Poems of Gatsby
By Greg Patrick
Based on Characters from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Novel “The Great Gatsby”
“Gatsby. He had an extraordinary sense of hope. But I had the uneasy feeling that he was guarding secrets.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald
“A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn’t think he’d remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.”-from “Citizen Kane,”by Orson Welles
“The world was on fire and no one could save me but you. It’s strange what desire will make foolish people do. I never dreamed that I’d meet somebody like you. And I never dreamed that I knew somebody like you. No, I don’t want to fall in love. (This world is only gonna break your heart) No, I don’t want to fall in love. (This world is only gonna break your heart) With you”-Chris Isaak
A sigh steams in the cold air..and the night never felt darker nor dreams farther.. To one that struck an enigmatic figure against a silvery background of moon-lit sea, awaiting breathless tidings from a dark emissary Like a pilgrim before a vigil flame afar..A green light over the sighing waves..like an earthbound star to a magi’s questing gaze or a stargazer’s perpetually- searching eyes..His eyes were haunted.. distant..focusing on the green light yet as if on the tides ebb and flow his conscious drifted back to past and present..Like a wounded soldier on morphine on a cot..Flashbacks..memories..nightmares..Dreams.. “Major Gatsby Sir..we’re to fix bayonets. You’re to take command.” The Hindenburg Line Offensive 1918 The battlefield was lit in crimson reslpendence like a midnight sun and the gnarled silhouette of frayed barbed wire was illuminated in intervals like metallic scarecrows holding vigil over a desolate field. Faces of those waiting in feverish and dread expectation for the fatal order to be given were like masks devoid of expression yet eyes eloquent with dread or philosophical or resigned..None prayed anymore..some looked to a small portrait from home.. like sacred relics.. One soldier closed his eyes pressing a locket portrait to his forehead in chill valediction and remembered… He was with her again.. He was there at parting, standing in the New England Autumn with leaves swirling like a ghostly bonfire flame consuming like an immolation of dream as they denuded the branches to mere skeletal arms in the dusk. When the leaves are green again I’ll return he vowed..to his lady..to his dream..in prayer..talking to air.. He watched helplessly as she embraced a man and stepped into a car.. He stood in the twilight in his green uniform about to deploy in a matter of days.. To France..to war.. If statesman were to lead him astray to ruin and carnage in distant lands.. “To make the world safe for democracy”.. So too had the heart led him astray.. Seized by a terrible defeatism..he so strong of will sought orders instead.. uniformity instead.. To lose himself.. What did it matter anymore.. He lost.. The car disappeared as leaves rained red into the twlight..red dreams falling in slow motion.. His eyes had the same look now as red debris fell.. By the intervals of blazing light and glare afforded by the artillery he composed:
In an ancient gesture he kissed the talisman of a distant love and took up a sabre to lead men across a field of war. Around him men drew into precise ranks, mechanically..soullessly..halfambulant.. He all but cursed in derision at the way men had become.. He raised his sword like a pupetteers chords and arms extended likewise.. Their faces were haggard and cheeks sunken..were they to survive none at the homefront would recognise them in the shadowed apparition at the door.. Some muttered and shook with trench fever, the eyes of others were lit in feral crimson malediction in reply to the flames, like a lion’s eyes in balefire to a brandished torch.. They became sanguinary..those who would return to become gangsters in the urban warzones and “concrete Vietnams” of prohibition.. A flare blazed into the night..arcing..A green flare..flourescent fire.. A signal.. “Mr. Gatsby Sir..” Forward! ..across a field of war..fire and it’s images seared and branded into memory..and so he had come to his usual haunt overlooking the sea..to the allure of a green vigil flame across the firelit water..like a somnambulist across a paralell dreamscape of nightmare and daydreams..ghosts that could not be banished by sacred word.. “Jay..?” Fireworks lit the seamist trailing in arcs of blazing replendence..falling languidly into the sea..sizzling into the waves..casting an eerie sanguine crimson glow on the waves.. illuminating the buildings in jagged outline..He ascended to the vanguard as if in slowmotion..the folds of the coat