found
in Texas. It’s
an Oklahoma bird
that must be lost.


He says
he sees
people we
can’t see,
and we
nod
knowing
this is not
part of his disorder.
When a therapist
questions
the details
spin
then melt
back
into the nebulous
web of his psyche.

This child
of my heart
spins
his reality
like cotton candy
on a warm day,
sticky details that
melt
with the telling,
yet,
he keeps spinning,
adamant
in the tale,
his mind
a web of
whirling fancy.
I can see him
building
thread
upon
thread
and I am mystified.


~~~~8/16/10

A Chance Encounter

And yet another new poem sparked by and old, new friend and the upcoming school year.

A chance encounter
stumbled upon among half-
forgotten names in a virtual
yearbook sent me spiraling
back into musty halls clogged
with the muffled echoes of teenage angst.

Snapshots appear then
disappear into a dormant scrapbook
where images blur and bleed into each other,
the Kaleidoscope collage from a long barren field.

Memories are like sandcastles
on shifting sand--
tiny grains of truth and half-
truths watered down with the waves
of eroded emotions.


Swells of first love
and small triumphs crash
against pangs of rejection
amid tugs of uncertainty. It’s
a roller coaster of
insecurity cloaked in brash spirit--
a wobbly ride over untested landscape.


I fumble my way
among the fossils,
like a blind woman
picking the bones of a distant land,
detached, yet not…
immune to lingering echoes.




~~~8/12/10

New Poems

The unbearable heat lately has forced me inside, for the most part.  That being said, the heat has been good for my creative juices.  I've written a few new poems that I thought I'd post.


"August"


This heat
assaults me
like the uninvited
embrace
of a stranger,
his stale breath
pressed
against my cheeks
as I blink back
the assault of an angry sun.

August
straddles
my limbs
and stifles
my soul.
Languid thoughts
drowse
on cushions
Of distant snow angels.

~~~~8/11/10


"Intrusion"


Small
shards
of
discontent
prick
my illusion
of
contentment
and
I
turn away
from
the
sting.

~~8/11/10


 
What if




we could go back
and rewrite
a story
or even a paragraph in time?


What if
we could insert
a word or
conversation
Into a completed chapter?


The days are blank pages
as we journey through them,
one word, sentence,
one scene at a time….

no editing allowed once the ink has dried.


~~~8/10/10

Back in time.....9th or 10th grade.

Birth of a New Poem

Have you ever had an image of something swirling around in your head for days, nagging at release in some creative form or other?  From time to time I see something, taste or smell something that triggers a memory from the past.  It can be a smell that hurtles me into the home I grew up in or a smell that brings back one of my grandmothers. 

Recently, I thought about the dress I wore at my high school graduation.  It was THE perfect dress!  I loved the way it fit, the way I looked and felt when I wore it.  Naturally, I can't put my hands on a photo of me in the dress although I know I have several stashed away in some box or other.  Anyway, I asked a couple of female friends if they ever had a "special" dress or outfit that stood out above all others in some way, for some reason.  Turns out every one of them said they did.

This morning I felt the need to make time to be creative.  Another half-formed poem was germinating in the back of my mind, so I sat down to bring it to life.  I also needed to "do something" with THE dress.  And so I did.  Here is the poem that sprung from that need:

The Dress

Most women,
I suspect,
wear one dress
(or two, perhaps)
that lingers in memory
as perfection,

that gift wraps
a pearl,
one crystalline stitch
in time.

Mine
was white cotton,
gossamer-
with sleeveless bodice
of delicate pleats
tightly
cinched
at the waist,
cascading in gentle folds
to just below the knee.

Twirling before the mirror
I could find no fault
in my reflection-
a rarity, I dare say,
in the feminine psyche.

Graduation Day,
threshold of the time of milk and honey
and I was Aphrodite,
Cinderella,
cloaked in clarity
with one glass slipper atop
the translucent pattern
that paved the road ahead.

~~~Pam Patterson 6/30/10

An Exercise in Futility

This is a poem I've had in the works for a few years, actually. I get a thought or a phrase or the germ of a poem and I put them into a file. Periodically, I revisit these dormant seeds. Sometimes I discard one or even an entire file. Other times I nurture one of the seeds and see how it grows. This is a fledgling bloom that I feel sure I will revisit and rework from time to time.


I study the smiling photos of
a five-year-old Spiderman grinning,
web slinging into the camera.
I look for shadows
that surely lurked,
like the villain he pretends to slay,
in the corners of his mind or
the curve of his smile.

When did the shadows
creep into his burgeoning psyche
and how did I miss it? One day
the laughter was too shrill, too
over the top, for too long before
the trip down--fast, furious
and frightening. He was tethered to an
out-of-control bungee cord,
furies unleashed.

Searching the photos for clues
I catch a glimpse of five,
white sunshine frozen in time.
I close Pandora’s box knowing
it’s too late to go back.


~~~~~~~Pam Patterson

In Honor of National Poetry Month

A poem by one of my favorite poets, Sharon Olds:

The Talk

In the sunless wooden room at noon
the mother had a talk with her daughter.
The rudeness could not go on, the meanness
to her little brother, her selfishness.
The eight-year-old sat on the bed
in the corner of the room, her irises distilled as
the last drops of something, her firm
face melting, reddening,
silver flashes in her eyes like distant
bodies of water glimpsed through woods.
She took it and took it and broke, crying out
I hate being a person! diving
into the mother
as if
into
a deep pond--and she cannot swim,
the child cannot swim.

~~Sharon Olds (from Strike Sparks)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And, one of my own in the same vein.....


Stale words
in stagnant pools
sink into a lifeless sea of drivel.

I’ve said it all before.
You turn a deaf, defiant ear;

Ruffled feathers
beat me back--
a safe distance.

You dance around
the sting of my words.

You’ve yet to really hear.

~Pam Patterson