Soothsayer's Vision

Our divinations have shown us
a wonderland of lush grasses
and trees slowly waving in the
freshening breeze

All the features of a paradise
we have long since renounced
are there, out there at the
end of forever

A vision, this beautiful world
somewhere out there beyond
today, in the dreaming territory
after we're gone.

Patrick M. Tracy
7/16/12

Haiku Poems, 7/5/12

Above and below
these clouds cover the mountain
claws in frothy sea

There comes an echo
noise of an eagle hunting
sun fights against gray

Nothing remembered
perhaps only this: pastel
brushstrokes in the sky

What is the kanji
for this feeling, this moment
the rock wall--mist slick

Once So Mighty

The titan sags
slowly dragged
down to earth,

bloodied and
hollow eyed

defeated by
his own
coping mechanisms

all the strengths
that have served
him well for these
many years

turned against
him in the
end,

all those times
when he could have
used the small
critiques that
people were
afraid to give
him

looming so large,
amplifying gravity
at his feet
drawing him
with brutal
inertia toward
his messy demise

the titan succumbs
his own weight
finally beyond his
ability to sustain,
the simple drawing
of breath a labor
beyond his grasp,

who was once so
mighty on the
earth, and whose
voice shook the
air and made others
tremble with his
force

Patrick M. Tracy

7/3/12

Haiku Collection, 7/3/12

Wind has been given
unto the long, open land
purple clover blooms

Sparrows burst upward
out of the tangled hedgerow
a sudden maelstrom

At the river's edge
old man, his face so wrinkled
his eyes still fearsome

The muddy hollow
catfish rises, swallows air
sleek shape departing

A leaf, bright with blood
hunter follows, arrow nocked
forest falls quiet

The last of the light
an empty glass craves upward
autumn draws nearer


Patrick M. Tracy
7/3/12

Noises of Industry

You do not hear
the small sounds
of calluses building
upon the palm

You do not hear
the noise of sweat
as it comes down
the brow

You do not hear
the hard-churning
heartbeats as
the faceless workers
struggle up the
muddy hill with
heavy stones
hugged tight
to their chest,
slow rain falling
from a leaden sky

You do not hear
joints in the
seamstress's hands
as they burn from
sewing circles
all day in the
hot, close, loud
shop at the end
of a shabby street

All these small
noises of industry,
of the business
of people and their
uncounted efforts,

They are simply
humming against the
electric vitality
of our promised
future

Simply the unspoken
predicate to a sentence
we utter from rote
memory as we
run hard against
the setting of the sun
and trust to what
we once thought
someone may have
said, something
about destiny.


Patrick M. Tracy

7/3/12

Dry Wind Prayer

At the foot of
these temples,
these edifices
arisen from the
blasted land where
soil has turned to
ash and rains have
failed for years uncounted

we confront the
obelisks of days
slipped from the
grasping hands of
dead men with
forgotten names,
wrestling with the
thoughts far too
large for our narrow
conception to frame

we squint into the hot
wind that blasts our
eyes and turns our
cheeks to bronze,
the sickness of the
land taking root in
our own flesh as
year turn their slow
cadence and the
memory of a whisper
of hope

becomes
as a talisman kept
buried, glimpsed
only at the hour
of midnight and
under the stars
upon nights when
the desperation
threatens to overwhelm
our final defenses
and leave us
insane

and we yearn to be
sated, to be content
and without our
accustomed pain
for just one blessed
turn of the wheel

but this life on the dry
land, upon this crucible
where we are rendered
and made desolate
below the angry
bronze furnace glare
of the sun,

is not
here for our comfort,
but for our edification,
our torment, at turns

our slow and arduous
sojourn from innocence
to experience.

Patrick M. Tracy
6/26/12

Caretakers of the Departed

The exalted and the unknown
both are interred here, their
remains suffering the
depredations of the soil
in the self same manner, their
graves unchanged, the scant
flowers desiccated before
the etched stone that marks them,
the lichen that grows over
a set of dates and an
unclear epitaph,

and all the invisible divisors
that stood between the dead
are dissolved, salt upon the
misty brow of the earth

and all the acclaim that some
wore upon their chests like
medals pinned and ribbons
about the neck have faded

and every person here is as
important as the next, having
the same quantity of acclaim
after years have robbed them
of their admiration.

and those living unheralded--
the lawn cutter and the
driver of the excavation
tractor--they go about their
small and noble tasks with
equal vigor for each
new tenant here

moving in their dreaming circles,
shifting the earth and
grooming the land outside
the conscious vision of
the rest, existing in the
strange demilitarized zone
between the dead and the quick,
known but only vaguely,
difficult to discern,
these caretakers of the
departed.

