Patrick Storm

At national slam poetry events, individual poets who are unaffiliated with a team are referred to as “storm poets.” Poet Danny Solis created this name as a memorial to his friend Pat Storm, who died in 2000.

Pat was a member of several slam teams from the south competing at the national level and was very successful. You can see why in this piece.

Pat grew up in New York City and he returned there, amidst some controversy. He would hang out in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village near where I live. I would visit him there sometimes.

But Pat was struggling with substance abuse. One time when I saw him in the park, he was unconscious on a bench, surrounded by paramedics and police. When they roused him, he burst into fire and it took several men to restrain him. Pat was a powerful force.

In 2000, I invited Pat to come see the SlamAmerica Bus tour’s NYC performance at a club on 14th Street. I think that was the last time many of his slam poet friends saw him. He died soon after.

Pat was well-loved by the slam community and we miss him. For all you proud storm poets, here is your namesake...

Source:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130909224610/http://devlinpix.com/blog/2013-05-31/slam-poem-pat-storm-my-friend-sean

This is the record of one amazing human being's death and burial in the Graveyard of the Unclaimed, the Lost, the Forsaken, the Missing, the Unnamed, the Homeless: Hart's Island, commonly known as ‪#‎Potter‬'s Field.

I just received notice that the record has now been corrected in the Hart's Island database - a record of someone who lived and was important to me, someone I searched for - for 25 years.

I'm being asked to add 'his story' to the plot/section/grave number information about him in the database.

This is all a life amounts to when you're alone and nobody cares, or when you're missing, or unidentified, or nobody who knew you can find you and you die homeless, with nothing, and alone - even when someone has always cared.

Do you have any idea how it feels to finally find the person after searching for a quarter of a century, only to be told they died years ago, in squalor, with nobody who loved them by their side, or how it feels to know they're buried in a mass grave?

Plot 285. Section 1, Grave 17.
His name was Pat, my son is his only living kin, and his life mattered. The name he wore was the life he lived: he was a 'storm' indeed, and he could twist into and out of your life like a funnel cloud.
I have to write his story, which is part of my story, so it can 'humanize' this dehumanized person whose body was dumped in a mass grave along with many other societal castoffs and expendables, the ones nobody wants to see because the sight of them makes the lobster and Pellegrino taste just a little bit 'off',
The ones nobody wants to remember. The erased.

Just when you think there are no more tears left.
I remember you, Pat....I can't make the world care about your life or how funny you were, or what a tremendous poet and storyteller you were, or how awesome an actor you were, or about how you died, and why you died that way. I can't make anybody understand who you were, or how much you mean to me, and have always meant. I can't make your son understand why he wasn't meant to know you beyond the first 2 1/2 months of his life, or why you went away.

All I can say, really, is...

I loved you more than a quarter of a century ago...and love you still.
Grave 17.
What a life amounts to when you die alone.
Not even a name on a headstone.
He saved my life a long long time ago, a whole other world away from now. Then he went *Poof*, and twisted away, ever the tornado.

He wrecked my life, he saved my life, the memory of him is tattooed upon my heart for better, for worse - and I,  I ....failed to save him.

My love goes with you forever, Pat Storm. You will never die because you're not forgotten.  Rest in power and peace.

~ Lisa Guliani, Cherokee, NC

24 January, 2015
................................