flared like the wings of a bright rebel angel leading a host of lost souls into fire..His sabre was raised , it’s blade seemed to smolder like a slaver’s brand. Artillery shells shrieked and fell among his men, drowning out there screams..Crimson sprayed on his ash-darkened face like a red mask.. Unscathed..He felt dreamily invincible.. Like the title of a song that one could not get out of one’s head..there was one name to which his warrior’s heart rallied.. “Daisy”..the name a soundless battlecry..he heard it soundlessly yet deafeningly through the artillery barrage.. The one thing between earth and heaven and hell that made him feel invincible and vulnerable at the same time.. both fallible and undefeatable.. Other youths with spiked helms across the burning desolation, manned a mounted machinegun and waited for them to tangle and writhe in the labyrynth of razoured wire, like a spiderweb of razors and stray into range.. ..”Sorry..I was..just lost in thought..” “A party tonight..” ..”Who..?” “Daisy Buchannan..” his voice like the ghostsong of the winds dark carress over the waves.. like a title of a song requested of a dark choir and the song the night answered.. Silence.. “Not up to it..” “Up to anything..” Over the trenches.. a dark wave rose..roared..and fell The depths took up the roar from across the sea and sighed yet unsubsided.. Fire blazed above in reply.. blindingly..deafeningly.. “Enough to wake the dead..” “So it is..” “Mr. Gatsby..?” “I wasn’t invited..” The voice was detached..disembodied as a ghost condemned to haunt a night shore in search of a lost love.. “What..” “oh nothing..” “you can’t repeat the past..” Bayonets were raised and leveled as foriegn men like a march of shadows charged across a field.. The fireworks errupted in mult-coloured flames..flourescent light ricocheted off the light-bejeweled facets of waves..cries..of delight echoed by those of agony.. “Oh look Mr. Gatsby..the grand finale..” Men he had left home with, he had laughed with and endured nights of fire and darkness that sheltered tears fell in mid-stride.. “You can’t repeat the past..? Of course you can..” In love and in war.. Tragically so… What is history if not a study in repitition.. Like thousands, millions before them on the selfsame ground men had fought and died over and for banners and gods forgotten, causes irrelevant to the future..falling like a succession of raindrops in a storms sweeping the land and swallowed by the earth.. All for the vanity of statesman..all for nothing.. Just names on chiseled stone, no more than a glance to the passerby.. Broken dreams..like blossoms in the wind..like leaves into the Autumn dusk.. fields of red Poppies.. “Daisy..” The voice feverish as he was writhed in feverish nightmares on a field hospital cot.. A green flame flared across the sea and lit two haunted eyes.. like Daisy Buchannan dancing in a green dress before his bewitched gaze.. Come on Mr. Gatsby..you can come with me I have an extra invite.. You might know somebody there.. “Jay..?” “Daisy..may I have the last dance..” “Mr. Gatsby..you’re to be discharged and sent home..The war is over for you..” No..it’s just begun… And a veteran of The Great War was afforded another age of immortality in the “roaring twenties..” They were silhouetted by a wall-size window pane lit by fireworks falling in slow motion like a deluge of flame. He seemed to waver between the red light and beckoning green of two worlds vying for his soul..In a detached consciousness he walked the aftermath by a grey light seeing those strewn around him.. till he paused at a familiar face like a mirrored image in a moon-light oasis to a nomad’s eyes..He saw himself gasping for breath, saw a shadow loom over him malevolently..a bayonet blade severing the locket chain..Daisy..opening it.. Then as the bayonet was poised above him another shadow stepped in and his assailant fell like a lord of shadow overthrown..Lifeless eyes at level with his own..last breath smoking like a gun in the chill air…The sound of a sonorous groan like ghosts rising in defense of the living..Bagpipes..You alright mate? The highlanders were taking the field.. He fell like a rebel angel..with a timeless inevitability..basking in the flame, felt the sensation of warmth, he seldom knew in the trenches..felt the embrace..arms around him bearing him up ere he fell and like a hapless sunbather swept over by a seismic wave..the shadows of men passed by him and darkness reclaimed him like a rightful prince..Then before him..a being of light and redeemer..Come back to the light..I have.. And like a way known by heart alone though he did not know the steps to the song..he found his way back.. If as Tenesee Williams wrote: “All memory happens