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A STRAIN OF LAUGHTER by Robert Patrick
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PROEM
Hugs and kisses left me stranded.
This abyss is where I landed.
Losers' bliss is being candid.
You think this is openhanded?
Then listen, misses, what a man did...
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A STRAIN OF LAUGHTER
Copyright 2002 by
Robert Patrick
(rbrtptrck@aol.com)
The lovely lady above is
Dorothy Parker
in whose manner these verses
are slavishly written.
******************************
Well, we were one,
And now we're done,
And time to write our history.
Like any love
That's written of,
It comes out as a mystery.
But what, aside
From love, has died?
A certain strain of laughter?
I get more done.
You get more sun.
Whatever were we after?
******************************
The golden god of stunning strength
Who lifts your spirits higher
Always eventuates at length
To be a thief and liar.
The lissome lad you sing to see,
With danger in his dimple,
Unfailingly turns out to be
Sensationally simple.
It isn't just "What makes us dream?"
It's more, "What makes us dream so?"
Since men are never what they seem,
Why did they ever seem so?
************************************
The Earth is flat ground
A deity made
which stars swirl around
Which never fade.
Rigors in youth
Make compassionate men.
Justice and truth
Universally win.
It's vital I plod,
Manufacturing art,
And you are a god,
And have a heart.
**********************
People writing poems to "you"
Address indifference.
People poems get written to
Are arrogant and dense.
Keats wrote his to Fanny Brawne,
Housman to a swain.
Fanny answered with a yawn,
The swain with, "What? Again?"
Sappho lyricized a lass.
Shakespeare sang an earl.
The lass let implications pass.
The earl met a girl.
Edna signaled either sex.
Dotty sought the male.
They emerged addicted wrecks.
To terminate the tale,
There's one whose languid loveliness
Left me in debt and doubt.
I'm in here working out the mess.
He's out there working out.
******************************
That love can die,
That love can fly
Are lessons that amaze,
Which he who leaves
And he who grieves
Learn in diff'rent ways.
The one who's left
Bemoans, bereft,
How vuln'rable he is.
The one who goes
Forever knows
What hid'ous power is his.
*********************************
Lad, with old songs beguile me,
Then sit astounded while
Glad songs with tears defile me,
But sad songs make me smile.
The glad songs were betrayed by
Pretenders on parade.
The sad songs then were played by
The best friends ever made.
No more may you discern why
They make me laugh or cry
Than later lads may learn why
The same songs make you sigh.
**************************************
At ease between assaults of love,
I lucidly espy
What good the gods might have made of
Such a man as I.
I might have soothed the pain of beasts,
Or saved endangered plants,
Or succored souls from pimps and priests,
Given half a chance.
But in these fits of lucidness,
Romance must renaissance,
And I am off again to guess
What some dimwit wants.
**********************************
Desire is a suicide, seeking its end,
Tracking a murderer, never a friend.
Some men are all desire, free from it never,
Longing forever to die forever.
*************************************
When men are clothed,
Then men are loathed.
Shall we get, shall we say, "betrothed?"
When men are nude,
Then men are rude.
(Define "romantic interlude.")
When men are through,
Then men are blue,
Despite a slight magenta hue.
May I suggest
We get re-dressed
Before we're totally depressed?
********************************
Venus is the evening star,
Granting lovers' wishes.
It also is the morning star.
Isn't that suspicious?
When a morning finds you far
Less than lately lenient,
Reappears the wishing star.
Isn't that convenient?
********************************
You mutter that you're insecure
How long our love will be,
And moan for me to reassure,
Which is a rarity,
For usually
Men lie to me.
I utterly assure you you're
Adored eternally
With passion permanently pure,
Which is a novelty,
For usually
Men lie to me.
*************************8
Although the libido
Will serve as a credo,
It's best during revolutions.
Those who survive from it
Seldom derive from it
Durable constitutions.
*****************************
Even though we interlock
With such a satisfying shock,
Let's avoid the level of
Exchanging amulets of love.
Our wantonness is wonderful,
But not remotely personal.
We're mere convenient metaphors
For bodies blind as meteors.
Thus anybody else could do
This exercise instead of you,
And you might find another guy
Who'd serve almost as well as I.
*********************************
The sparrow and the dove descend
To quarrel for my crumbs.
Ye gods of all the faiths, forfend
That I should know such bums.