Patrick M. Tracy

6/22/12

Hesitant Tapping

In the silence
of a large group
gone quiet

we linger here
unknown and
unknowing, our
fingers grasping
at the edges of
things as we
move in darkness

space grows great
between us, like
the uninitiated man's
vision of another
land, far across
seas that he cannot
conceive crossing

and all small noises
all movements and
cleared throats,
all hesitant tapping
of a nervous and
itchy foot is like
thunder and marching
band music here

our spirits stifled
by what we have known
and all we have yet
to learn

and we are alone

together

Patrick M. Tracy

6/22/12

Poem Published!

Hey, folks.

Yes, I know this blog has been dormant for lo, these many months. My poetry writing mojo
has not been workin' of late. That said, I did get a new poem published. It is called "This Misspent Requiem", and is featured in the January issue of Pens On Fire, the online poetry magazine. I'm pleased to be featured at that site once more, as I have two prior works there.

In any case, should you wish to read this one, it is beyond the following link:

http://pensonfire.com/ptracy.html

Cheers,

Patrick

The Complex Physics of a Simple Thing

What makes it easy
in that moment
when the feathered
thing flies true
hitting the center
coming to a stop
with deadly ease

But is it ever easy
this complex motion
the turning of one
solid around the
other, the stacking
complications of
leverage and acceleration,
of air pressure and
the dispersal of
standing waves,

This minor miracle,
this expression of
stored energy, of
my own energy as it
is transmitted downrange

And is that energy an
element of spirit, are
my arrows in some way
imbued with an incalculable
element of myself

And if so, if I am what
my arrow is, and I go where
my arrow goes, what of the
errant shot, the flinch
at the moment of release

Are the components of my
spirit in turmoil, are there
minuscule wars between the
warp and weft of my essential
energies, or is that affixing
esoteric thought to a thing
that is, in essence

Simple flight, a moment of
bravery in the face of
universal forces, then a sudden
stop, and let us hope that the
stop is where we wish it, and
that our shot finds home.

Patrick M. Tracy
8/20/10

The Year the Fimbulwinter Didn't Happen

Haikus

Things go slower now
the sound of plaintive guitars
sun mixes with rain

The warmth that threatened
stalled summer hiding beyond
the lip of the world

Now wet to the skin
from here the salt sweat is born
into morning's chill

Here's the way forward
through the valley's keen anguish
emerging cleansed, new

From the killing floor
I have returned spent, different
lost in my own skin

Dust and lassitude
thundering, trackless vistas
circular searching

Like dogs, we have howled
aching for the light of day
now half blinded, mute

All my troubles now
are candles before the sun
snakes without their fangs

Beneath a tree--rest
as Spring turns to Summer, choose
any path will do

Tame the Dust

I am the revivified tissues
the strengthened flesh
the hardened bone, the
new skin around this
old chassis brought back
from the darkened
barns of rusted doom

I am not healed of all
the ills of the past
nor purified of the
poisons of long gone
days, but new fuel
cooks the taint of
the old slowly down,
slowly down into
the weedy lower
bowels of this
machine, and roads
long forsaken
once more beckon
from the blue
of late spring
twilight

I have reached the
turning places on the
odometer twice now,
once broken in and
twice nearly broken
but I am not gone,
not decimated by
the rough sand of
the track to this
parking lot where
I now idle

There is one fewer
in the caravan now
and we are moving again
moving across the
unknown meridians
and into lands where
something green may
grow, where the rains
will tame the dust.

