WHY DO SO MANY COMETS OF WOMEN

WHY DO SO MANY COMETS OF WOMEN

Why do so many comets of women

fall in love with men

who have firehydrants for hearts

or burn their faces off the lucidity of their blood mirrors

like the sunlit exorcism of the mist off a lake in the morning

streaming away like the ghosts of swans

or the stars through Cygnus

as if they were diamonds leaking out of themselves

in a palace of coal as old as the darkness

where they finger their faces like braille

looking for flaws in the moonlight

or wait for some drunk to come home

like a black sail on the angry seafoam of a beer?

And again, he declared war on your eyes

as if your face were some sort of disguise

for the way you truly see him

and again, your ruby lip

is chipped like the saucer

you keep slipping under him like love

to catch what he spills from his toilet-bowl heart

when he pours you out.

It’s three in the morning

and you’re shaking with terror

there might be a lonelier truth in admitting the error

than working with lies to get it right

and you’re crying as if there were no bottom to the night.

Don’t you know, baby, when the chicken’s been eaten

all that’s left is the wishbone

and yours has been broken like a harp

stuck in the throat of an angel

who still thinks she can sing to the beast

of softer ordeals than all these savage thresholds

you keep crossing like a lop-sided weathervane

as if happiness always lay to the east?

And you don’t want to call the police

and you don’t want me to cruise the streets

and find the fuck

and beat the shit out of him

until he’s shyer than a sex change

and there are reasons only you know

for why he snorts the Milky Way like blow

and raves like a little god on a late night talk show

about the premiere of the opening act of his next comeback

that always ends like an air-raid siren in a blackout

sitting here like you with nothing to say

as you hang the dead oceans

of your starless emotions

like bloodied bedsheets

over your bruised windows and pray

as if you were downloading stars into a telescope like a gun

that might go off like God in your mouth

over London during the blitz.

Walk away, walk away, walk away,

and let your eyes heal like waterbirds

that efface their flowing in the distance

and that bow of a lip that was split by a fist

be feathered by the fire of a poison-tipped arrow

that stings like a kiss good-bye

when it comes up like the Queen of Cups

on the dark side of the Tarot

and you stop letting yourself be pushed around

like the moon in a wounded wheelbarrow.

PATRICK WHITE