The Blue Wore Through: Collected Works of John Patton O'dell

By John Patton O'Dell

This collection contains the fi rst fi ve books completed by John Patton
ODell. They appear in the order they were written. The fi rst four books
are volumes of poetry, ranging from epic to lyric. The poetry is emotional,
spiritual, and at times religious. The fi rst and fourth books do not contain
long poems, nearly half the poems in the fourth book were written as song
lyrics. The fi fth book is a collection of short stories which house elements
of drama, fantasy, suspense, and the supernatural. A touch of humor, also a
focus on nature, can be found throughout the books.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465350541

John Patton O'Dell

John Patton O’Dell was born in Greeneville, Tennessee. He lived there in the foothills, for the fi rst ten years of his life. At eleven he moved to Augusta, Georgia. Upon turning eighteen he moved back to Greene County. John worked a series of jobs and attended school through his teens to his mid twenties, resulting in a diploma and a degree with lots of life experiences. It was while in college that he started to fulfi ll his life long dream of writing, beginning with poetry then songs and stories. Since fi rst putting pen to pad, he has found nature inspiring. Just before turning thirty John moved back to Augusta and started a family with his high school sweetheart; they have one son.

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by John Patton O’Dell.

Cover Art and Photo by: Janel O’Dell.

Into the Woods with a Black Hoot Owl—Copyright November 11, 2001 by John Patton O’Dell

On the Last Day of Spring—Copyright August 8, 2003 by John Patton O’Dell

Black, White, and Grey—Copyright March 21, 2011 by John Patton O’Dell

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4653-5053-4

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-5054-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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94709

Dedicated to the memory of

Myrtle E. Darnell O’Dell

CONTENTS

Into The Woods With A Black Hoot Owl

Preface to the Work

Prelude, at the beginning

Blue Bird

A Long Night’s Journey

Domesticated versus Wild

Subtleties of the Road

Those Eyes

G. I. Joes and Super Heroes

Boulevard

I Remember, Aeriel Pressler

And Synthia, She

Wonderful

Can’t Catch a Cat

And it Rains

Christmas is

Written on November 9th 2000

No Batteries

Meditation on You and I

Through a Hole in the Sky

A Colorful Journey

Deeper into the Woods with a Black Hoot Owl

Jigsaw Looking, Strange Markings

The Terrible Grey Nothingness

Summer of the Snake

The Bridge

Comic Book Appreciation

Staying Behind

A Simple Little Chant

And He Says

Sex on Sundays

She’s My Girl

Dreams

One Generation to Another

On Day Dreaming

Three Nines

What Jasper King said to Leddie McQueen

10 Reasons Why

The Eleventh through Fifteenth Commandments

For You and Me, Millicent

To the First Times

I Know that Spiders Can

In Honor of Stanley Mitchell

Epitaph

The Inevitable Turn of Events

Epilogue to the Work

On The Last Day Of Spring

The Origin of Lightning

Born on the Last Day of Spring

Doubt

A Question

Standard for Being

Roll Call of the Pride

Poison Rag

Humphrey

Bombs over Baghdad

Every Jesus

(Ariel) A Song for April

Because I Miss You

There Like a Flash

Day Eagle or Night Owl

Augusta

The Wrongly Accused Golden Labradors

The Electric Fence Incident

Like I Miss the Rain

From Where You Are

Captains of Action

American Dreamer

Veronica Chaves

Playing G.I. Joes

A Reflection

The Flood

Because of Snakes

Of an America I Sing

From Tennessee

The Hippie Boy Song

Tonto’s Done Turned Rouge

He’s Like the Breeze

Shedra, the Shed Cat

Say the Lines

Jack of Clubs

Black Thorn

Born on the Last Day of Spring (Reprise)

All the Day a Night is Rising

Hidden Chameleon

The Human Torch Vs. The Sub-Mariner

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Every Time I Look At It, The Moon, It Gets More Full

The Venom Is In The System

My Burden

The Stashed Satchel

Waiting For Pluto

Knight Of Verse

The Spectral Ghost

The Spectral Ghost Helps A Good Guy Get A Good Looking Girl

The Crutch

Allgood

He’s Like the Breeze (continued)

