DANIEL MARK PATTERSON - POEMS

Daniel Mark Patterson has been a voice on stages across North America for over 10 years, but has forayed into literary waters for the first time in 2020. In 2018 he won the Art in Action Award for his video poem "Autobiography of a Body" and its portrayal of mental illness. In September 2017 he featured prominently in "In Their Words" a TV Documentary following the lives of 5 Spoken Word poets. He has work soon to be appearing in The Gateway Review and New Feathers Anthology. He is also hard at work on a Spoken Word Show titled "Mortality by Lamplight."

Open Letter: To the Beds that have borne me:
​

​Dear beds,
receptacles of excess,
you containers of deodorant-free fluff,
domiciles of drool,
holders of flatulence,
chaste victims of more bare-assed hi-jinx,
than any ghetto encrusted
toilet seats anywhere.

Thank you for your patronage,
catching crumbs and cradling,
weeping naked flesh on too many nights alone.
 
Thank you for long suffering silence,
for mere whisper of springs
after constant defilement.
 
Apologies for the acts of solo loving,
and the evidence left on your body.
 
I don't envy you your job,
professional snuggler, surrogate,
substitute partner,
comfortable dream maker,
wet dream,
morning wood taker.
 
You are the accomplice of all
my procrastinations and laziness,
the confidante of all my tears.
You have always been my perfect refuge,
my rejuvenation,
my makeshift hospital when I am sick.
 
It has been many years
since I have jumped on your bedsprings,
enjoyed the happy squeal of your mechanics
beneath my bare feet. I am bigger now,
and I don't wish to break you,
but it has been eons since I've heard you sing.
 
Metallic soprano,
may this poem be an opera,
with you a one woman band,
I have always considered myself
a one woman man.
 
Yet I love you, and this is not enough,
so call me your poly-amorous,
filth and semen encrusted Dan Juan,
for I am seeking one more to
help your box-spring belt again,
one more to spoon when I look out
the window at a sunrise,
one more to write poetry to.

Legend of a Hedgehog
​

​Ronald Jeremy Hyatt.
He is the “Porn King,”
Guinness World Record holder for appearing
in over 1800 pornographic films,
100 mainstream TV shows,
movies, and music videos.
 
Infamously nicknamed the
“Hedgehog” for excessive hairiness
and profuse sweating on set,
this short, squat little man
from the documentary Porn Star:
The Legend of Ron Jeremy
was unexpected.
 
I expected him to be cold, arrogant, repugnant,
yet Ron exuded an odd warmth,
an awkward charm,
a slightly sad self-deprecation.
 
He’d always repelled me,
although secretly, I envied him.
Because I’d been with
3 women in my entire life.
Because I mistook sex for intimacy.
Because I always slept alone.
 
Thing is nobody can escape loneliness.

I wonder when he closes his eyes,
if he can see the face of the
first girl to kiss him.
Or the one who took his virginity.
His first crush.
Perhaps he wrote her a love poem,
crumpled it up,
too terrified to show it to her.
 
Somewhere in this semen-encrusted Eden,
he fucked his innocence away.
Love became a fairy-tale for schmucks.
An ironic joke.

There are 3 things
many female porn stars won't do:
Bestiality
Anal sex
Ron Jeremy
 
He laughs at this.
He likes to make others laugh.
See them smile. See him smile.
See how happy he is.
You have to love him. He makes you laugh.
The biggest porn star in the world.
The fat, ugly little troll,
doing it for the underdog over and over again.
 
Faithfully fucking the weeks,
the months, the years into oblivion.
 
Fucking the pain away.
Fucking the pain away.
Fucking his pain away.
 
Do you hear the snickering...the disdain
in their eyes evident in their touch?
 
He has fame. He is alone.
He is surrounded by people. He is alone.
He fucks thousands and thousands of women.
He is alone. He has forgotten how to love.
He is trapped in a valley of unholy orifices,
mutant monstrous moans.
The faces are fleshy shadows.
He has forgotten how to love.
 
No more girls to write poetry to.
No more anticipated first kisses.
No cherished faces hidden behind his eyelids.
 
He has forgotten how to love.

Eclipse
​

​I often cling too longingly
during hugs,
hold that hand one awkward
(beat)
too long.
Sometimes I disparage myself,
because I like to be reassured
Others care.
 
This world of warmth
and friends
is a strange
one for me.
It lacks the
isolation
and cruelty
I am used to.
 
There is a safety here.
Sometimes the greatest
gift is an absence of fear.
 
Unfortunately, even this
absence
sometimes births it.
 
Do you recognize the fervency
behind my laughter?
The mania behind my jokes?
 
I worry I do not belong here.
That all those I love will realize
I am not worthy of these
kindnesses.
 
That,
I am Lucifer.
Become too bold,
striven too hard,
and
must be
flung
off
my
lofty
perch.
 
I feel certain
that this world is
too full of beauty.
That it's all being used up.
 
So I will clutch a little more fiercely,
laugh a little more frantically,
sing a little more feverishly,
dance a little more frenetically
these lunar nights.
 
Each morning I stuff a section
of the sun in my belly.
 
Lest the Universe snatch the Love away,
replacing it with ashes.

The Mortality Diaries
​

​Tonight I hear my own breathing.
Surrounded by 4 walls,
and so much silence,
it seems all other existence
is a waking dream or nightmare.
 
Tonight I’m not the last survivor
of the Apocalypse,
because life has never lived
outside of me. I am God,
as they may have been at the beginning.
 
Not a mastermind,
a lonely kid,
wanting someone
to play Tonka Trucks and Barbies with.
Eternal period on a blank page.
No sentence. No Universe. No page.
Just the broken wheeze of my own loneliness.
 
My internal Wasteland calls and I answer it.
From my tears the forests grow.

Insomnia
For the Stardancers who glide along the surface of a dream,
but can never fall in.
​

Insomnia,
 
my 3 am nightly liaison,
undeterred by the tears and fears which sometimes visit me pillowside.
The lies which fester an inch beneath the skin,
ready to curdle a mother's love in her breast.
You smell,
you smell of desperation,
and murdered nostalgia,
unborn children,
and acid rain atmosphere before the water falls.
 
I am Bluto,
all savage brute denial,
you Popeye devouring my doubts like spinach.
You're Poison Ivy,
I'm Johnny Canuck clear-cutting your forest,
but at some point we collapse into each other,
until the sunlight simmers on my eyelids.
And the nights you aren't there...Insomnia.
I itch for you.
 
Insomnia,
let's make it official,
and become a couple.
Share my bed so it'll never be empty,
and I'll buy you a promise ring.
When I can afford it.
What do you say Toots?
I'll down 6 Pomegranate seeds on our wedding night,
don a white gown,
for when we meet on the other side of darkness.
 
Dance Dance Dance with me Insomnia!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Tonight you will be my lord of the Underworld,
and I will be your Persephone Princess.
When we consummate this marriage do not be gentle.
I prefer scars with stories to a blank slate oblivion.
Be my thorn encrusted hug. Share your
kingdom with me until the seasons change.