Busy as Rust

We have put many things aside
in these bitter years, so
slow in turning, so much like
eons in the dusk, time
churning slow as broken
gears suffused with
coagulated grease

We have put our own hopes
by for days we began to
doubt would ever arrive
watching rapt as the
titanic and poisonous
flower grew up from
the blood between us
hiding our eyes and
what remained to sparkle
in its penumbral shade

We have lost grip on
our own souls, forgotten
what we desire, doubted
what we once knew so well
that there never needed
to be a question, because
the cruel mechanisms of
despair never quit their
toil, busy as the disease
process, busy as rust,
productive as termites
as they chew through the
underpinnings of all we
hope to hold

And now, no longer shackled
to the shadows, we are pale
and strange to ourselves,
unmade in the process of
sublimation, no longer the
people we once hoped to be,
gone soft and aimless with
the darkened year, grasping
to remember the chemical
fires we once burned on our
own behalf

Places Beneath the Cloth

(A Circular Breathing Poem)

Here is wisdom
to which we must
give only the
substance of the
day, the dust
shaken from the
shoulders of our
traveling jackets
and poured out
from our worn
shoes, blown out
at the seams

And the seams in
our skin, like
shoe leather as
we are worn away
by the wind, so
fatigued that we
can be poured out
into these supportive
chairs that have
become like unresolved
dreams, and our
jackets hang slack
at the door, always
ready for future travels,
ready for our shoulders
to occupy their familiar
places beneath the cloth,
all the dusty substance
of us only giving respite
when it must, its words
small wisdoms soon forgotten

And what are these forgotten
voices, these wisdoms without
sacrifice when clearly there
must be, for what respite
can exist in all these
dusty miles, the substances
cooking out of us beneath
the cloth of our own demise,
these grave-windings within
places half familiar, these
coffins too slim for our
shoulders and wheeled for
the long travels to which
we are bound, always
standing at the threshold
and looking outward, our
jaws slack with dreams
unresolved, ambitions
poured out upon the
earth and spent, our
last mighty efforts
gone now into the twilight
of fatigue, the wind of
our loud railing against
the meal of dirty leather
between our teeth,
a pig's raw skin, the seams
of a child's discarded
toy the grist for this
mill, now fallen into ruin.

Astride the Earth

Even in casual conversation,
her hands are drawn upward
unconscious

Into the shapes of the
penitent, into the gestures
of prayer

And her eyes, though she's
young enough, have that
serenity

That absence of tenseness
that so often marks those
on the downslope

And even her smile is somehow
slow, ineffably soft in that
dimness of her room

Everyone she talks to feels
just for that moment, that
he's special, chosen

As if, as she regards you
you become alone and unique
on the earth

Plucked up from the rank and
file, the gray phalanx of
trudging similarity

Given, just for a moment, a
ray of something pure and solid
out of the great ephemera

And she, like goddesses are,
is unaware of it all, in her
bliss the illusion

The mirage of normality, such
that, from afar, even those
looking wouldn't see

And her days come and go, just
as ours do, and she has her
small successes

And even her setbacks are minor
miracles, for they allow all
the smaller creatures,

We who scuttle about in the
dust at her feet, a moment
in her presence

A moment when we can act as
savior to one who stands, colossal
astride the earth

Patrick M. Tracy
11/6/09

In the Vestibule, Where They Do Obiesance to Tiny Gods

Bent things
crimped down
eyes turned
ever toward
their handheld
digital gods

the small gods
best worshiped
in lieu of experience
in the easy turning
away from the real,
the actual, the present
and accounted for

whole flocks of
ghosts, caught
somewhere between
the tangible and
the ethereal,
unaware of each
other as the
world swoops by,
tethered to
existence only
by their thumbs

and in me, the strange
impulse, the thought that,
with a single, violent
motion, I could sweep
them all from the
stage of life,
that they would go down
like blind fish crushed in
tunnel collapse,
unknowing, having perhaps
never known, and only
really half alive

but that is a rogue thought
a moment of my own madness,
this desire to awaken these
sleepers, to enlighten in
blood these many drones that
so blissfully serve the hive,
and perhaps I am one, and have
been, and this febrile wakefulness
serves only to torment me with
that failing that hits so close to
the heart.