to music..” he remembered the song of the leaves falling before he left to France, as if a hailing of a rebel prince..by nature alone for none was left of his command to do him homage.. It was their song..From the opened mullioned windows of the manorhouse leaves swept in from the chill night and through a cascade of golden hair he once beheld enflamed by the pyre of twilight.. He strode forward as she turned.. He nodded to the band..The crowds parted as if making way before a dark prince..just two on the dancefloor..The band hesitated before a soloist shrugged them off and began to play..A Stradivarius was taken up..The music played softly as ever composed to the silence set to music of a duet of eyes that closed in synchrony into the song, nothing in it’s glance unsung or said like composer’s inspiration transcribed into notes after a moment of transcendent silence of taciturn song taking shape in a sleepless sculptor’s hand..
and for once in many years..ages ago it seemed as the lovelorn measure time..He felt..Invincible..He closed his eyes and seemed to dance to
the song of another time..”The world was on fire and no one could save me but you. It’s strange what desire will make foolish people do. I never dreamed that I’d meet somebody like you. And I never dreamed that I knew somebody like you. No, I don’t want to fall in love. (This world is only gonna break your heart) No, I don’t want to fall in love. (This world is only gonna break your heart) With you”
-Chris Isaak
Poems of Gatsby
Heaven To Gaudy Day Denies Poems of Gatsby By Greg Patrick © 2010 Eire N.U.I.G.
“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.” ― James Joyce By Greg Patrick Though his noir-like persona was fashionably attired in finely tailored suit and in bowler hat, he strode the pier with the air of a solitary knight-errant on pilgrimage as if his step was echoing upon the flagstones of a causeway at quest’s threshold, across the sigh of undulating waves ethereally- lit by the swathe of moonlight in interplay with the crimson houselights, like newly-disembodied ghosts and fallen angels chasing eachother across the surface..Red and silvered lights lit expressive gaze cast like a ghostship’s wake to the horizon , not lulling his heart to any repose but as stirring in it’s soundless tones as a battlecry uttered by eyes alone, but he seemed to feel the waves forming and then smiting the shore. The beacon-like light across the dark sea unlike the stars led one astray, a wrecker’s light to believing mariners. Beaming tri-forcatingly like a desert star to a farfaring nomad’s eyes. And the dark waves rose like a toast to the stars, like a procession of black horses passing by in review before a radiant queen envisioned in the moon and by a light across the horizon’s threshold of the ebb tide, the night wind whispered it’s nocturne melodiously through a cascade of hair like an endearment whispered in a forbidden sonnet by an angel to a mortal daughter of eve and lost between two worlds. For that which is spoken between man and angel is the oldest long distance relationship ever known. In phantasmal silhouette he paused at last on the crushing brink of the sea as across the dark waves, the sea sighed at the light with the same depth of dark yearning betrayed by a haunting presence by moonlight. An incomplete road to the horizon the pier seemed. Breakers roared and subsided till he heard them no more in his lone vigil. He lingered by the dusk overlooking the undulating cascade of waves lit briefly by the last smolder of twilight making the sea seem a mirror cast to a fire goddess’ vanity. Yet he remained oblivious to the elements with faraway eyes. A returned soldier from the Great War cried out in nightmare-haunted sleep, a derelict called for alms under a marquee. As still in his vigil as Odysseus of myth bound to hear the siren’s beckoning…so was the light afar to his eyes.. Even as the dark sentinel aloft the pier closed his eyes to the sound of the incoming tide sizzling upon the shore..forgetting.. remembering more so. Locket’s chain whispering from his hand into the sea..Let it go.. It was in that time of contradictions that one profoundly alone sought constancy overlooking the swathe of night sea like an exiled lord upon a turret. Like star-crossed Ulysses at the prow within sight of Ithaka. The inevitable entreaty of eyes to the heights.. What star brightest of all this eve?, he pondered. Tis no star but Venus. What is a star but by it’s nature impossibly distant and for it’s proximity there was a greater void then ever seas had breadth. A leonine expectancy lit his eyes in reply to the candular beacon of the houselight with it’s Scheharazadian promise. “Daisy..” his whisper trailing..
