2 Pattern Poems

"Artificial Intelligence"

I am the coy smiling handsome man
and my feet beat the darkness away when I rush.
And I rush, in the alleys, sightless,
an actor led by lines of wilting dialogue.
And jasmine litters the gutters, fit to be dredged, the
aroma and the petals streaked with reminiscence.
I rush. I am the man toward an apogee,
a scalpel, with tastes as keen as winter lavender,
and eyes that feel the weight of tastes behind them.
As I dredge the depths for rarer tastes
I rush toward the gutter.
And like the gutters I thirst, in the levees and fen-
In the fen the rush of prey caught
Idling fills the space inside my eyes like oil,
and I dredge the lake for traces.
I am the actor, the dredge, my wit rehearsed
and I am acquainted with the lady of the night.
I smile as she caresses my oily deluged eyes-
And her eyes are filled with bile,
accented by jasmine, even
in the dimmest light of
gutters are rushing to an
apogee, fiercer than I'd like them to
appear, but I am the scalpel, to incise the insincere-
I am the prince, an heir to exacting the coerced-
I watch her eyes like windows from the gutter like a vigil
and hold tight to her breath.
I pour her blood in paper cups
until her breath is weightless-
And I rush, an actor, in the scene that we portray-
I am the giver, the oily deluged eyes that close around the flesh
and rend the fruit from the rind.

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"Patterns of Veal"

In the beginning
the slowly spinning underpinnings of divorces and
Civil discourses serve as reminders to take off the blinders.
I am furious that the world is hideous, and
I plot fastidious courses through tiring sources
While insidious forces exert themselves
Like a series of lambs through a giant meat grinder,
Lambs just curious of the mysterious,
Then levied with serious reminders
That the world is imperious
And they are simply lambs.
The white fleece is marred
with the blue and black of fascist police
And the dark brown stains of elbow grease,
And the pains of being innocent
In a world so downright hideous.
Ground to dust and formed into cubes
Of gold and sold by the piece
Oxidized and rusted red, forced through
Tubes and high paying careers,
The lamb is used like bandoliers
And discarded like a casing
What once was wet behind the ears
Is left to hirings, employment, and retiring.
I am a lamb aspiring to climb atop the shelf and shout
“These colors are dull and uninspiring!
I'd rather paint with light itself!”