Heartbreak

I Think Maybe We Should

The Pimp Song

All The Things You Can’t Take With You

Bother Pushes

The Immortal Ramble

Motivation

Version One

Miles Above You

A Cat Dreams While Having Nine Lives

Somewhere In the Heart of Winter

G.I. Joes and Superheroes’ Chorus

Meant to do

Athens GA

I’m Lying

Avenging Son

Rebels

What I Can Do

Oh Moon in the Sky

I Don’t Own It, It Owns Me

I Know There is a Spring

Three Things

Don’t Know Where This Road Ends

No Place

The Masked Man and the Indian

The Battle Hymn of the Republic

Sherman’s March

I See You in the Summer (A Duet)

Beauregard and Lenora

On Your Own

Half Breed

Dialect

Tomorrow Belongs to Me (Refrain)

The Sheppard

Gentler Times, part II

Spinnin’ ’Round in Circles

If You’re Ever Coming Back

My Elaborate

Adam and Steve

Change the Position

One night

Vivid

The Hills Bade Me Stay

Gentler Times Part I

The Palenthor Plains

Six Ways to go Through A Twenty Stashed

I’m Like the Breeze

Society

Late September

The Green

Most Rules

I Just Did

Two Brothers

Ammo v. Gun

Blair Witch Just Sold the F—Out

Daredevil

I Didn’t Know Indians Still Existed And Twenty Other Phrases For Minds That Are Twisted

Monster

Gods of the Moon

A Werewolf Serial (In Four Episodes) Ballad of the Black Wolf

The White Wolf’s Serenade

Black and Light Brown

The Retort of the White Wolf

Three Nights of Halloween

The Chameleon And The Witch Of Westwix

Zebel’s Soliloquy

Golden Eagle

Golden Eagle

Untitled

One Vote

I Hear the Voices of By Gone Days

Miraculous Fashion

City Streets

Shine

Last Words

So let us

Sunshine

Gives Me Piece

And The Bell Tolls

Birds Like Us Two

Alive today

Seven Minutes, Six Seconds

If I Stare

With my Green Power Ring

I Can’t Be a Follower

The Flash vs. Brainiac

Visionary

Dew drops

I Sing A Song Of Sixpence

The Little Imperfection, That Makes It Perfect

Consciences Objector

If there are three things a woodwyler hates it’s

In The Spirit

To The Purple Born

Jason And The Salamander Spawn

Gods of Mercury

Jesus Heal This Broken Heart

There’s Every Reason To Believe

And I Feel His Presence Everyday Down at the Creek

Love The Dear Lord, Cling To His Name, And Won’t You Let Go Of That Pain.

Two Simultaneous Heartbeats

Two Become One in the Cross

What We Need

The Earth’s Daughter

A Human Torch

Give Me This Year

He Should Have Said Something

The Reluctant Warrior

I Have Seen the Lonesome Highway Roughly to the Tune of Life is Like a Mountain Railway

Redemption Song

Somewhere in the Heart of Winter

I’m Going to Get Up Out of this Hole

I Know that You’re All I Need

Morgan Show Us Your Eyes

If You’re Ever Coming Back

Turn of the Tide

My Jesus is a Mighty Fortress

I Built it Too High

Makes Me Want to Cry

’Round in Circles

Come Back to Me

Please Let Jesus Change Your Heart

This Christmas Night

In the Light of the Moon

I’m Your Lord

I’ll Go Blind

I Want to be Your Man

Rollin’

Five in ’75

Where the Creek turns back

Whispered Prayer

A Thought

I’ve Been Wanting You

Chasing the Sun away

Played

Reach

Want

Not a Second Time

Should I Leave Tonight Or Should I Leave Tomorrow Morning

Crystalline Disaster

Jacob (Who Walks With a Limp)

The Rules of Engagement

I Don’t Cut, I Stab

Brittany

That

Don’t go there

Soulless

I Was a Hammer

Smells Like Teen Spirit

Indictment

Style Over Substance

Underestimated

You’ve Been Served

From Tennessee Part II

St. John Lightnin’ at the Abyss

King of Clubs, Queen of Hearts

Flying Too Close to the Sun

The Fire and I

When Beth Was In Town

Harmony

The Method

The Flame Baring Phoenix

The Two Towers

Eight Stories High

Smokey

The Big Bad Wolf

The Smell of Death

A Deer Caught In Headlights

Zero Hour

The Curse of the Earnest

The Phoenix Drive-in

Green Glow of a Lantern

INTO THE WOODS WITH A

BLACK HOOT OWL

For Beth

Preface to the Work

Like a lone wolf when he howls,

in the moonlight he waits too long.

Come listen to the song,

the song of the hoot owl.

