Monday, August 3, 2009

THE LIE IN YOUR THROAT

THE LIE IN YOUR THROAT

 

The lie in your throat:

another lapis luzuli nightengale

you’ve added to a Byzantine mechanical tree,

dead meat down your own well.

What’s the point of taking centre stage

if you’ve got this huge, astronomically expansive

iridescently supersensible soap-bubble around you

like a womb that doesn’t intend

to ever let go

as the stars grow further apart

resigned to the distances between us?

My heart is an alloy of darkness and silence.

I’ve always been able to imagine my way out of anything

from a black hole to a leg-hold trap

but now I’m zoned out in hyperspace

before the monstrous enormity

of this protean emptiness

like a universe that’s suddenly realized

the way to last forever

is just run out of beginnings.

So nothing ever gets born

and nothing ever perishes.

But it’s underwhelming yourself

to spend a life

trying to sweep the stars

out of the sky

with your eyelashes

like the constellation of an ex-lover

condemned to the slums of a zodiac

slated for demolition.

And I’m not content to ride the tides

that come and go

like a skeleton in a lifeboat

holding on to some last hope of rescue

someone will eventually throw a lifeline

to a puppet on the rocks.

And there’s an exquisitely fine line

between cynicism and serenity

just as there is between

the metal in the stone of the heart

and the sword that no one can pull from the fire

or give back to the lake in devotion

because it falls upon itself

like the reflection of the moon

snailing its way to enlightenment like an open wound.

In short, I don’t know anymore about

who the fuck I am

than I do who you are

and one mile east is always

one mile west of here

and there’s a light, there’s fire,

and only stars in a black mirror

deeper than night

could suggest your beauty

on both sides of my eyes

when I am summoned by these images of you

like water to a tree on the moon in full blossom.

And it’s getting harder and harder to know

whether it’s the torch I’m holding

or me that’s upside down,

or the darkness that’s lying in wait

like the shadow of an assassin

raised by the light

to put it out

so I take the lid off my mind

like a masonjar of fireflies

I let go like sparks from a chimney

to shake out into whatever constellations they want.

And seeing the north star that I have followed for years

like the truth and constancy of a love sonnet

feeling baffled, lost, a little out of place

not knowing how to go before itself into the darkness

like a lamp in the arms of a journey

and its own blood

the only map of the heart it’s got to go by

in the melee of all this liberated radiance

afraid to follow itself

to the source of the hesitant waters

that silt the banks of the lifeline on its palm

with stars you can plant in

like pyramids in good soil;

I aspire to my higher side

and set my eye like a jewel

at the nave of a dreamcatcher

I’ve hung in your window like a new dimension

you can follow in all directions

and still be true to the night

like the first star of an eye

that ripened in darkness

like a bead of light

that runs like water down an apple

and tastes of your own seeing

like a nightstream flowing down

the mountains of the moon

with only that sea of shadows

you cast like breadcrumbs

and crosswalks on the water

to guide you out of the harbour

like a tide without a lifeboat,

blood without a heart,

or the lie that’s caught in your throat

like a harp of the moon

you keep pulling apart like a wishbone

or a witching stick at a sacred joining of rivers

trying to divine your own waters

as if they always flowed under your feet

like a secret path that’s only a secret

to those that walk it alone.

 

PATRICK WHITE