WHOEVER I AM

WHOEVER I AM

Whoever I am

it’s only for a moment that passes

as quickly as the universe.

Sometimes my eyes

outshine the stars they’re looking at,

and thought is faster

than the speed of light

and every feeling

feathers the flight of the fire like a flame.

I have a name

that I’ve been trained

to turn toward like a sunflower

but ultimately it’s only the sound

of another wave crashing on the shore

of an uninhabited island.

Sometimes listening

to the music of the spheres within me

I think I can hear

the single, silver note of myself

timing my life like a drop of water

at the end of a blade of stargrass

or a triangular tintinabulum

that catches the attention

of the whole, cosmic, symphony orchestra

like the first sign of rain,

but more often I feel like ditchwater

carrying rose petals down the drain.

And there are things that I’ve exhausted myself against

like a fly against a windowpane

looking for an emergency exit

out of my own shame

at being what I am,

but it’s just another delusory sham

of the flypaper I’m stuck on like the self

of a conning chromosome.

So I call my own bluff

and shatter the lamp

and break the mirror

that buffs my seeing with stars

and dig up all these scarecrow, cruciform, avatars of being

that lie buried under my words

like bad advice from the birds,

and disappear

though I can’t say where

as if I had never existed.

But it isn’t as if

I was here and now I’m not

and there’s a great emptiness

that marks the spot like a black hole in my heart

and there’s anyone to suffer

long term loss for short term gain.

Everything’s still the same

and there’s no end of the pain

that flares up over and over again

like the universe

through an open window of the darkness

to immolate itself like a moth

in the trick candle-flame of a life

I can’t blow out on my birthday

because it’s only as old as I am

and I’ve been here forever.

PATRICK WHITE