Why were these brutes who peck and shove--
Unkempt, uncouth, unkind--
Selected as the birds of love?
Oh, I see. Never mind.
*******************************************
Heterosexual lovers obsess,
And so mate to look after babies,
But I'm overdrawn
About sex that can't spawn--
About as productive as rabies.
Just what is the point of this staggering stress?
How smart are the powers that forge us?
What sense to the strain
Of desire and disdain?
How long, really, will you be gorgeous?
******************************************
You were an ass to leave him alone.
He was a swine to stray.
Any male mammal that ever was known
Can be shown to have gone the same way.
He wanted two men out of petulant greed,
And lied that his "side" was a friend.
You were a patsy to loosen his lead,
He was a putz to pretend.
All above actions were reckless and wrong.
We don't leap whenever lust leers.
We don't leave our lover alone for so long,
And we please don't defend it for years.
*********************************************
To loll betimes,
Committing rhymes,
Was never what I planned, lord.
If you've surmised
That I'm surprised,
You oughta see my landlord.
**********************************
The ancients always styled
Love as an infant child.
They didn't get that wrong.
Love never lives for long.
You may relax, assured
It never yet matured.
For confirmaton, please
Check verse anthologies,
Historic'ly arranged.
Love's voice has never changed.
*******************************
I lie, an empty, twisted bell,
Beside love's cruel sea,
With many a truth that I could tell
About love's cruelty,
But should a lad lift up my shell
And hold it to his ear,
Then love's intoxicating swell
Is all that he would hear.
**********************************
Where I sedately sat to wait
For you to let me love you,
I sit of late to contemplate,
Quite over and above you,
Yet pray and fret you'll pass to let
Me openly ignore you,
Lest friends ill-met should think me yet
Sitting waiting for you.
**********************************
Man navigates from bed to bed,
A guiding image in his head
From pics he's seen and books he's read,,
And that's idealism.
And anyone who'd catch a man
Must match that image if he can,
And that is nothing other than
Reflective realism.
*******************************
Fool! Fool! I offered you my life
If you would leave me never.
I wanted you to be my wife
Or husband or whatever.
Though to my kiss not ever,
To concommittence you were cool
And so I chose to sever
Ev'rything. Oh, fool! Fool! Fool!
************************************
The sun always rises. The soft rain will fall,
As if your heart never had broken at all,
And rainbows will shimmer soon after the rain,
And someday your heart will be broken again.
Tall mountains will cumble. Straight rivers will part,
But never will nature take note of your heart.
************************************************
Why is biography
Purely pornography?
Why does euphoria
Own our sensoria?
Should mere concupiscence
Even take up a sense?
Though not monotonous,
Where has it gotten us?
**************************
If you should find the fellow gone
When you return with both your drinks,
That's probably when it will dawn
Just how a fellow thinks.
A man adores the way he sounds
When vowing love with all his might,
And resolutely makes the rounds
Until he gets its right.
***********************************
My love for you has died,
Which, let us understand,
Was neither suicide
Nor done by any hand.
Your love for me had died,
So mine could not endure,
No more than twins so tied
In torrid lit'rature.
**************************
You make me fantasize events
Unique in my experience.
I've lost my life in dreams, I know,
But here's a fresh scenario.
I don't recall in all my lore
Imagining such things before.
The opuses which you incite
Are not the sort I tend to write.
As much as MOMA from the Louvre
They differ from my other ouevre.
Am I correct in thinking, then,
You're different than other men?
************************************
The rich don't know that they are rich,
The tall that they are tall,
Inheritors of empire which
Race they hold in thrall.
The bright their brilliance can't recall,
The king that he is king.
The beautiful, who have it all,
Don't know anything.
**************************************
The sun comes up behind a hill
(Love didn't manage quite to kill.),
Then settles in an ocean. (Hope
Did not provide sufficient rope.)
Therefore must I experience
Desires denying common sense,
And lovers through my heart must troop
As if it were a paper hoop.
Yet friends must mean it kindly when
They mention there are other men,
As must philosophers who say,
"There'll always be another day."
*******************************************
Two fronts' encounter causes
Invisible upsurgence.
Those seabirds' airy pauses
Connote such a convergence.
Just so, our petty plangence
And corresponding courses
Denote just such a tangence
Of such conflicting forces.
Yet see, the birds stay stable
In turbulent transparence.
