Friday, February 26, 2010

THE BLONDE SHOCK

THE BLONDE SHOCK

 

for Layla

 

The blonde shock of wild sea grass from New Brunswick.

At first I thought it was your hair.

And tiny beads of iridescent peacock seeds

as small as the myriad hopes of a poppy

she’ll come again

that fell out of the envelope

into my coffee

as a muse of patchouli oil

inspired the air like an Egyptian temple

tending to the rites of Isis

when the moon’s in the nymph phase

of her ancient seduction.

And a drawing of a rainbow phoenix

in the form of a flower

and a money-order for five hundred dollars

to paint violet horns

on the black inverted star

with its plinths open like legs

giving birth to helical vines and snakes.

A symbolic tatoo

that means you

that will hang like a flag from your spine

down your back

as a sign of whose country it is

should anyone ever get lost.

You’re right.

You can’t draw butterflies.

But your darkness intrigues.

Your light is true to its star.

Space bends around you like water.

And there’s not a chained tree

in the whole of your wilderness.

The gates of your rivers are open and free

as the salmon who jump them

conjured out of the sea

by the siren who sings to them

like a journey of things to come

at the end of the long way home.

Love breathes life into death

and even on the fly

love is the prime circumstance of now.

And I feel the gold of your harvest in every seed.

And there’s no scarecrow with a sword

trying to defeat the ploughshare

it was born from

like the moon as it moves

like a white horse

through a wounded valley

looking for its lost rider

somewhere out there like the wind.

I’ve been blinded by squalls of stars before

the sphinx blew in my face

and I have felt my eyes

evaporate in the blazing

of certain fireflies

who could read the braille of my face

like elegant fingertips of light

deciphering the writing on the wall.

And I’ve lived through it all like space

whether I was a celestial snakepit of passion

with a mouse for a heart

or I was blowing kisses

like the petals of bruised flowers

into the grave of an enlightened starfish

passing by in a deathcart.

And sometimes the geni gets his wish

by rubbing the lamp on the inside

and asking the night to need him

like water needs a fish

like fire needs a tree

like air needs a bird

like earth an unpoached elephant.

I’m not a species bent on martyrdom

to any cause lesser than the love

I aspire to

and I won’t burn my eyes

on insincere candles at a black mass

or the votive fires of delusional crucifixtions

that yearn without conviction

for a better infancy in their afterlife.

Things have been tough

but I still go to bed at night

with the door wide open

as hope to folly

to catch a thief

that might put the moon back

she stole from my window

like the coin from my mouth

I had hoped would pay for my passage.

And I’ve been given up

like the sea gives up its dead

like the ghosts of old cliches

to the voice of a new medium

and I’ve discovered

that love isn’t the forensic history

of a mystery that can be cracked by the truth.

It’s apocalyptic lightyears beyond both

like a prophecy

uttered in the secrecy of your solitude

that can only be overheard

with your eyes.

And there is no age in it

no youth that leaves the stage

a wiser happier skeleton

no shrines to spring

no pyres of autumn.

It isn’t the beginning or end of anything

that wanders in a world of forms

like a road with all the answers

to questions it never stops to ask.

Love isn’t a lost cause

looking for someone to take a risk.

And it isn’t the silence

it isn’t the singing

it isn’t the longing

to be pulled out like the lucky straw

in a random draw among exiles

to decide who should go first.

It isn’t a thumb in a plum pie.

It isn’t the kiss that lifted the curse.

Or a lifeboat on the moon

that overturns like a blessing

that only makes matters worse.

And it would be unforgivably spacious of me

though I have loved long and intensely

to say what love is

when it wings its own immensity

like a nightbird of blood

that sheds its hood

to fly among the stars

like a fire feathering its own solitude.

