‘The Armory’, ‘Buttercup and the Afterlife’ & ‘ At the Pinnacle’

Donald Patten is an artist and cartoonist from Belfast, Maine. He produces oil paintings, illustrations, ceramic pieces and graphic novels. His art has been exhibited in galleries across Maine. His online portfolio is donaldlpatten.newgrounds.com/art

The Armoury 

I can see it, her love for me 

has dampened my fear, its  

broad fingered prairie blaze 

cauterised the

dissolution, disease, the death 

that will come at me now 

that little harder, with its fists raised 

swinging its fat little arms 

now that I have something 

somebody to lose 

I have something it wants.   

I will step into the arc of her  

the mountain austerity of 

who we are, to make myself 

a target, ready for the punch  

open to the strength of us 

to the soft machinery of us 

small fishlike bones of how we fit

in how we bloom with the 

seriousness of the sky 

with the ritual within our bodies  

which must be carried out, the 

soft muck of her and I exposed 

aligned, spread like weapons 

on a blanket. 

Buttercup and the Afterlife      

In rain I am walked by the dog

herded by her darkened muscle over

potholed streets 

compelled by the froth of wolf cub 

love beast  

edgeless unnavigated coagulate of 

lightness track 

expanse of back alleys, cut throughs, 

desire lines  

navigated by snout, netted in a 

flush of scent of 

consummate gutter sniffer, fur bound 

trash hound 

into sightlessness, the slip of the knot 

of being  

to move out across curb ways into

the patterns 

of the elderly, morse of post divorce 

death wait, freedom beyond the 

human of me

into the 

swarming approach a of silence, a 

winter evening, off the leash. 

I am a dark wing; the sky is a bridge of 

birds, indistinguishable, one.

Father, Mother, take me home

It is time to go, be never heard of 

again.   

At the Pinnacle  

I have spent time with it   

this stink, naked wheeze of 

all I have not lived  

sat with it in the dark 

held hands with its boneless 

featureless form 

pressed my teeth into the 

hard bread of soured love 

known it as mine.

Not that I care. 

When I was ten, I 

reached those plumbs 

slithered myself over the 

plastic sheets 

of the shed roof  

the one 

shoddily built by my dad 

I was told to stay away from 

that could collapse at any point 

impale me on his hoard 

on unused garden tools

to seize the fruit

the perpetual flowing ocean of 

sugared love, the dead eyes of 

an unjudging god 

want free isolation of the 

highest branch.     

Alan Hill has been writing like his life depends on it; because it does. He cannot imagine there is a better way of trying to make sense of the world that follows him around with its bad breath and big hairy fists. His latest book 'In the Blood' was published by Caitlin Press in 2022.