You Decided to Live in a Fish Tank

To the fish tank to live
until a future day
you may emerge
possibly sterile.

For the day
was for you
... like yesterday
when peril
day in, day out
same as last year
the days...
... no one could reach you,
for your haste in climbing in.

A fish tank
of seawater
to be amongst
they who swim
eat, dodge,
and dart.

After they've gotten
used to you
and you to them
watching one another
... well, it's a start.

Patrick Darnell (1993)

Golf Man

Muttering to his own mind distance and wind measurement
While Falstaff-tans approach, they are
Consuming and spreading out along borders
Some things one must take in faith ...

That miscreants, hellions, and twerps
Cannot prevail beyond the number seven,
And what is it they consume? Besides
Culture, their diet demands, gorging morals.

Wherewithal of deepening fracture,
Could tempt the perfect par eight to sway?
He, Golf Man, might at Fall be perfect in game
... perfect in stature,
In judging turf men's perfecting grass grain -
In conquering swells, grade and drift in gale.

Winter wave, late tee, lengthening shadow ball,
Perfect arcing hook at 300 pine tall
No meager male shall stall his golf
For love of tempestuous, herald par -
One cannot assume big boys tote and play here -
The association is more intimate by far.

Tyrants on steel horses cough,
Can come only so close to the life in golf.

Absent of guile,
Golf Man has a two lie --

Hardly noticing at all
... staid he cogitates the ball,
Hairy hands reach deep to putt
... heeds he no earthly call,
No wall of wind to overcome
... he putts to bird
Finally to golf god
... speaks he the third:

What a swing --
What an up lay --
'nift, the brass cup is stirred.

God, oh what may be asked
... more of any Golf Man.


Copyright © 2010-11 Patrick Darnell

Sore Nation

by Pat Darnell

You cried to our hearts
You thought for us
 ... not we listened

Look about us now
You say, I have laid out
your lives in reason.

Built
Repair
Guilt
Despair

Control re-entry
You cried to our minds
Chosen minds focussed
instilled Revival from rind
you fortified and buttressed
... Reviled death
... Sought fitness
and strengthened in spirit
Deliverance in abundance
Disinterment, decisioness,
You sore nation, our fortress.


Copyright © 2010 Patrick Darnell