But if I were to say anything

I would say

love might be a mighty sword

drawn from a dark ore

tempered in secret waters on the moon

enfolded like time in space

like a worldly loveletter

in a cosmic envelope

with a return address by the sea

that keeps faith with its prey

by giving its word to life

it’s not the expedience of the slayer

or the obedience of the slain

not the exaltation of joy in death

or the mystic terror there is in birth

that calls the lightning down

to make the weathervane crow at midnight:

I have tasted the light on my tongue

like the tine of a new direction.

A dragon sheds it skin

like the ashes of a spent fire.

And the serpents of desire

dance to the flutes

of a lyrical resurrection

like words that take

their meaning from us

when love’s the native language,

the grammar, the muse, the voice, the silence

the playfully profound way the picture-music

hides like a Rosetta stone

that doesn’t want to be found

like a key to the meaning of everything

when we’re what it’s trying to say.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Thursday, February 25, 2010

I GOT THIS FAR

I GOT THIS FAR

 

I got this far only to find out

I was too far gone.

No way back.

No way on.

I think I’ll just stay here

like a continental shelf

that keeps falling off

the edge of itself.

Life’s absurd I know.

Life’s deeper than sorrow

and higher than joy.

The past of the old man

was the future of the boy.

When space and time divide

into one discontinuum

who’s the widow

who’s the bride?

And then there’s the dark.

And then there’s the light.

Is the moon two goddesses

in one gown?

Master the loser

and the winner is bound.

I keep my nightface

turned toward the stars.

The other’s eating flowers.

God may be cutting

but she’s not malignant.

Little we see in nature that is ours.

That’s why I look at the stars.

Space is pregnant

with gravitational eyes

of dark matter

that can see into the heart of things.

And time’s a proud father.

And it’s a toss-up

between a mirror and a lense

whether time resembles you

in the way you look upon the world

or you’re the spitting image

of an ancestral abyss.

This is perfect.

That is perfect.

Take perfect from perfect

it’s still perfect.

I’m in the presence

of all the things I miss.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Wednesday, February 24, 2010

A CREED FOR THE DESPERATE

A CREED FOR THE DESPERATE

 

Don’t let your bones be softened by fear.

By the time you hear it the lightning has already struck.

Don’t listen for the echoes of things you haven’t said.

And stop breaking your fortune-cookie skull open

like an old prophetic head

that claims it’s been to the dark side

without being dead.

Don’t let disaster define you.

You’re not the bouquet

of a second class vinegar

hovering over a first class wine.

No crisis ever comes with its own identity

until you give it yours.

Move calmly over your own waters

like clouds in the eye of a puddle.

Walk as if you were already

following your own funeral

and lost your way to the grave.

People make much of being

but seeing is enough

to save you sometimes

from your own obscurity.

And when was there ever any security

in security

as if this flame were safer than that?

How long has the universe risked being you?

Take a chance on your own magic

and pull your life like a tiger

out of your own hat

to eat the rabbit you’ve become.

Then there’s nothing to run from.

Become the sword

and you won’t cut yourself.

Become the fire

and you won’t burn.

Become life again

and you won’t pass away

breath after breath after breath

wishing you could stay

in the negative space

of a comfortable death

that eulogizes your lies.

There are full moons

that don’t weigh

like pennies on your eyes

to keep you from seeing too much. 

And there are things of the earth

that have followed you into exile

like a new birth of things you can touch

that are wholly yours in passing

like music from a keyboard

or a fire in church.

And you may be down

to your last black beatitude

and righteously uphold the sanctity

of your will not to listen

to anything but the clinking of your own chains

and the mournful whistle

of your distant dying derailed thought-trains

giving up the ghost

but you’re just sucking on the tit

of a perverse purity

and you’re milking it

like the bitter truth

for all it’s worth.

And it’s not worth much.

And you may have flattened

all the mountains

and filled all the valleys

of your flatlining event horizons

but there’s still life going on

in the crooked backalleys

of secret dimensions

you don’t know about

stuck in the house all day

like a child afraid to go out.

You look at a tree.

You see a crutch.