In slow motion he moved as party boats with their revelers passed with a nigh maddening languidity that belied his ardent desire like the night sea’s murmur: “Give me corsair vessels” in their stead he brooded, “to bring him at last the horizon” and hasten forth the dawn or dreamless sleep beneath waves that lent ventriloquism to his own sigh…no words were there to capture what was lost. No solace to be found in the ceaseless murmur of the tides. The saxophone soloist seemed to convey in wordless eloquence his dreams. The gilded age is no golden age and as he lingered by the lantern’s languid sway and the sounds of laughter and music like a venomed honey reached him. More a gilded cage really he brooded. To be oneself is to be by oneself yet as he averted his gaze with distaste from the silhouettes of couples dancing The Charleston while by closed eyes he imagined waltzing over the promenade with her.. Memory and present passed like two lone stargazers on ships passing over night seas In darkness spectral, a startling moment of recognition ere they pass to new and old worlds. He reopened his eyes and imbued they were by moonlight then as he thought: what armistices could there be between huntsman and herd? He had remembered at The World’s Fair the tragic sight of a great cat pacing in the confines of it’s barred cage. Saw it being baited,prodded.. “Stop that now!” he protested. His practiced bootlegger’s menace seemed kindred to the spirit of the beast within. He understood all too well the depth of it’s sadness and huntsman’s desire. It’s eyes seemed to smolder into his psyche baring it’s teeth till it’s tormentor’s recoiled at the sinister over-coated man. And it’s roar diminished to a guttural purr like rising waves subsided. He smiled years later again dreamily. “I wouldn’t do that Sir!” He caressed it’s face gently.. “You’re not me..” He looked to a billboard.. “The Great Giovanni..The Liontamer..” “The Great Gatsby”..he smiled jokingly. Then with gravity..”I will be.” The infamous name was murmured knowingly.. And the ticketmaster though the better of asking for admission’s nickel lest it come back in lead.. He averted his gaze with disgust from the lot of the caged pygmies and animals. Men dehumanized to the tacit approval of passerby and lion’s gloated upon to the jeers of bystanders. The dark Samaritan who found himself before a night pier’s promise of solitude yet the memories, their imploring gazes haunted him. He felt profoundly world- weary then. Morose and brooding was Gatsby but gentleman at
that. If they ask glitter without substance find then an actor. There are plenty around. Enact a lie have the actor’s curse to be everyone but yourself? To be a nihilist, a defeatist?
