April 2003 | back-issues, Patrick Seth Williams, poetry
__________
God knows how many letters I’m going to write before I send anything off. Unfortunately, god didn’t inform me on his/her decision and if he/she did, it must have been during a time when I was refusing to believe in him/her. Anyway, I hope things on the home front are looking up. Hopefully, you have found someone that has restored your faith in males, even though we all are childish and immature.
There really should be a class that tells you how to live. No, scratch that. There should be a class that tells you how not to live. Maybe run it on HBO and call it Life: It’s so Goddamn Fun. Wait, I think they already have a show like that.
If you are wondering why it’s only the third paragraph and I’m already disillusional it’s because I’ve been sick all day. My body temperature has been fluxuating from, I swear, 97-101� and my throat feels like I swallowed the neighbor’s cat. Except instead of getting it all the way down, it got lodged in my esophagus and is clawing me repeatedly. Needless to say, I feel horrible and I’m working.
Some things I have noticed while being ill are dreams become really strange. This usually happens, but what I’ve noticed is the stranger they become the more lifelike they are. Last night, I made up with my ex-girlfriend, had sex with a complete stranger, and was thrown in jail, all while sleeping peacefully. And I used to think dreams were abstract.
I’m freezing again. Thought I’d share.
I’m surprised I’m still functioning.
I feel like a reptile, my blood cooling,
my appendages becoming stiff. As
soon as I hit my bed though, I’ll be
sweating bullets. Stupid flu.
Ah ha, I knew in my repressed memory I had a question to ask you. Were you still interested in being part of the English Society I mentioned? If you are, do you know of others we can drag on board? I seem to be a dying breed amongst my peers, as everyone that used to write in my circle has given it up. Either way, it’s still over a month away and I’m not sure if I’m coming back to Emporia yet. Here is where I say Guten Nacht.
pat williams
spring 2001
April 2003 | back-issues, Patrick Seth Williams, poetry
At the soles of passing shoes,
on the road no one travels,
the place ants have invented
a specific feeler wave: Rock Land.
It isn’t all bad, the fixed monotony
of the day, shuffling from place
to place with a bit of leaf fragment,
granules of undigested sugar,
a fallen comrade’s body.
A simple sexless society; exist
to work for the collective, ensure
the survival of the commune.
Marxis, or a greater monastic order?
One scampers over scaled-down
mountains, going around those
that seem too much effort
for a quick run, almost mindlessly
(maybe they’re evolved beyond minds).
They are content, while the heat
of the day begins to make the back
of your neck itch with impatience.
There is something else to be done,
a task not yet complete.
Shouldn’t we begin asking
when are we going to be unlike
Sisyphus and let our stone drop?
April 2003 | back-issues, Patrick Seth Williams, poetry
I am coming
the second coming this year
preceded by my friends’ same
worn routine:
“When will you come?
Today? This hour?
In a month, or two,
or…what?
We’ll have cold beer!
Maybe even a keg!
And will sit at your feet
listen to stories
of places you’ve been.”
I wish I could raise them
to their feet and shake each
calloused hand of those
that have remained to work
on the farms or in the plant.
Show them I am no better
because I’ve been at the
un-i-vers-ity, bein’ pointless
book l’arned while they’ve been
workin’ workin’ workin’
punchin’ the clock at 7 A.M.
shortly after I’ve fallen asleep.
I’ve no good stories to tell,
no knowledge to bestow
that they haven’t already
known for years.
Here are my hands
to prove it, the scars have healed.
Now they are just useless,
long spindly fingers, that could
and would snap in an instant.
Here are my sides
free of marks–bruised
& broken ribs, this is what
the years have given me,
what they have taken away.
And I can’t drink much,
anymore.
April 2003 | back-issues, Patrick Seth Williams, poetry
If I were governed
by the Law
of Thermodynamics
then I was (1) never created
and never will
be destroyed
I can only be
(2) transferred from mind to mind
and will continue
in this way forever
I am a debilitating neurosis
the (3) entropy I generate
always increasing in
your closed system
April 2003 | back-issues, Patrick Seth Williams, poetry
with two toes I test
the temperature
of the linoleum
like a rookie member
of the Polar Bear Club
wondering if I plunge
right into the day
that the floor is as cold
as it looks from the cocoon
I’ve made with my bedspread
that the tiny icicles
forming on the AC ducts
are really part
of my imagination
then I’m forced
to look at Vonnegut’s
Cat’s Cradle lying
at my head board
and laugh so hard
that I’m crying
I jump out of bed
throw open the curtains
outside it’s bright
with just a touch of gray
April 2003 | back-issues, Patrick Seth Williams, poetry
[i]for Modern Poetry Fa02[/i]
“Can you imagine
if T.S. Eliot were
to enter the room, right now.”
Beckoning the call,
almost unnoticed, insignificant
dusty silent wings fluttering
in the mid-afternoon,
the karmic incarnate
sailed into the classroom.
We were unmoved
to the unannounced visitor
to the discussion, somehow
always retrospective to certain
expatriate literary geniuses.
How for fifty years (maybe more)
the accomplished poetic deities
lorded over form and words,
commanding
make it new!
let no words not add!
Forgotten now are radio speeches,
recantations, fascist salutes–
men now only in what is left
on signed printed pages.
Cinematographers love
a hero, but the literary world
will always worship a villain.
And now in this place,
if the insect would metamorphose
into human form, who among
the struggling minds striving
to add to a generation would not rise
and proffer a hand
as if to a long gone friend.
Instead, we sit intense–
eyes glazing–bored–
asleep–dreaming of the ability
to say anything worthwhile…
The gray unidentifiable moth
slips through the chalk-scented air
(the rustic classroom befitting
of an appearance)
and does not land,
wary of being crushed
by a student wanting to destroy
history under an ignorant hand.
I wonder if some of us
are dreaming of being human
when we are really moths
set to disrupt the harmonic-
balance of the class.
