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Thoughts upon reading Kenneth Patchen

How fine on a sunny day with a soft warm breeze over the asphalt streets as the beggars pass by in their outlandish costumes, lord forbid they dress in Armani like the rest of us, because then we’d have no reason to deny throwing our money at them.. but back to the sun and soft breeze wafting softly across the oceans and carrying the scent of the plastic beer cups we threw in the sea last weekend because we know about climax change... but the poetry.. the man in the shag rug shirt pisses by our table and we call the cops... men in blue with the breath of dead wolves and cemetery eyes...He tells us he once played baseball... we nod...but his words... his words... true poetry on the breezes that find their way across the United Fucked-Up States and the Oceans plastic fish to his lips and into our ears... words of Kenneth Patchen.. and the Orange Bears..long gone, but not. And baseball.. finally back... sighing the sigh of the grass, the anticipation of the swing... The beauty of the nights on the fields.. the shagged baseball preacher is dragged away... just the shadow of a baseball diamond drawn with his piss remains as twilight draws ever closer and I think of baseball, and plastic fish, and her.. endings beginnings..
”.. Be Music, Night.. That her sleep may go where angels have their pale tall choirs.....”
let them whisper to the seas that all will begin again.. ”But our beauty is dying”, they cry... Those who commune with the gods whisper.. ”All will begin.. ” but... but... ”Pause.. and begin again... ”

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

dan,
this made me think of many past loves...and my days as a kid in NY with the Giants, Dodgers and Yanks all together in the Capitol of Baseball...and the new seasons...then the ending of NY for me...and moving to Illinois...and all that poetry that has been there over the years..
and the panhandlers in Carbondale...some legit, some not.
but this poem certainly is...and it is so visual and close to the heart for me.
wonderful write.
j.