Prelude, at the beginning

it’s hard

it’s hard to realize

that it should be okay

things could turn out in the end

or sometime before the end

all depends on right here and right now

not back then or back when

now’s the time the time is now

Plant said it with Zeppelin

people can think about the past

knowing it can’t be changed

only altered

in their minds

what can be done is done

deep down it’s known

lying is saying the truth is not good enough

what was said

what was done was not good enough

how screwed up

the more people lie, the more they hate

themselves or the ones they lie to

the serpent lied to Eve

it was the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

the first sin

disobedience

was begat by a lie

the second was a lie

corruption and destruction accompany them

it can’t be changed

the past is unbending, the future is not

rules for the two are different

living in the past means living somewhere that can’t change when

anything could happen at any time

happiness can be gained

sorrow can be lost

times don’t stay the same

think about the cost

everything is in the mind

Blue Bird

Blue bird, blue bird, on the wire.

Will you fly right through that fire?

And will those cool blue feathers turn?

When those red hot blazes start to burn.

A Long Night’s Journey

Ride on white knight,

over plateaus where the sun shows bright.

In time ride down from that lofty height,

into dark ravines that have never seen wrong or right.

In the absence of light,

a reflection will show only a black knight.

Ride out, if you can, to the middle lands of clouds, shadows, and twilight.

Exist where there is no black and white.

Then ride on a grey knight.

Domesticated versus Wild

He sat perched upon the couch, surveying his territory.

Something bad had entered, it was plain for anyone to see.

He leaned upon the pillars that held his little world up.

When with the slightest of a cough,

the domesticated dog ran the wild dog off.

Subtleties of the Road

I know all the subtleties of these roads.

Whether traveling light or with a heavy load,

                                             these are my roads.

Catch me during the day, you might,

           never at night.

I perceive more with feeling than with sight,

           been on these roads all my life.

Those Eyes

I woke up tired,

faint memories of dreams lingered.

Suddenly, I remembered

pure beauty had taken shape in a pair of eyes

from a time so lovely.

blue, pale blue

I turned away first, they watched me leave

long after too I’m sure

no use foolish youth

things that went unseen

things that could have been

fair skin, blue eyes

hair dark as night

Love can exist, but, not be recognized without need.

I need beauty now.

Nothing more beautiful than those eyes,

they haunt me those eyes.

G. I. Joes and Super Heroes

I’m going to try to rhyme

about a kinder gentler time,

of G.I. Joes

and super heroes,

a favorite new song

and favorite T.V. shows.

A time that’s gone,

but not by choice.

Parents were gods in my little world,

infallible when

they made decisions

never revisions.

And, I never spoke to a girl,

just my sister.

I do miss her

and the way we all were back then.

School was some evil creation

that took away my imagination.

It made me play with other kids

that made fun of things I did.

Unless, I picked out a weaker one from the herd,

called him some evil word.

Teachers talked while inside I screamed,

looked out the window, or day dreamed.

All I really wanted was to be left alone,

where I couldn’t hurt anyone and they couldn’t hurt me,

somewhere I could just be.

Dad read me books about the lonesome places cowboys roamed.

And, kids always wanted to run races.

I remember the intensity of their faces.

I longed for other places.

Seemed to always be on my own.

I played with action figures.

My collection kept getting bigger.

A universe where I was a god,

controlled their movements with my fingers.

I never seemed to want the Leias,

Scarlettes or, She-ras.

They were missing like my mother,

how odd.

I started out sensitive all around.

So, the world around me beat it down.

That’s why I want to remember

how it was back then,

when my heart was tender.

Please let me remember

how in September

my heart would flutter in the gentle wind.

Boulevard

When you seem only to find

in this world only time

to do the things you don’t want to.

Don’t know the outcome, haven’t a clue.

Answers could come when you’re dealt the next card.

It’s the waiting part

that just gets hard.

’Cause one way or another,

one day or the other,

brother,

we’ve all been there.

So it’s one more time down the boulevard,

one more time through the square.

I Remember, Aeriel Pressler

I remember

the first time I ever

saw Aeriel Pressler.

Pumping gas into her red Mazda

on the day she bought it.

A soft breeze blowing her light brown hair.

She wore

faded blue jeans and a red silk shirt.

Which flowed in the breeze as she walked with a strut.

Her hair and eyes were light,

her skin was dark.

Might have been about five o’clock.

She was paying with a five,

She grabs my hand, she looks into my eyes.

She says, This has been the greatest day of my life.