You look at the moon.

You see a scar.

You look at a star

and you’re lost for good wherever you are.

And it’s not really a dysfunction of your imagination

that you can look at the Taj Mahal

and see a one-room hovel with slumlords

jacking up the rent.

It’s good to look both ways

at any spiritual crossing.

But you see a stick in the water

and you think the water’s bent.

And to shrink anything as the Tao says

you must first expand it.

But I think the Tao meant the universe

not a used condom on the death’s-head

of a stillborn resurrection.

But you’d have to fall

further than you have

to understand it. 

You’d have to fall

from your present plight on the world mountain

all the way down until you came to a space

where there were no more opposites in the abyss

and nothing in order

nothing amiss

nothing is meant

to scare you into being

and nothing is trying to hold you back.

What’s your lover’s mouth

if not a wound

you can kiss into healing?

You can see it that way.

Or you can harden the bruised fruit

with brittle tears

and flintknap chandeliers

to fall from star-crossed mirrors

like rain from broken glass

that hasn’t fired up a single root in years

to dream of flowers.

The mind’s an artist.

The painting’s yours.

A self portrait in the image of God

whom no one’s ever seen.

I see a black star in the bottom of a tulip

shining up at me

like the direction it took

to get to the other side.

You see a poisonous spider

like the leftover lees

of a flowerless wine 

in the eye of a toxic goblet.

And you might raise it to your lips

like a lunar eclipse

but you never drink up.

And even when you do

it’s a bad guest in the house of life

that drinks from his own skull

like the grail of a grape on the vine

with one eye open

as if he trusted the wine

but not the cup.

You’re not the cure

that failed the ailing kingdom.

And you’re not the miracle

that got up and walked away

to spread the word like a bird at sea

that had just discovered a tree to perch in

you might have sinned as a crow

but now that you’ve been saved

you’re a carrier pigeon.

You can sit here all day if you want

like a buddha on his tatami mat

thinking bituminously

about burning enlightened diamonds

back into eyeless coal.

You can squat like a tree in rings of fat

smashing small thoughts

like eggs on the rocks

trying to read your fate

in their misfortune

like a chromosome

you hold in common

with all those who hate

having been born.

You can heap your afterbirth with scorn.

You can turn your eyes

into a pair of gravitational lenses

like dark matter

and wince at the stars

like cinders of light

that contradict your seeing.

And you wouldn’t be wrong

because you can see it that way too.

The same eye by which I see God

is the eye by which She sees me.

Two creative geniuses in one studio

painting each other in the nude.

And she shows you hers

and you show her yours

as she enflames your solitude

by not putting her name on it

though it’s a perfect likeness of you.

Your face warped into

a convoluted starless space

like the opening gala

of a staged extinction.

And your soul shrouded in lampblack

like a candle

that soils its own light

by putting on a deathmask of night

like a snakeoil salesman

selling skin to ghosts.

And there where your eyes used to be

two black holes

surrounded by random haloes of light

like lipstick on the mouths of star-nosed moles.

And look at that scar of red she’s used

to catch your ambiguous smile.

That’s the kind of genius

that leaves the asylum gate open for awhile

for everyone to get into your style

of imploding your eyes

like black dwarfs

with abstract depressionist astigmatism

as if gravity couldn’t dig a grave deep enough

or matter make a stone heavy enough

to put on your chest to keep you from rising again

or the gold of the moon in your mouth

ever prove true enough to pay the ferryman

to get you to the other side of nowhere

as if he knew somehow

you huffed life like a paint thinner

trying to escape the race a winner

by never crossing a starting line

that wasn’t already

a dark horse lamed by life behind you.

And he couldn’t be bothered with anyone

who would fix their own death

and lay a bet against everyone

their pain could outrun their compassion

and in the second heat

their bitterness the truth.

But if you want a way out

like an emergency door

I’ll let you in on a little secret.