Perhaps we may be able
To fend with such forebearance
*************************************
Just what will change because I die
That doesn't change because I love?
Implausible you'll be nearby
In either circumstance above.
With all due dread of death, confess
It offers all we're looking for,
For I won't see you any less,
And you won't see me any more.
*************************************
Ah, would you fascinate
A man to hold you dearer?
The effort isn't great.
Merely be his mirror.
Have a special smile
Only he can foment.
Then, once in a while,
Withhold it for a moment.
He'll dare Hell and fire
To restore that pucker.
You'll have your desire
(If you still want the sucker).
******************************
"Loving" is code for "leaving."
The thing's never lasted past lust.
The glory that's got you all grieving?
It's the bunk. It's the blues. It's a bust.
Feeling is always a failing,
The wise realize, and move on.
Wait. What is this musk I'm inhaling?
It's the dusk! It's the dew! It's the dawn!
**********************************************
As his new love, you're curious
How best to set him sighing.
Come here. There's just the two of us.
This used to get him flying.
And this device,though devious
And rather death-defying,
When added to the previous,
Had him, like you, complying.
This bit we never did discuss,
But always seemed worth trying,
And, when elaborated thus,
Is it not gratifying?
Ah, do you find me generous,
No dear detail denying?
Well, here's the little added plus
That left him craving, crying.
**********************************
May I be quarantined
From fancy's fol-de-rol?
You cried he was a fiend,
And sighed I was a doll,
Reciting all his sins,
Inciting me to stay
To fill me full of pins
To hurt him far away.
**************************
The barriers break.
The dance commences.
We're going to take
Leave of our senses.
The classic defense is,
We must dance thus
Before our senses
Take leave of us.
************************
Be understanding.
Be undemanding.
Believe the tales he tells.
Be unsuspicious.
Be all he wishes.
Be ready with something else.
******************************
Darling, do you back away
Because you fear I merely play?
Have the poets of the past
Convinced you lust can never last?
Do those sluttish friends of yours
Say love's composed of overtures,
And strangers claim the same in scrawls
Disfiguring the public walls?
Do all your counsellors concur
Love lives, then leaves you as you were?
Darling, all you've heard is true.
Let me love you while I do.
************************************
They claim a kiss will heal a wound.
My corpse with kisses is festooned.
Perhaps the myth is not impugned.
Perhaps life was the worser wound.
**************************************
I have no breach you do not strike,
Though we are far apart.
Pity and friendship and love alike
Are strangers to your heart.
Oh, hate has made your reason rot.
Could ev'ry blow that falls
Land so precisely had you not
A friend within these walls?
************************************
On the expressive face, we see
Specific personality.
Involuntary features are
A whole lot less particular.
******************************
In times immemorial,
Love was corporeal,
Eve having eaten that apple.
Then a coy courtier
Made it much flirtier,
Thus guaranteeing some sap'll
Promise to telephone,
Making a fellow moan,
Frequent some taverns and chapels,
Then probably buy a tryst
With a psychiatrist.
How do you like them apples?
Passion, once primitive,
Strove to the limit, ev-
Entually reaching Romance
Where lovers loved airily,
Ending summarily
Deep in the land that is no man's.
Surely you've been in that
Bed draped with linen that
Lachrymose exudate dapples,
While he from Marsella, Spain,
Wires fruit in cellophane.
How do you like THEM apples?
************************************
I live on, only to review
The happiness I lost with you.
You live on, only 'cause I'm too
Preoccupied to deal with you.
*******************************
Yesterday's wish came true in you
Of whom I've since wished rid.
Now I regret, I really do,
When wishing wishes that came true,
Not wishing that I'd love you, too,
But then I thought I did.
But had I then wished you away
And off with other men,
Then I'd regret that wish and say
I wish that you were here today
Of whom I'm fully fatiguee.
What must one wish to win?
*****************************************
Jewish lovers' attitudes
Are basic'ly parental.
Catholics have ugly moods
And then get sentimental.
Protestants consider you
Another home apliance.
Atheists subject you to
Psychiatric science.
Throughout my sexu'ly active years,
From Roosevelt through Reagan,
I vainly sought through veils of tears
Another horny pagan.
***************************************
With love so soon neglectful,
And lust so prone to pick-ups,
And passion less respectful
Of dignity than hiccups,
And promises more fragile
Than crystal in a shot-put,
And acrobats less agile
Than liars on the spot put,
I wonder that we hunger
To find love's way and step it.
