At the Blood Bank

obviously and deviously derived from Beatles album cover photo

At the Blood Bank

by Pat Tompkins

Clench, pierce, pump:

out flows a hot, dark pint.

Before I make a deposit,

the nurse checks pressure, heat, iron,

questions drugs, sex, travel.

How little a no or yes tells.

A plastic vein transfers saturated memory,

richer than my medical history:

remembrance of every song the Beatles sang

craving for ice cream and chocolate bittersweet

preference for Graham Greene and Edgar Allan Poe

delight in snapdragons and swimming

abhorrence of foie gras and caviar

fondness for spaniels and basset hounds

experience with Iowa winters and West Coast earthquakes

Every few months, I gain unknown relatives

eating dessert, petting dogs, singing of love, looking for clues.

Mingling talismans, blood sisters/brothers,

somewhere out there, my secret sharers.

~ first published in flashquake

Night Music

venus & jupiter align - digital art: ralph murre

Night Music

by Pat Tompkins

The quarter moon rests in telephone wires,

a twilight clef sign. Jupiter aligns

with Venus, sounding solo notes.

With the sun offstage, other stars emerge

playing the music of the spheres.

Windows open, a car passes

an airborne song. Radio waving,

I slow dance in the high school gym

fifteen again for an instant,

but that tune’s now light-years distant.

~ first published in Astropoetica

Common Ground

artwork: ralph murre

Common Ground

by Pat Tompkins

We are mineral matter

calcium and sodium

refined into metals

precious and base:

tin ears and lead feet,

hearts of gold and silver tongues.

An iron stomach and nerves of steel

add to our mettle, tempered

by liquid: sweat, blood, and bile.

Ice in veins and watery eyes.

This malleable essence reigns

over bronze-skinned vessels,

which tarnish or rust, alkali

and earth, returning to dust.

~ originally appeared in flashquake

The Little Blue Horses

artwork: franz marc

The Little Blue Horses

by Pat Tompkins

Bold swoops of color, the canvas filled

 by three muscular blue animals,

 round haunches foreshortened

 black manes trace their curved necks.

Grazing a bright yellow and green field,

 heads tucked, shy, they do not gaze at the viewer.

 Pure potential energy of the new century

 before the war. The artist died at Verdun.

A quarter century later: Munich,

 an exhibit of “degenerate art” hosted by Hitler.

 “Die Kleinen blauen Pferde” shown

 with works by other artists. Verboten.

Picture Nazis angry about a painting

 of blue horses by Franz Marc.

 Goebbels and his ilk upset by horses

 the wrong color. Imagine the danger.

~ originally published in Everyday Weirdness

Recent Sighting . . .

digital montage - ralph murre

Recent Sighting of a 1962 Cadillac

by Pat Tompkins

Fins bristling and grille smiling,

top-down in December,

the blue car cruises: a living fossil.

The driver of this terrible lizard

keeps his own speed limit, fails to signal, glides

through stop signs confident as a general.

Is the man behind the wheel a connoisseur,

freezing a highlight in red taillights,

like a fly preserved in pitch?

Is the driver also the driven?

Founder of Detroit, Antoine Cadillac:

names, a place, a product tarnished.

~ originally appeared in Sugar House Review