Life doesn’t grow into death

and death isn’t waiting

to take your next breath.

And there’s an eye of liberation

in the darkest hurricane roses of despair

that frees the light like life enough to care

that all it falls upon alike

should see its own face everywhere

through a crack of black lightning

in the white mirror

where everything that appears

evaporates like a ghost off a lake

or cataracts from the eyes

of the orthodox

who couldn’t see straight enough

to thread their keys through their locks

like mystic heretics

to have known

the deepest wounds give birth

to the sweetest spears

that life has ever thrown

like light on a roadless night

or insight like a bird through the sky

that enters the sunset

like a planet following the sun

through the seven coloured doors

of the seven blind seers

who disappear in a vision of one clarity

with many more eyes

than there are lightning bolts and fireflies

whose age can be measured in light-years.

If a fraction of nothing is nothing.

Then a fraction of eternity

isn’t a brevity less than the eternal

and every fraction of anything is all.

There now that’s not too hard to follow.

The white face of the moon

veils the dark other you never see

because it’s all been timed to turn away.

The moon and its month are one day.

Things might be empty

but they’re not hollow.

And you’re free to go or stay.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


A CREED FOR THE DESPARATE

A CREED FOR THE DESPERATE

 

Don’t let your bones be softened by fear.

By the time you hear it the lightning has already struck.

Don’t listen for the echoes of things you haven’t said.

And stop breaking your fortune-cookie skull open

like an old prophetic head

that claims it’s been to the dark side

without being dead.

Don’t let disaster define you.

You’re not the bouquet

of a second class vinegar

hovering over a first class wine.

No crisis ever comes with its own identity

until you give it yours.

Move calmly over your own waters

like clouds in the eye of a puddle.

Walk as if you were already

following your own funeral

and lost your way to the grave.

People make much of being

but seeing is enough

to save you sometimes

from your own obscurity.

And when was there ever any security

in security

as if this flame were safer than that?

How long has the universe risked being you?

Take a chance on your own magic

and pull your life like a tiger

out of your own hat

to eat the rabbit you’ve become.

Then there’s nothing to run from.

Become the sword

and you won’t cut yourself.

Become the fire

and you won’t burn.

Become life again

and you won’t pass away

breath after breath after breath

wishing you could stay

in the negative space

of a comfortable death

that eulogizes your lies.

There are full moons

that don’t weigh

like pennies on your eyes

to keep you from seeing too much. 

And there are things of the earth

that have followed you into exile

like a new birth of things you can touch

that are wholly yours in passing

like music from a keyboard

or a fire in church.

And you may be down

to your last black beatitude

and righteously uphold the sanctity

of your will not to listen

to anything but the clinking of your own chains

and the mournful whistle

of your distant dying derailed thought-trains

giving up the ghost

but you’re just sucking on the tit

of a perverse purity

and you’re milking it

like the bitter truth

for all it’s worth.

And it’s not worth much.

And you may have flattened

all the mountains

and filled all the valleys

of your flatlining event horizons

but there’s still life going on

in the crooked backalleys

of secret dimensions

you don’t know about

stuck in the house all day

like a child afraid to go out.

You look at a tree.

You see a crutch.

You look at the moon.

You see a scar.

You look at a star

and you’re lost for good wherever you are.

And it’s not really a dysfunction of your imagination

that you can look at the Taj Mahal

and see a one-room hovel with slumlords

jacking up the rent.

It’s good to look both ways

at any spiritual crossing.

But you see a stick in the water

and you think the water’s bent.

And to shrink anything as the Tao says

you must first expand it.

But I think the Tao meant the universe

not a used condom on the death’s-head

of a stillborn resurrection.

But you’d have to fall

further than you have

to understand it. 

You’d have to fall

from your present plight on the world mountain

all the way down until you came to a space

where there were no more opposites in the abyss

and nothing in order

nothing amiss

nothing is meant

to scare you into being

and nothing is trying to hold you back.