I rather thought, when younger,
I wouldn't when decrepit.
**********************************
I thought you wished me all the best
Until I took you to my breast.
Anatomy has never lied.
Your heart is on the other side.
**********************************
The torture of
Your prior love
Has left you gaunt and gloomy.
Though we've but met,
You've got to get
It off your chest onto me.
You're bound to blurt
Of human hurt,
Gargantuanly gory,
Though your report
Is in this court
Supererogatory.
Before we mate,
Expatiate
About the rites of wrong love,
But be so kind
As not to mind
If I should hum along, love.
You need to tell
Me love is Hell,
So little do you know me,
So do your worst.
Just be the first
To tell me, not to show me.
******************************
A-swirl in love's vortical current
While sirens and sophists be-myth me,
I dream it would be a deterrent
To drag someone pretty in with me.
**************************************
You can't help loving him?
He can't help loving them.
**************************
People act odd-like
When people look godlike.
**************************
Your love has died,
And is no more.
I would my pride
Had died before
As, long before
My pain or pride,
As much and more
For Sappho died,
For, "This is Hell,
And we are dead,"
We all know well
Great Sappho said,
Or might have said,
Or might as well:
"We all are dead,
And this is Hell."
*******************
It's just because we incarnate
That other things seem small or great.
A gamma-grain or galaxy
Impress a vacuum equally.
It's just because we live and die
That time appears to flag or fly.
Time doesn't offer hope or hurt
To things immortal or inert.
It's just because we hate and love
That others seem worth thinking of.
If we could be indifferent,
I wouldn't wonder where he went.
************************************
Upset an hourglass and see
Its sand sift down with gravity
To settle in a pyramid
As sand in ancient Egypt did.
Exert the effort to revolve
The glass, and see the sand evolve
As regularly as a rhyme
The pyramidal paradigm.
Is there a realistic way
To make recurrent DNA
Like sand reverse, recoalesce
Into your vanished loveliness?
But that must mean mine must revive
As plain as when I was alive.
Nor science nor pseudo-science hid
Solace in the pyramid.
********************************
Long after mis'rable midnight,
Till dawn with its beauty imbues you,
You reiterate what I did night
After night after night to lose you.
Love, you adjure, pulling grudges
From off of the very back burner,
Is made, prosection adjuges,
Of stuff that is very much sterner.
You mean you could wish love stronger?
Consider what you're beseeching.
If love should last very much longer,
I'll be on the floorboards, screeching.
**************************************
This bird has brought your terms of love,
Requesting your release.
I remember when the dove
Meant more than peace.
Upon this weathered battle-wall,
Where were defeated Greeks,
One may observe how trophies all
Become antiques.
This bird bears back the words you wrote
With one word underlined
In absolute agreement. Note
It is unsigned.
On struggle's often noble stage,
Where even failure's fame,
For foes who simply disengage
There is no name.
**********************************
The rainbow's but a minor thread
In spectra infinitely spread,
The scale an unimportant glitch
In music infinitely rich.
But all of time's and space's spans
Hold no emotion but a man's
Brief gamut of experience--
"Attraction" through "Indifference."
Today again you seemed so strange.
Be wary how you change and change,
For soon you will have put me through
All that a man may feel for you.
**************************************
I am unpliable
And unafraid,
Listing you liable
For love betrayed.
Though gut is gratified
Being so bold,
And reason ratified
Hearing truth told,
I am ridiculous
In my unease
Molding meticulous,
Mean melodies,
To you inaudible
As any thought.
Really more laudable
Biting tongue taut.
***********************
I can forgive, if I should live,
Your bent towards betrayal,
Your little slips into side-trips.
After all, you're male.
I can discount the vast amount
That I'm abandoned owing,
The file that spills recurring bills.
After all, you're going.
I can ignore your slamming door,
Your telephonic raving.
But you must pay till Judgement Day
For how I've been behaving.
*************************************
We vowed to hold each other dear
Until the stars should die.
Well, one by one, it would appear,
They're fading from the sky.
You're agitated that their light
Should evanesce away.
But, really, ev'rything's all right.
They vanish ev'ry day.
They leave no lovers' vows in doubt.
They only serve for show.
And anyway, a lot burned out
Millennia ago.
