Sunday, November 2, 2008

EVENTUALLY

EVENTUALLY


Eventually you have to make room in your heart

for everything

because if any part is left out

the whole of it is as well

and the absence is astounding.

No more border guards

checking the passports of the stars

like autumn constellations,

no more anything out of place

like the right dream under the wrong face

or this a jewel and that mere stone.

But there’s a subtlety here

so pay attention

or you’ll end up thinking somehow

that you’ll need to revoke the patent

you took out on your impending self

like a faulty invention

if you want to stop mistaking

a galaxy for a nightlight

and bumping into things that hurt.

The moment you think to improve yourself

you’re already the scar

of a self-inflicted wound.

One part of you wants to be a lighthouse

and the other, Noah’s ark,

but the only way to keep from drowning

is to become the flood

and that you already are

like blood in the lifeboat of a star

that guides you from below through the darkness above

that can’t tell the crow from the dove.

And it’s the truest form of humility

to accept yourself as you are

and realize your wildest delusions

are just as sincere as the missionaries you send out

to lie about you to the unconverted

like waves calling out to the sea.

But even to understand that much

is just another pair of handcuffs on a cloud

you keep binding yourself to in protest

to save the rain from falling as it will

on the worst and best alike.

Why live and work like a polyp

to separate heaven from hell with a dyke

when everyone’s walking on water

and swimming through stone

like angelic marrow in a demonized bone?

Just realize that space is always like-minded

without being the nature of anything

and yet there’s nothing it doesn’t embrace

like the mind you reflect

when you hold your face up

to the mirror that breaks and polishes you to see

the perfect lineaments of divinity

in the smear on the maculate moon,

and the enlightened maggot in the eye of the star

that greets every corpse like an avatar.


PATRICK WHITE