Minimalism? Fine enough for those who desire nothing more than to be forgotten or fade into the night as if they had never been there and the sea draws away their footprints as if they never made strides towards dreams. He knew too much of the concrete jungle to believe civilization lingered here in the shadow of towering buildings and enlightenment was not found among gaudy citylights. Civilization and freedom were state of mind and heart alone. The hopeless romantic is not the helpless romantic. Yet the dreamer is so often acquainted with nightmare. He was worldly yet cosmopolitan for that. Innocence is not naivety. He knew too much of the concrete jungle to believe civilisation lingered here in the shadow of towering buildings. Civilization and freedom were state of mind and heart alone. Men with pasts inspire new futures and to be remembered is to wish one could forget much of what happened under the stars. He withdrew his hand from the cage and turned at last. The crowd parted in awe chewing popcorn in bemused silence. He knew instinctively what zookeepers began to comprehend as exotic creatures were brought as curiosities to “urbane eyes”: That are some to whom the pacing fate of being trapped within sight of freedom is to die. He sighed at the recollection. The shoreside carnival held no allure. The red ferris wheel’s revolutions coiled in a circle of fire upon the ocean surface and so he brooded that to have come full circle is to be going in circles. The fireworks lit the seamist, their trailing arcs flaring dully into the ocean. In his face mirrored to downcast gaze upon the iridescence of sea as if gazing back from fathomless depths and from the masts of sunken ships as futilely as he looked in silent petition to stars. His gaze bespoke their dark soliloquy. Crest-fallen though un-resigned to fate’s inconstancy. As he gazed nigh yearningly upon the sea the pallorous gleam of the moon cast its silvery swathe upon the heaving undulating tumult like a causeway across the ocean, a road strode by Atlantean kings.
The musings seemed that of another time and in his wistful gaze was a troubadour’s song of taciturn eloquence yet so too was there a timelessness like that of the seas themselves, as old as mortal man as old as life. Held at bay from the partygoers and their gaudy lanterns he turned again to shadows and wished he were the last to think so on an eve of moon-lit waves . Revisiting old dreams differed is like trying to go back to a castle that is now ruins and shadow calling out names and only echoes reply. Don’t be afraid to be a rebel. You’ll not get a second chance to laugh in the bright castle of your dreams. Don’t call after shadows by name and expect an answer. Unrequited dreams like sandcastles built by young dreamers only for the tides of change to sweep them away. “I’ll save her from the sand castle” he vowed. That proved pivotal from the fall and dark seas embrace. Contrary to the most prevalent illusions of the gilded age was Gatsby’s heretical wisdom that there is that which money could not buy back. He could not revisit nor reclaim the past he knew as he beheld with pixellated eyes the stars. Away from the citylights they gleamed like beacons of eternal flame all the brighter to the gaze of seafarer and castaway and yet his gaze fell downcast like a rebel angel once more to the green light. What is the role of light if not banishment of dark? And as his step faltered at the sight of the distant light and that which so haunted him he found vestige of consolation in that those who are lost to time are remembered by the future. While dreams differed like restless ghosts craving substance while the world goes on without them. As moonbeams filtered through the wooden boards echoing with his heavy step and he paused with downcast gaze as a cry answered to a face reflected in the sea like a mariner looking up from the depths. Tis a ghost!, a night fisherman gasped. Surely some lost soul making it’s solitary rounds, unfulfilled dreams keeping it from beckoning light and … rest.” No,” his mate replied his eyes never leaving the sea. “One alone with love.. Same thing really. I see them all the time, these shades”. Uplifting their eyes with a lingering sigh while passerby couples draw closer from their presence and eyes. Casting star-cast gazes as ever I cast the snare to the sea. That one especially he pondered from the oars. He in his usual haunt like a lord in exile presiding over the nightseas,oblivious to all but memory, Bereaved..loverlorn? I wonder what his story is.. Not privy to his dark musings the fisherman pondered at his desire betrayed in downcast eyes where once they must have been highborne. His enigmatic presence at dark vigil seemed to hold sway over the night ocean his hand raised to the light as if conjuring the elements further enhancing his mystique. Yet there was naught so cryptic but the desire of every man. He extended his hand beckoningly towards the light only to caress the chill darkness and memory. Gatsby reflected: You know that you are not living meaningfully when you walk those lantern-lit eve piers or the sands of a distant shore and one’s memory and heart is not farther still. Remembering like a castaway or sleepless warrior on eve of battle, that one name to the skies, of the many who walk the world who they look to like a seafarer his own chosen star among the countless myriads. Like a somnambulist walking, lost in dream’s spell he pivoted from the fall and dark waters yet more so did he bear the aspect of a ghost diminishing before the dawn. Locket’s chain whispering from his hand into the sea like an offering..Let it go.. No. The tenacity of his muse was not so easily forsaken. If you have regrets. Good. It means you valued life. And placed heart to your endeavours. It means you cared. Your dream will always be yours. Gatsby turned at last with grim finality. Something of his old bootlegger swagger returned… He straightened his wind-dissheveled hair.. “The Great Gatsby” he laughed with the same feral grin.. Almost shouted it out like a rebel’s final battle cry.. “That’s what they’ll call me..” His voice lost on the nocturne of the chill wind like a parting apparitional caress and he seemed to dematerialize more shadow than man into the dawn. Though he felt not rejuvenation but ancient as the seas below. An inexplicable promise and sense of immortality was his again.
