Wednesday, April 2, 2008

http://papoetry.blogspot.com/2008/02/dan-waber-scranton-22908.html

Patrick Walker

Patrick Walker

An Excerpt from Pegasus at the Plow Plus Some New Work

To a Young Boy at the Funhouse


I watch you down corridors of my past,

Strange boy of six with the maze yet to run;

Fetch me the thread when you come round at last.


Of much brisker blood, like you, when I last

Lent heart to this quest you endure for fun,

I watch you down corridors of my past.


Presumptuous child, you scoff at a task

Heroes of well-tempered mettle might shun;

Fetch me the thread when you come round at last.


As shadows sprout horns, unsettling your casque,

Will brave sweat bedeck it like dew in the sun?

I watch you down corridors of my past.


One day we’ll swap yarns, and slaying our flask,

We’ll boast of toy monsters our quests have undone.

Fetch me the thread when you come round at last.


Dare we then boast how young legends outlast

Those bright, comfy halls modern Minotaurs run?

I watch you down corridors of my past;

Fetch me the thread when you come down at last.



My Calvinist Mirror


Each morning wash

I dart my tongue

At all damned youth can’t see:

That frog rasp in

One’s princely throat

Spells more than puberty.




On Growing Up a Poet in Today’s America


To walk among grownups

And keep a straight face

Takes genius for doublethink:

Where frat boys get fitted for world leader’s shoes,

Where Pharisees proudly hawk Christ,

Where the soon-to-be-dead

Sweat each pulse of their stocks

And seldom take stock of their lives,

Where billionaires earn more than nations

While we cringe for their property rights,

Where farmland’s despoiled

To build silicon worlds

While the real hack their chips just to eat;--


Where farce wields the scepter of adult norm

With scarcely a curl of our lips,

And reality itself’s

Dubbed a growth-stunting vice

Our Gross National Id’s pledged to ditch,

A fool bred for seeing

Must strike most adults

As a boy with his pants unzipped.