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
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.
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