
Tags: Nicholaus Patnaude, poem, poetry, the one black diamond in a sea of hate
“Kisses on the Hunt”
An addiction is a cure.
A craving: a promise.
Make me a home and safe.
and ponds for our love, dovetails
an easy exchange of medals
but your glory grew dusty
your prehistoric wings disused
who’ll need to regret
for people like me
for people like you
are comfortable with no one
it’s risen and raised beds
after diamond ring and bells do ring
under chandelier and champagne
the dull attitudes
shifting to a deeper boredom
one light is all I ask of you
in the bone-dry mountains
fed by an inward stream.
“A House with Warmth”
We’re cold without you
Please come inside
There’s icicles in your eyes
Which I don’t want to be true
We won’t need to worry about you
The stables will take us
to light candles when we pass
I’ll crumple in your sheets
to smell your sweat
Your sweetness is the burning of the sky
Ride horses with me
Hold my brown leather hand
There’s stirrups come to meet us
And daffodil dresses come between us
Where crosses burnt your evil
Issues in the breeze,
enveloped in tobacco leaves,
humming bunny:
birth in blue veins, red veins
a cloak of desire
soaking up wet miracles.
“Will You Still Leave with Me Tomorrow?”
You’ll be special
in memories of you
written on cold breaths:
a route of your choice,
a horse who knows no tomorrow,
a pet who leaves love.
I’m mice.
I’m marbles.
My bones climb to attics without me.
Come along:
we’ll skip the perfume counters
red bullseye parlors, targets at our backs
larynx and lynx eyes, radio silence
ends of transmission: we’re androids
running from a second chance
a wave that could’ve crashed differently
a deployment ritual
beyond the rivets of our design
or kiss me in the rivers
scents hold of you in strummed hours.
“In a World of Weeds and Stronger Flowers”
Give in to this authority
heed not the trust you wrest
from chests sincere
a look you give is cursed hooting
it’s backbreaking in the moonlight
and scary smiles bedevil
told to you in cute fish voices
when I look at you
the rodeos and windmills
ratchet us up telephone poles
the souls of wild animals
and we touch down at dusk
we touch dawn and landing strips
when I look at you, they take me away
in scribble me memories
for this is all we have:
faint notes, wounded hymns,
and hurt cockroaches.
“I Liked Your Mud”
Your tattered pictures
disused lipstick
in the supermarket
of carry me along and away
underwear carnations
had a home and people that loved
send it by post
even when naked: still on stilts
don’t tell anyone else about us
your secrets are safer than me
fishing for cats with cattails
we’ll dress as frog women always always
it’s death in the queen’s castle
placing blue roses in bishop’s caskets
they cried this us our girl to graves
and all passion renewed
at the thought of this tired newspaper
you’re dead to me but so are you.
“Maybe Magic”
Maybe on the death of each horizon
when birds hatch prematurely
and the hens of our throbbing hearts
cast prophecies
spores on our witch thighs,
Bengal tigers in our witch breath,
we travel on a cold magician,
in spite and anger, spiral on spire,
a spell renewed cast aside,
a chocolate trunk,
crying in the darkness, a rug now made
of once our lies and as we lie
animals and instead of magic on a beach
on a wounded slipper night
when seashells hurt inside you
and we kissed to frostbite
a dawn erased
no one will find our fossils
if we swing through the trees
fast enough to outrun our shadows.
“Candy Heart Crime”
Thanks for your patience—
Do I deliver you in secret—
When the wind talks.
When the hoarfrost rattles
a cage in a cave,
your ballerina slippers
the jackal within burns bridges
cast iron steel aflame
the candy heart crime
webs the cottonmouth snake
steals the kittens
a princess invited me
candy stripped of cane and vipers
removes the nail polish of hammers:
did love forge a future:
we,
emerald crocodile to emerald crocodile
forever in flame.