poem in progress

my parents had been 

great readers

before TV

my mom

would discover 

an author

and read all 

his works

at the library

                        when i came

along there was

no reading 

only TV

but there were 

the stories

about the books

the library

a kind of

nostalgia

for books

then priesthood-

high school

no girls

bored me silly

started reading

for the first time

novels

jules verne

robert louis stevenson

magnificent escape

entertainment

was mocked

by an effete priest

for reading

kids’ books

ignored his rudeness

meanwhile

the world opened

July 2015

missing link?

broken link

[on seeing an online photo of an intern going through clancy sigal's papers at the ransom]

while googling myself a few years ago

i discovered that norman mailer

had sold his papers 

to the harry ransom center

at the university of texas at austin

and there was my name

as one of his correspondents

in an index to the boxes of letters

he saved, probably a dozen 

letters of mine over thirty years

i used to check the site occasionally

to remind myself of my brush with greatness

at the notorious 1968 democratic convention

i'd gotten an autograph and we'd

exchanged a few meaningless words before

he flew back to provincetown

i later sent him a letter to criticize his version

of existential philosophy and he sent

a fuck you reply, but it was a friendly fuck you

so i continued to send praise or blame

over the years

for his numerous works and he'd reply

as the mood struck him but he put my letters

into a file, evidently, quite the pack rat, aware

that someday the biographers would

come lurking

                       but yesterday

i discovered that the link is dead

and navigating the site is now restricted

the harry ransom center requires you

set up an account--life keeps getting

so much more complicated 

it was easier at the convention

when the humphrey people voted down

the peace plank, meaning we'd stay

in the war for good--as we have--

you knew then, finally,

where the establishment

was going, and it did

may 2013

stopping by weeds dive bar of an evening

weeds

cost me thirty bucks all in

two glasses of bombay-on-the-rocks

then another drink to pay off after losing at 8-ball

and a couple bucks to the barman

the entertainment lacked something rich

except for two performances

one, the crazed gorgeous senior declaiming violently

on middle-east politics, even

shrieking here and there

—a lota good that’ll do—

then chuck rolled out something from the past

about an aging rollicking r & b diva

shaking up a summer chicago political block party

on her way to a hoped-for comeback

then the one about the dying brother

hallucinating bravely before the nurses

put him back to bed—it said

something strong, moving even, about

endurance and imagination

even on the way out

i passed when i was offered the mike

too out of shape even for this

unsubtle venue, maybe in the next life

assuming the gods are generous

july 2013

Always Fun

Always fun to witness
a frank poetry throwdown.

Goes back to Whitman
and the absinthe-swilling ass-fuckers in Paris

with a touch of Thomas Hardy’s brutality
and then the entire 20th century

–hipsters versus the suits–
pencils and then the keypads

blinking out secret sadnesses
and begging for love.

2010

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wise heads

wise heads suggest

balance, maturity,

forgiveness where

i find betrayal.

maybe violence

will make me whole.

silly since cracked

limbs barely

carry me along,

vision failing

hearing less, less,

flab where muscle was

heartbroken yet, 

ignoring wise heads

old friends, barely

wondering, walk away

Copyright 2012 by Patrick O'Hayer

transit of venus

old old friend

with plush equipage

scales heights to

view the rarest

cosmic event

a black dot

snailing across

the white-hot disc

used in olden time

to triangulate

the parallax of

the human heart

Copyright 2012 by Patrick O'Hayer