**********************************
I hear among the Attics
It was the favored game
To prove that mathematics
All turn out the same--
A game I find a lame thing,
As surely they did then,
Once they discerned the same thing
Is ever true of men.
***********************************
When eying an extinguished fire,
I fantasize it lit,
Envisioning what I desire
In its opposite,
Imagining the laudable,
Extinct Achaean dawn
While pondering the pitiful,
Pilfered Parthenon,
The Founding Fathers' overview
Embracing when I see
Democracy's raped residue,
Tawdry tyrrany.
My dead desire to see you smile
This reflex to revert
Just might rekindle for a while
Could I see you hurt.
*********************************
Love full-strength
And love full-length.
Of all of sex's facets,
Levity
And brevity
Are least considered assets.
***************************
I prayed that we might have one night,
And promised one would do,
Considering I had no right
To even one with you.
My promise in the morning light
Came absolutely true,
For you confirmed our one night quite
As adequate for you.
*************************************
This is true, and always was:
Men are made by formulas.
This was always true, and is:
Nobody can tell you his.
The good news is: by dint and doubt,
I've worked my combination out.
The bad news is: the data says
I'm most turned-on by challenges.
************************************
The speed of light is great, they say,
As is the speed of sound,
But stars are very far away,
And spiral so around.
What's more their radiance may take
Eternities to reach
A supplicant who, for love's sake,
Selects one to beseech,
So wishes made to some dead one,
Deceptive in the sky,
May strike an undiscovered sun
And bounce back by and by.
Some long-extinguished kinkajou
On some lost austral lea
Must once have wished for such as you
Some one just wished on me.
*******************************************
I am astonished that I am in love.
I rather fancied I'd forgotten how.
I blush to think of what I'm thinking of.
I flush, considering what I'd allow.
I can't conceive what gave the final shove.
I can't believe I ache to take the vow.
All you forgone phantasms up above,
Move over for a new companion now,
For I am foolish for another flame,
And taking up an old, unsteady stand
To fumble at an old, familiar game
While constellations on the stellar strand
Arrange themselves into a brand-new name--
God help us!--written in the same old hand.
******************************************
I'm neither loathed nor cherished,
Though some few might be sadder,
Perhaps, to hear I'd perished,
Perhaps some fewer gladder,
So I'll persist in living
At least until tomorrow,
That way at least not giving
Anyone much sorrow,
And might consider pausing
Some years beyond that measure
To miss the risk of causing
Anyone such pleasure.
*********************************
You made me face so many facts
Before our falling-out
What illusion's left to wax
Miserable about?
You so dispersed my fantasy,
There's little real to rue.
Thank God one lover proved to be
Literally untrue.
***********************************
Now and then, I must look
Through my memory book
At pictures of yesteryear.
Oh, what joy and what grief
I relive as I leaf
Through pictures of yesteryear.
Please don't frown if I laugh
At a sad photograph
Or a happy one brings on a tear,
For here at the last
All the past is the past
And a smile and a frown are both dear
In pictures of yesteryear.
*****************************************
There’s nothing in my e-mail that I’d read.
There’s nothing in my mailbox that I’d want
There’s no one I could call not guaranteed
To be a dullard or a dilettante.
There’s no one I could see not asinine.
There’s no one that I know not occupied.
There’s nobody to whom a lyric line
About them is of interest or pride.
It’s as remarkable that I keep on
Composing as it is ridiculous.
Did Sappho in the lambent lyric dawn
Of western poetry continue thus,
Punctiliously, pointlessly at work?
No, supple sleepers in her shadows lurk.
*****************************************
Not one of A.E. Housman’s golden beaus
Ever, I fancy, read a verse of his,
Nor did Cavafy’s athletes, I suppose,
Marvel at his mosaic messages.
Whitman, contrariwise, I’m rather sure,
Held readings for enraptured handymen,
And Wystan, claims the cliquish lit’rature,
Made lit’racy the price for getting in.
Of Maugham and Coward, journeyers afield,
One can’t confirm that English-speaking was
At all a requisite for them to yield
Their favors to “fahntahstic foreignahs.”
Sondheim played cards with naked fans as stakes
Who stood it for his brilliant lyrics’ sakes.
**************************************************
Consider me your wishing-well.
Ask me what you will.
Babylon or bagatelle,
You shall have your fill.
Believe my way has always been
To offer ev'rything.
Ignore those disapponted men,
Palely loitering.
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