Pat Nolan


ODE OF CHOICE

I’m content with my choices
if that’s what they actually are
I don’t recall the crux where
I might have chosen one or 
the other but there must have 
been that moment when I had to 
decide the results are evident 
enough although the chain of 
memory binds me to a familiar 
place within where I find calm
my whole time taken up reading
or writing reading about writing
writing about reading as if
they were the most necessary
things I could choose to do yet
clearing out the vines beneath
the wisteria paring away fuzzy
bruised skins putting peaches up
are demands that must be attended 
to for which there is no choice
and add to the details of the day
that give weight to my decisions

 

SELF-INDULGENCE IN THE GUISE OF A HIGHER CALLING

In a closed society
looking for a way out
is criminal behavior

silence is the ultimate music
the space between events
the most resonant of all

that the world can even exist
and that I be a part apart
unknown even to myself
regarding the maturity of the season
and the time past a blur
if not for the catalog of those accounts
that made those moments what they were
the things said being the things done
new worries sprouted from the seeds of old 
worries walking the tight rope tipping point
the landscapes less severe may be indistinct
resolution results in a certain satisfaction
that which must be held cannot be grasped
all along the lollipop trail of reason
to be secure in the simple sugars of belief
the secret to the quantum of the word
that it can reveal as well as obfuscate

“you must if you don’t you’re failing”

I hate those little voices giving pep talks 
they echo in the ironic distance and yet 
another day belongs to dust and weather

with the passing of each old friend
the lie of our immortality makes clear

an anemic wave of light
filtered by the chill coastal air
language provides its own rhetoric

technology has always allowed
literature to be viewed differently
at every retooling of telling

my impatience surrounds me



TIME AS 

the expression of our ignorance of the universe
a place of contradiction witnessed by the subject

expenditure of a logical conclusion
logical conclusion of an expenditure

thermal equilibrium where past 
present future are the same

time as the arc of destruction 
like Zeno’s arrow infinitely divisible

(complexity slows entropy 
by keeping it occupied)

perceive time as coexistence with the world

an insistence on the present 
which is always the next thing coming

hand over hand pulling ourselves 
along with the rope of time anticipating
the length ahead while leaving
the coils of our anticipation behind

time as the suffering of mortality

 

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

Sometimes all it takes is a nudge 
to derail a thread a path a dream
eye opening on a mind closed
to the decades that have flown
unattached to any real reality all
the energy expended over nothing
in a crowded field not everyone
gets the same sunlight or attention
the cultivation of resonance from 
the past winnowing the vast archives
clueless to anything not self-advancement
becomes the cruel twist to the game
viewed from up close or at a distance
nothing changes but the measurement
not preoccupied with the language 
effect but the clash of discontinuity
that would strike for a moment 
a spark sometimes all that it takes
distracted into the self as reverie
the itch the bug the sinking discontent
remains elusive as a vague jealous envy
and rationalization runs in circles
further deepening the groove of a captive
mindset laboring under a despot of delusion
that something will become of all of this
up against a wall whose texture is sorrow
or just the vague verdigris of self-pity
desperation’s desire for the undesirable
flinches at the flagellations of regret
fed up with the pretense of normal
the lost cause is impossible to find


 
HAVING A MOMENT 
(Sonnet in the Voice of Rimbaud’s Other)

With the advancements in science
we could look at our origins under
a microscope a curious preoccupation
we are not who we thought we are
or what class of beast we represent
with myth allowed for our follies
without allowed for our failings
we are as perfect as our surroundings
shaped by landscape and light
beyond which is idle speculation
greater heights belong to birds to
whose evolution our steps must follow
gain the air along with the earth
reign supreme or swim with the fishes
 


AFTER ISSA 

always the last to 
melt yellow icicle in 
the snow by my gate

in the echo chamber
not a sound
the redundant silence

knock on the door
hurriedly dress
this stifling heat

funny face
anticipating
the next sneeze

gripped by cold
in a monochrome world
the howl of wind

chopping firewood
and the wretchedness 
of the world

as much as I wished
you’d stay you had to leave
breathing memory

shopping list from
a year ago the familiar
old winter coat

“I awoke in 
the middle of the night and
said ‘it’s raining’”
 


I KNOW BETTER
               “the smile of the father 
               whose pain made him sing”
               —Julia Kristeva

Self-diagnosis rears its
pointy orthodox head 

flaw in the hominid 
ointment or maybe 
just progenitor ego

there is no consensus 
outside the circus

surfaces where 
dust and coffee 
cup rings gather

to do something 
by doing nothing
someone’s touch 
bridges other worlds

slowly die being 
ourselves much quicker 
as someone else

cerulean blue bordered 
by the haze horizon

at the periphery men 
wistfully whittle away
their grand dreams 
to feed the hearth

innocence is blind 
to our darkening soul’s 
creeping corruption 
of aging oxidization

lyric encounter with 
the moment living in 
the shadow of the flame

Pat Nolan’s poetry, prose, and translations have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies in North America as well as in Europe and Asia. He is the author of a dozen poetry selections including So Much, Selected Poems Vol. II (1990-2010) from Nualláin House, Publishers (2019) and the thousand marvels of every moment, a tanka collection (Nualláin House, 2018). His online poet-centric novel, Ode To Sunset, A Year In The Life Of American Genius, is available for perusing at odetosunset.com. He is also the founder and editor of The New Black Poetry Society’s blog Parole. Made In The Shade, a limited term poetry document, began posting monthly in January of 2022 and which will end on December 31, 2022 can be viewed at made-in-shade.com. His most recent fiction project is Dime Pulp, A Magazine of Serial Pulp Fiction (tencentfiction.com). Pat lives in the redwood wilds along the Russian River in Northern California.

 
 

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