She was only asking if her Matryoshka dolls would be safe…

                                         *

By the time I met him, he had a potato stone at the center of his grand synthesis

                                          *

He didn’t know he was a nervous wreck until Perry Como sang

                                            *

On his lonely way, he kept his hands at his sides until the diamond needle skipped 

                                             *

Instigators of unmanned aerial attacks know nothing about the whites of a child’s eyes

                                              *

Limping through eighty-four thousand Dharma doors to shake Yevtushenko’s hand

                                              *

Opening the koan with a yellow Lego I found under the backseat

                                              *

The adjunct professor has arrived at the pool with his scattered notes on lofty things

                                               *

When most alone, in the greenhouse ’round the praise of blue sage, she’s young again

                                               *

Horseshoes and hand grenades with every utterance

                                               *

It takes a green bile duct and a certain smirking, lickspittle disposition, to serve a tyrant

                                                *

Pussy willows in the vase, slowing the arrow of time

                                              *

The Roman Emperor Domitian, commanded the senators to kiss his knobby, yellow-bunioned feet during receptions…

Patrick Sweeney is a short form poet and a devotee of the public library.