Patrick James Dunagan – The Dalles, The Dailies


Patrick James Dunagan

The Dalles, The Dailies


            Born in Portland, Ore., on Oct. 20, 1923, Mr. Whalen grew up in The Dalles on the Columbia River.

                      –            San Francisco Chronicle obit, Thursday, June 27, 2002

             I listen
             as I eat the street for supper
             listen to the pain songs
                          of Mexico.
             Flashes of returning
             come with the birds.

                      –     Joseph Ceravolo

Back of feeling
not feeling
that day might bring
best parts
gone horribly
wrong

_____________

Love and for no good reason
– A. Notley)
between feeling and not
we do what we do

_____________

By grace few
along the rail creating cycle

_____________

Through white slits of mountaintops
tips of pines below
off heights drawn from wind
feathered wings soaring know

_____________

What prior hands gripped
choral discipline deficit

_____________

Thing is map
world a globe
no concern prior
loss of it

_____________

List the things we do
List the names we know
List the birds of song
List to list again

_____________

Care now
the here
the air
we breathe

_____________

Miss Consideration
there’s the rub
smother the mask
and behind the eyes
hide thy wit

_____________

Spit or spew
song comes

_____________

Opposable thumb
brain digits rolling biz

_____________

Trucking it a la Rimbaud
pain of scarcity

_____________

How the tail
transforms easily
to a left thing
the animal must handle
as though the appendage
itself were migrant

_____________

Alive in all this wet heat

_____________

Come upon a pair of eyes
on the page

_____________

Thing for thing
among whorls of word

_____________

Plain day speech
played against light
dark words bare

_____________

Slender tinged fern tip
bright with excitement

_____________

Among the flowers a child
in the early morning light

_____________

No word
for before
that moment
no more

_____________

Oxy hydra drawl
ennobles night’s
symphonic glut

_____________

Typing listening

_____________

Mired wing-down in tuber
deep sound

_____________

Voices in the head
preferable
to no voices at all

_____________

You are gone
in spaces left
an image persists

_____________

To tree to sky
day come

_____________

As ever & again
doing the same
day turns to day

_____________

As though words
had hopes extant

_____________

Earth turns flesh
deliberate poles of purpose

_____________

Kitty breaths
dear to be near

_____________

Moving vowels
bristling motors
the lawn goes wild

_____________

More bombs
bomb the world
the world I’m in
missing you more
bombs the world
missing you

_____________

Fiery inchoate

_____________

Were I not I
no such thing
now would be

_____________

O body o ghoul
render free
the fantastic chorus

_____________

Night lights shine
aural era discipline

_____________

Inside of Milton heroic
couples stroll paths
in valley’s lush green
bright echo of day

_____________

I seems incredible

_____________

Sweet singular
joyous expression
back of breath

_____________

It’s not easy
doing this while
that goes
all the while

_____________

Alone
traipsing a field of white

_____________

Avatar of cove & briar

_____________

Squirrel hops from branch to quivering

_____________

May all of it come again
every day every day

_____________

          for O

Wing of bird dipped low
upon the horizon

_____________

Poet be poet let
it be that poet
love poet let it
be that

_____________

“…it’s all the same fucking day”
o Joplin o bright day

_____________

Poetry who cares hooray!

_____________

Polished stone working-class
understanding

_____________

Poiesis verb flaneur
bait plays patience

_____________

Hundreds of years for shards
of once moved-in space

_____________

Nothing past her hesitant kitty moment of becoming

_____________

Statement alone is not enough
inlet the subject

_____________

Behind words sound
again again
in the middle of everything

_____________

Edible visual stimulus

_____________

“Consult a spiritual lawyer”

_____________

21st Century ventriloquism
from confusion rises consciousness
annihilation of common sense

_____________

Mid arch hi-flier
honeyed out

_____________

Moonlight isn’t like
‘in the movies’ the stars
don’t ‘look good’

_____________

Names calling out a world
for parts of a whole

_____________

Wreaking havoc abroad
havoc at home havoc in
the stars would they

_____________

Eyes is words
abstraction of math
dark path to walk
engaging vicious sun

_____________

The poem
the poem alone
the poem alone attests

the poem

_____________

From a woman I knew
not how to talk to:
“a ghost of the real
inhabits me as well as you”

_____________

Father no address farther
than I have come

_____________

Light between the shades
for a portion
of the long run day

_____________

Get tongue unraveled
chords to blow

_____________

o was there song
worth praise when high
above it all
the shit came clean

_____________

Thing enough
specimen

_____________

Anything but complete
useless sounds
as if eternal
now the feeling

_____________

Only the voices
recognized
become known
and implanted
the rest go down
by way of the shore
tossing gold coins through the air


 

return to SHAMPOO 40