Part 2
Before Dreams
“When the last moon is cast Over the last star of morning. And the future is past without even a last desperate warning.”
-James Webb
“Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title. Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works”.
-Virginia Woolf
Before Dreams By Greg Patrick
Part 2 of “To Gaudy Day Denies.”
“Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.” -Lord Byron
“Moon rising, disguising lonely streets in gay displays The stars fade, the night shade falls and makes the world afraid. It waits in silence for the sky to explode.Here I am on Man’s road. Walking man’s road.”
-James Webb
Duskfire had cast it’s dark spell upon the array of palatial manor houses looming in baleful austerity. The pellucid glow of moonbeams and trailing lengthening shadows Lent the mansions a glowering forboding aspect. As night befell with inevitability, as many a haunted regret as the night had shadows.
Their gables rose like peaks of unconsecrated cathedrals against the imminent darkness coven-like. His was now a gaunt forlorn aspect that regarded them like exiled Heathcliff before Wuthering Heights. A shadow among shadows.
The moon drew at the tides even as the beckoning houselight whispered it’s sirensong. In the wavering interlude of light and dark he sought her hand so as to cast back the shadows. His step quickened breath visible in the chill air, yet he lingered like the tiger he had remembered pacing against barriers to freedom. Something untamed he seemed poised beyond the circle of firelight, Yet as he beheld couples escorting one another their laughter melodious he wavered no longer like an unhallowed thing at consecrated ground banished from the promise of light and the angelic.
What is regret if not a phantom pain like a ghost gazing from the dark craving substance and the world it once knew. He heard the sea at his backlike a ghost army and reflected that he some looked back from the wake of a cast off ship at the diminishing shore left behind but some to the horizon.
The tides cast rhapsodic surrealist patterns upon the walls like ghosts reveling among ruins as he strode forth into what seemed a dreamscape. And in the distance a steeple bell tolled the hour in synchrony with his heart and footfall.
The transition from a daring existence to one of gentile complacence was not an effortless one and one who was aquainted with the perilous life of a bootlegger found his old swagger and huntsman’s guise.
He felt a somnambulist that belied the ardency yet he knew one To whom it felt to partner at the dancefloor was akin to walking upon clouds.
The green light that had so pixellated his gaze and smoldered into his dreams like the last fireside ember one dreams by, the only true light known his dark world lit his countenance doppelgänger like silhouetted against it. One cannot so easily reclaim the past without losing life itself.
Party lanterns swayed languidly like gypsy orbs lighting paths to future prospects, lighting individual faces in haunting radiance. And falling back into shadow.
Gatsby observed the masquerade before him. The world had dissolved but for her presence. The raucous music was submerged as if by the sea. The music was hers alone.
Love like duels have their windows of opportunity.
He felt awkward then, mouth puerilely agape.
The dance floor cleared, bribe passed to the soloist At the stradavarius.. Ummm..Daisy? May I have this last dance? 
Greg Patrick. Traveler. Poet. 