Pat Paulk


Even Though

i woke up this morning
with my bones melting
pooling in the soles of my feet

i squished
when i walked to the bathroom
sloshed when i stopped
yeah though i walk
through the valley
of the shadow …

I still fear!
leaving puddle-prints
of skeletal slush


Light One Up

Are stars the flickering tips of cigarettes
being smoked by fallen angels that never sleep?
The sun, a fat smelly stogie burning down
to the last puff this world will ever know?

Paper rolling postulation?
Unfiltered thoughts of fantasy?

At the very least a musing
lighting up a smoke of imagination.


Ashes Of Ghosts

Words can be empty
even when full.

You can tie them together
like garlic in panty hose,

hang them from
the toe of a lost poet’s dream;

they’re still just words,
empty when full,
ashes of ghosts howling
in the period after goodbye.


Something I Said

Words fall,
like soldiers on a field
of someone else’s choosing,

fatally woundedin the trigger pull
of sound proof ears.


Last One Out Lock The Door

Death is like a door in a room.
We paint over it, even the knob,
so, it’s inconspicuous as can be.
If we can’t see the handle
we surely won’t open it by mistake.

We can nail boards from jamb to jamb,
add sophisticated locks that require a key,
a combination, and a dead bolt with hardened steel.
Security measures make us feel safe, except
in the pit of our stomach we know
it opens from the other side, locked or unlocked.

-all poems gathered from his blog, Poetry In A Garden Of Fire