Sae true, my love.
I never outgrew talking to dead poets. Got pretty serious with Blake and a couple of others, whispering their verse deep in the woods down the path from my childhood home. Of course that got a bit unmodern once I was old enough to hear the world shouting at me. I loved Kenneth Patchen instantly and wanted to take him as my undead bride, but had superstitious need not to upset Miriam. Sure, that might be magical thinking but I will; so it is not impossible to expect that some loves are too great to upset. Who knows, if I had been in the same time as Kenny, he could have shown more of the same bullshite if a, gulp, girl expressed the need to connect in real time. Unless I was/hadbeen a nun or an overpriced courtesan. It is so good that all of that boy/girl outdated thinking is over and done in our modernity.
Anyway, I guess my convoys with Ken doll are what one might call safe fantasy. And again pretty PG-13 because I believe in great love more than any other theory of [hu]man. It is just that sometimes you need someone to address or even an audience but saying Gentle Reader doesn’t cut it, because it seems like a voice that belonged to others for many many moons.
In 2001, I cut out iron-on letters to make a tank top that said “Save it for your blog.” Who knew the blog would blow up then be reinvented with a cooler youth-conceived name then just called ‘blog’ again after that millennial batch got old really fast. I feel like our Gen X time stretched out but then we didn’t take a picture of everything or much or up the profit machine by working for free posting our lives as a blur of reality content. I only knew handfuls of freaks I saw at shows. You could still get pummeled for tats or hair color then and you’re welcome. I mean, I get it. As said previously, I thought problems might go away if the old guard left or died off. But I never poopideed on the minds that advanced freedom or discovery. And even now I realize that there is always an ungeneralized story to those who dedicate their lives to getting involved in the political world. It is a damn luxury to sit back and crap on political efforts before heading off to an overpriced music fest that just isn’t all great. The pop formula and all-chorus alt bands were an issue well before it all went robot and punks went country–those same punks, by the by, that refused any form of musical romance because it was not brutal enough. And yes, they made for lousy lovers unless you had some kind of kink to work out where you just wanted to be dominated. Would have hated to wake up from that psychosis to see the wank who worked out the bully to take his porn guts education out on a fem who was somehow convinced that this was a barter that might lead to a great release from all of this stupidity.
I can tell I’m going full Grandpa Simpson and am not even going to proofread this because who cares? No one comes here. If they did, I hope it was educational. Maybe a bit less douchery could bloom from reading these epic truths or whatever this is? If it helps, I could say I’m a man or an alien or AI. Maybe AI will save us from ourselves. Except that it is probably programmed by ERROR ERROR ERROR…
For Kenneth Patchen
It was never done,
your walk from pyre to pyre
on celestial stilts. Each step shed
its charry skeleton closer to the ground.
And money burns faster than faith
when you have no faith in money.
In the sorting of possession—
a ring, identification, unfinished words—
the poet doesn’t leave much unsaid.
Whorls of swords scrape blood
and opinions, temper the edges
of youth, make room for memories
in the widowed grip on the hilt
of a hero’s blade. Honesty is
the death of the body.
There’s no need for music,
my love. Death dances
a swansong after birth,
waiting to eat its own words
from the beak of another stranger.
But should we need
our own dance, our own music,
your lips sang lullabies
wrapped in animal instinct,
in the sensualness of holy writ.
LAFogle©2021
written for the Los Angeles Poetry Beach Festival
Happy Deathiversary
Columbus, January 8, 2022
Happy Deathiversary,
I imagine you’d like us writing poems for you. To shake the trees with the breeze of words read aloud. In this you never left. When the flowers return, I’ll pick a Tiger Lily for you. It is my favorite flower, as the symbology means “For once may pride befriend you.” Sounds sweet, but what of pride and tigers is nice? When respect teeters on arrogance, dignity on conceit; which angel became devil and how could that battle reward the meek until the winner was determined? Reeks of a propogandistic maxim to me. Behold! The tiger has no spots! Look on, Cheetah Lily. Look on, seed. You be the rain if we must cry. You be the thunder if we must roar. We be the laughter in this undead tragedy, watching trash TV, calling idealists naive and the hopeful prideful; but spare the stars not in the sky.
Ken, I like talking to you because what I just said was probably more freeing than odd. I too want to speak all the words; for the angels to be more than sightings of intrinsic phosphene firing from the mind’s magnetic sight. We ride in the hands of a godlike child flying ghost planes through a more visibly sick world. Each night, grown offspring fold their robe of slights in sackcloth palls and sheets of dread. Their causes have waned and with them go covenants, modeled foundation, with styled scarves concealing torsoless heads floating above their animal vessel. How long, father, is this tournament and when do we rest?
Hey, when I read works of your generation, my gender sticks out a lot in prehistoric moments. Growing up, this was like being a child in the room while parents speak of you like you are not there or comprehending either meanings or intonations—it’s really patronizing and disassociating. I wonder if anything hits men over the head quite so much when they grow up reading—superiority of other men? But I can close one eye and read through timely reification, so long as the women and innocents were danced with instead of dissected as syphilitic zoophilic pieces of seductive naughty bits, slain for laurelled perspective dominance. People now don’t dismiss vessels as easily by the tango of their chromosomes, though hopefully we grow more increasingly modern. Remind me to ask you if you remember first learning of anim-, herm, and their loanwords?
Her rib is a feather. My feather of roots spin ahs and guttural pauses from an eternity of
questions we’ll ask again until answered: Why.
Sure is a doozy bartering for belonging in this collective consciousness. I guess we all have our side of the planet to gaze from at the flat line we understand to be round, while the unconventional dally with infinite walks up the glassy stairs of logic, and all the sounds hitting the ground like acorns with their hashtag caps and waggy nutbrains.
You were ahead of your timeline and I was lucky to find your seeds; seeds to which each(s)(p)age can relate: you noetic, throbbing in a larger state of grace With loose punctuations for new thoughts that seem they weren’t supposed to full stop. But I don’t know. Mine’s a perennial view. I’ll write a poem when the last one fades. Until then, Happy Deathiversary, my friend.
Long, the joybells ring!
With energy for better things;
The contentious turn content.
The end.
[From Erik van Loon of Poetry Train] A few weeks ago I asked the poets of LAPB2021 to write a poem to commemorate the 50 death anniversary of Kenneth Patchen on Januari 8. LA Fogle wrote the letter above to Kenneth and to introduce this letter she wrote me:
I wrote a poem last month for Kenneth Patchen’s birthday, hosted by LA Beach Poetry and Poetry Train, with the theme of “Get Ready To Die.” That piece might be better served for today, the anniversary of his death. So, instead, I will write him a freeform letter of sorts. ~ LAFogle
Featured on Poetry Beach https://www.poetrybeach.com/2022/01/08/happy-deathiversary/
the sea + earth gave birth to wonder
Sae true, my love, my ain sae true
love The sea is callin you The wind
is hollerin Her cut-throat openin
in song, out o tune
Tis true, my dear, she’s callin
tae wimble her weavin loom
The boat sways in black waves
tethered frae fallow tae toom
Respicere, my dear, she’s nosin
the sand Ne’er ween, but weet
I will follow you
Transcendin thought o where we lay
sae if you must go, sae if I must stay
Carry the great & ferry the sea
narry the wait & marry to me
Poem: LAFogle©2007, music: After-Death Plan©2017
