Kim's wonderful discussion on listening got me thinking about an older poem of mine, "On the Arrival of Portola in 1769," so I will post it for her Open Link Night: We are listening on the dVerse Poets site. It was part of a group of poems I wrote when living in a place called Paradise …
Month: April 2020
Beshrew That Heart
It’s easy to be a monk on a mountaintop. Or a penitent in prison. Or a travelogist on that long, lonely road to the interior. Basho said, “every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” But what if home is in lockdown and each journey, a misprision? Early summer sun griddles the …
Write Imperatively
The man in the high castle lost paradise beyond the wall in the land that time forgot. In our time, the journal of the plague year composed on the tongue the story of our lives. We have always lived in the castle. Go down, Moses, shout at the devil our residence on earth has been …
Exigency
This is a poem I wrote when living in a place called Paradise Canyon on the Santa Ynez river. I included it in The Gunslinger in Technicolor, my 2020 collection of poems on Americana, both urban and natural. Exigency Four feet snuck into the porch, squeezing though the cat door. After unweaving the chicken wire …
Poems by Kenneth Patchen
Street Corner College Next year the grave grass will cover us. We stand now, and laugh; Watching the girls go by; Betting on slow horses; drinking cheap gin. We have nothing to do; nowhere to go; nobody. Last year was a year ago; nothing more. We weren't younger then; nor older now. We manage to …
Jedediah Smith 