Patrick James Dunagan
The Dalles, The Dailies
Born in Portland, Ore., on Oct. 20, 1923, Mr. Whalen grew up in The Dalles on the Columbia River.– San Francisco Chronicle obit, Thursday, June 27, 2002
I listen
as I eat the street for supper
listen to the pain songs
of Mexico.
Flashes of returning
come with the birds.– Joseph Ceravolo
Back of feeling
not feeling
that day might bring
best parts
gone horribly
wrong_____________
Love and for no good reason
– A. Notley)
between feeling and not
we do what we do_____________
By grace few
along the rail creating cycle_____________
Through white slits of mountaintops
tips of pines below
off heights drawn from wind
feathered wings soaring know_____________
What prior hands gripped
choral discipline deficit_____________
Thing is map
world a globe
no concern prior
loss of it_____________
List the things we do
List the names we know
List the birds of song
List to list again_____________
Care now
the here
the air
we breathe_____________
Miss Consideration
there’s the rub
smother the mask
and behind the eyes
hide thy wit_____________
Spit or spew
song comes_____________
Opposable thumb
brain digits rolling biz_____________
Trucking it a la Rimbaud
pain of scarcity_____________
How the tail
transforms easily
to a left thing
the animal must handle
as though the appendage
itself were migrant_____________
Alive in all this wet heat
_____________
Come upon a pair of eyes
on the page_____________
Thing for thing
among whorls of word_____________
Plain day speech
played against light
dark words bare_____________
Slender tinged fern tip
bright with excitement_____________
Among the flowers a child
in the early morning light_____________
No word
for before
that moment
no more_____________
Oxy hydra drawl
ennobles night’s
symphonic glut_____________
Typing listening
_____________
Mired wing-down in tuber
deep sound_____________
Voices in the head
preferable
to no voices at all_____________
You are gone
in spaces left
an image persists_____________
To tree to sky
day come_____________
As ever & again
doing the same
day turns to day_____________
As though words
had hopes extant_____________
Earth turns flesh
deliberate poles of purpose_____________
Kitty breaths
dear to be near_____________
Moving vowels
bristling motors
the lawn goes wild_____________
More bombs
bomb the world
the world I’m in
missing you more
bombs the world
missing you_____________
Fiery inchoate
_____________
Were I not I
no such thing
now would be_____________
O body o ghoul
render free
the fantastic chorus_____________
Night lights shine
aural era discipline_____________
Inside of Milton heroic
couples stroll paths
in valley’s lush green
bright echo of day_____________
I seems incredible
_____________
Sweet singular
joyous expression
back of breath_____________
It’s not easy
doing this while
that goes
all the while_____________
Alone
traipsing a field of white_____________
Avatar of cove & briar
_____________
Squirrel hops from branch to quivering
_____________
May all of it come again
every day every day_____________
for O
Wing of bird dipped low
upon the horizon_____________
Poet be poet let
it be that poet
love poet let it
be that_____________
“…it’s all the same fucking day”
o Joplin o bright day_____________
Poetry who cares hooray!
_____________
Polished stone working-class
understanding_____________
Poiesis verb flaneur
bait plays patience_____________
Hundreds of years for shards
of once moved-in space_____________
Nothing past her hesitant kitty moment of becoming
_____________
Statement alone is not enough
inlet the subject_____________
Behind words sound
again again
in the middle of everything_____________
Edible visual stimulus
_____________
“Consult a spiritual lawyer”
_____________
21st Century ventriloquism
from confusion rises consciousness
annihilation of common sense_____________
Mid arch hi-flier
honeyed out_____________
Moonlight isn’t like
‘in the movies’ the stars
don’t ‘look good’_____________
Names calling out a world
for parts of a whole_____________
Wreaking havoc abroad
havoc at home havoc in
the stars would they_____________
Eyes is words
abstraction of math
dark path to walk
engaging vicious sun_____________
The poem
the poem alone
the poem alone atteststhe poem
_____________
From a woman I knew
not how to talk to:
“a ghost of the real
inhabits me as well as you”_____________
Father no address farther
than I have come_____________
Light between the shades
for a portion
of the long run day_____________
Get tongue unraveled
chords to blow_____________
o was there song
worth praise when high
above it all
the shit came clean_____________
Thing enough
specimen_____________
Anything but complete
useless sounds
as if eternal
now the feeling_____________
Only the voices
recognized
become known
and implanted
the rest go down
by way of the shore
tossing gold coins through the air