Patrick M. Tracy
10/27/09

True, but for the Details

Thin, tall, still awkward
with those long legs and
feet that have grown
like slender birds
always diving groundward,

the virgin turns away
and holds a match
to the pipe mouth,
fragrant smoke
surrounding her,

obscuring her thin
shoulders, her round
spectacles, her
face, pale from long
hours presiding over
the business of books
in the darkened library,

and she is unaware of
herself, of her body as it
moves like an unfettered
young horse, not quite graceful
but full of the new energy that
will slowly fall away as Autumn
comes onward,

but then she speaks, and
everything is changed, for
her voice chirps and whistles
and grinds, like the muttering
of a raven upon the split-rail fence
and of these narrow things, these
arcane pursuits within the pages
and curled paper--

of these things she is sure, and
she will hold forth about these obscure
articles of faith, which are built strong
and populated well in her sheltered
valley, and we older ones, shirt-tails
dirty from our long journeys, from
the fording of many rivers, from the
frequent times when we have crawled
upwards from the dust--

we wonder, wonder what will become
of her, this young, book-fed girl, so
sure, so stern in her own small way,
as the weight of winter falls upon her
and if she'll be lonely in the sheltered
valley forever, too narrow to let anyone in,
or will she walk past the walls of
sheltering stone, exchanging surety for
doubt, exchanging knowledge for wonder,
turning in that sweet, endearing clumsiness
for the slow, trudging step under the unrelenting
sky filled with the soot of bitter remembrance.

Patrick M. Tracy
10/16/09

Stoplight Season

It was a nicer place
before stop light season
and all the useless
motion while awaiting
the rise of the striped
barrier that held us
away from the train
tracks

Before we were trapped
by the slow and creeping
wait, our small dreams
deferred unto oblivion,
our plans and well-imagined
routes across the surface
of the world halted,
stymied by those who
would protect us from
our own flawed
ambition

But that was before, and
we are now bathed
in the red of the flashing
caution light, stuck
behind the locked turnstile,
awaiting change from an
unmanned toll booth at
which we are forever held
in limbo

For this is stoplight season
and any progress we had
once hoped for has been
disallowed, for without
the velocity of the road,
there can be to tragic
accidents, no catastrophic
impacts, but rather a slow,
sedate, predictable crawl
further into the guts of
dismal, postponed hours,
tires checked with dry rot
and gone flat at the
clogged exit of our own
driveways.

Patrick M. Tracy
10/10/09

As Chill Sets In

A Haiku Collection
By Patrick M. Tracy

Dark castles up there
vapor-houses for the rain
Autumn thwarts the sun

Rediscovered coats
thermal vests against the chill
slow drip from the roof

Out with these old things
break with all that's been deferred
before Winter's teeth

A day's useless deeds
pushing indoor air about
death abides, unmoved

The feel of these rooms
familiar like half-known songs
treasured, long absent

The echoing place
has drawn in and gone to brown
limits invented

A long "is" departs;
wide oceans of "what will be"
confront us this night

These Songs of Quiet Falcons

In the sticky heat of the evening
all these sounds around me, all
that surface static keeping me
from the chasm of being alone

Between the records that I
fill the night with, after
the television has ceased
to blare and rumble, when
only the tidal noise of
the dishwasher and the
river's run of the traffic
on the highway are there,

When the slow mutter of
my ancient dog as he
looks, half blind into
the indistinct night,
and I am still within
myself, considering
the strangeness of
existing within this
flesh, with its oddities
and unknowns,

I consider these sensations,
wonder if one of them is
a harbinger of sickness,
of the clinging infirmity,
that slowly eats us,
pride first, and makes us
mute, unimportant, forgotten
over time,

And again, I think that these
thoughts are only insecurity,
only incipient moments of
hypochondriasis on my part,
after all, perhaps it runs
in the family, over and above,
I'm moody, and these things
tend to catch one out without
the noise to block them,

But falconry then drifts in,
after the radio story, and
the longing to be so honed,
so beautiful in form, so
well-suited to the purpose
at hand, instead of being this
great, undetermined creature,
more brain than body, more
thought than flesh, but yet
tethered to the mundane at
every turn,

Yes, falcons come to mind,
and their bloody games, the
quiet of them when they are
hooded, the simplicity and
grace of their dream-like
faith in the wind,

But dreams like these move
time but slowly forward, and
it is a hot night, and what
little noise there is will soon fade,
leaving only the half made man,
bound to the keyboard, struggling
with these concepts just slightly
beyond his reach.