And Synthia, She

Kind of a frantic scene,

all the pageantry

of women and girls competing.

using runway walks

and amusing little talks.

Some show true, some show false.

like stars way up high

that shine through the sky

on a clear summer night.

Each give off their own light,

none shine like one.

And Synthia, she is so pretty

the brightest and the best.

She smiles her eyes,

raises them to the sky,

simply smoking all the rest.

Wonderful

Wonderful it is to see,

or anytime part of be,

the corruption of something wonderful.

Can’t Catch a Cat

I do things that don’t make sense,

unless maybe you know the whole story.

Certain subjects make me tense,

if I’m hateful sometimes, I’m sorry.

It’s hard to figure out,

just where my heart is at.

simple as that,

Can’t catch a cat.

I find it hard to be honest with others, let alone myself.

The truth can be hard to tell and harder to hear yourself.

Whether I’m referring to me

or someone else, you see.

It’s hard to figure out,

just where my heart is at.

simple as that,

Can’t catch a cat.

My feelings, it’s true,

are a little hard to deal with.

So I try not to

sorry I can’t, sorry for that, sorry for this.

It’s hard to figure out,

just where my heart is at.

simple as that,

Can’t catch a cat.

And it Rains

I hope it rains

and it rains

and it rains.

And the bad things

get washed away by the rain.

No matter how deep the stain

or how pure the pain.

I hope good remains

and it rains

The air turns cold,

the rain turns to snow

and the snow fall grows

and it lays

and it lays.

Till we’re trapped in our cages

with deep thoughts and quiet rages.

We release our pains

and love sustains.

Then the weather can turn warm.

There come a great storm

like a fast moving train

signaling a change.

The thunder and lightning fade

and until the snow is all gone away,

I hope it rains

and it rains

and it rains.

Christmas is

Christmas is

the one time out of about 365 times.

A child wakes up and finds

a tree simply lit or shimmering

with packages under it decorated fantastically,

housing dreams dared to be dreamed.

All this,

symbolizing something much greater

like a baby in a far away manger

giving a gift to humanity.

One day

finding peace

somewhere in the midst

of beautiful burning lights

and graciously given presents.

Written on November 9th 2000

Now is the defining moment,

no other offers such movement

in his, her, your, mine and our lives.

A battle launched with forks and knives.

The longer it goes the harder he strives.

Now is the moment, the moment is surely now.

We’re choosing the they

to whom we will bow.

We all do somehow,

that’s what they say.

And we will go forth somewhat changed

by the remains

of what came forth on this day.

A day for all days, Today!

I proclaim.

No Batteries

I suppose you could do that,

           if you had transposed to park there.

Run the cord past an open door

           to the cigarette

                      lighter.

Higher and higher,

           groove on the grass

                      listening to tunes.

Get shady in shadows cast by a full moon,

           reflecting over hazy skies, hazy seas,

                      And a row of pine trees.

Watch yourself in the reflection.

Like a movie screen projection

           that seems to fall there,

                      fall from the night air.

Of course, all this

           will lead

to running down

           your battery.

Still it would be nice

           to dance on uneven ground

                      under the moon light,

                                 if only for a night.

Meditation on You and I

I’m going to get to you sometime

with subtle rhyme

strong words and gentle phrasing.

Though I’m sane you might think I’m crazy,

taking it as far as I can

again and again.

Got to get out what’s on my mind,

I’m going to get to you sometime.

Through a Hole in the Sky

I was tripping on a thing,

           you know the way things go.

When you’re heart starts to sing,

           still it’s telling you no.

So the sun shone

           through a hole in the sky.

I’m sure I know why

           there was a yellow ball burning

through a wall of white and grey

           clouds pausing,

over a world turning

           ever slowly away.

Taught me something I already knew.

           Even when the sky gets grey,

it’s true,

           someday, someway

the sun always shines through.

A Colorful Journey

Started out with a patch of blue.

Then the blue wore through

           and I did too.

Saw yellow, orange, and red

with no gentle place to lay my head.

Though often I would smile,

still after a while.

They faded looking for the whiter shade of pale.

The quest where so many fail.

At a strange time green came in.

But, the green didn’t win.

Saw shades of grey leading toward black.

Then one day, though often more subdued,

the colors came back

           and I did too.

Deeper into the Woods with a

Black Hoot Owl

Come let us go then,

deeper into the woods with a black hoot owl.

When he prowls

long into the night

with nothing left to fight,

but himself.

His