What’s your lover’s mouth

if not a wound

you can kiss into healing?

You can see it that way.

Or you can harden the bruised fruit

with brittle tears

and flintknap chandeliers

to fall from star-crossed mirrors

like rain from broken glass

that hasn’t fired up a single root in years

to dream of flowers.

The mind’s an artist.

The painting’s yours.

A self portrait in the image of God

whom no one’s ever seen.

I see a black star in the bottom of a tulip

shining up at me

like the direction it took

to get to the other side.

You see a poisonous spider

like the leftover lees

of a flowerless wine 

in the eye of a toxic goblet.

And you might raise it to your lips

like a lunar eclipse

but you never drink up.

And even when you do

it’s a bad guest in the house of life

that drinks from his own skull

like the grail of a grape on the vine

with one eye open

as if he trusted the wine

but not the cup.

You’re not the cure

that failed the ailing kingdom.

And you’re not the miracle

that got up and walked away

to spread the word like a bird at sea

that had just discovered a tree to perch in

you might have sinned as a crow

but now that you’ve been saved

you’re a carrier pigeon.

You can sit here all day if you want

like a buddha on his tatami mat

thinking bituminously

about burning enlightened diamonds

back into eyeless coal.

You can squat like a tree in rings of fat

smashing small thoughts

like eggs on the rocks

trying to read your fate

in their misfortune

like a chromosome

you hold in common

with all those who hate

having been born.

You can heap your afterbirth with scorn.

You can turn your eyes

into a pair of gravitational lenses

like dark matter

and wince at the stars

like cinders of light

that contradict your seeing.

And you wouldn’t be wrong

because you can see it that way too.

The same eye by which I see God

is the eye by which She sees me.

Two creative geniuses in one studio

painting each other in the nude.

And she shows you hers

and you show her yours

as she enflames your solitude

by not putting her name on it

though it’s a perfect likeness of you.

Your face warped into

a convoluted starless space

like the opening gala

of a staged extinction.

And your soul shrouded in lampblack

like a candle

that soils its own light

by putting on a deathmask of night

like a snakeoil salesman

selling skin to ghosts.

And there where your eyes used to be

two black holes

surrounded by random haloes of light

like lipstick on the mouths of star-nosed moles.

And look at that scar of red she’s used

to catch your ambiguous smile.

That’s the kind of genius

that leaves the asylum gate open for awhile

for everyone to get into your style

of imploding your eyes

like black dwarfs

with abstract depressionist astigmatism

as if gravity couldn’t dig a grave deep enough

or matter make a stone heavy enough

to put on your chest to keep you from rising again

or the gold of the moon in your mouth

ever prove true enough to pay the ferryman

to get you to the other side of nowhere

as if he knew somehow

you huffed life like a paint thinner

trying to escape the race a winner

by never crossing a starting line

that wasn’t already

a dark horse lamed by life behind you.

And he couldn’t be bothered with anyone

who would fix their own death

and lay a bet against everyone

their pain could outrun their compassion

and in the second heat

their bitterness the truth.

But if you want a way out

like an emergency door

I’ll let you in on a little secret.

Life doesn’t grow into death

and death isn’t waiting

to take your next breath.

And there’s an eye of liberation

in the darkest hurricane roses of despair

that frees the light like life enough to care

that all it falls upon alike

should see its own face everywhere

through a crack of black lightning

in the white mirror

where everything that appears

evaporates like a ghost off a lake

or cataracts from the eyes

of the orthodox

who couldn’t see straight enough

to thread their keys through their locks

like mystic heretics

to have known

the deepest wounds give birth

to the sweetest spears

that life has ever thrown

like light on a roadless night

or insight like a bird through the sky

that enters the sunset

like a planet following the sun

through the seven coloured doors

of the seven blind seers

who disappear in a vision of one clarity

with many more eyes

than there are lightning bolts and fireflies

whose age can be measured in light-years.

If a fraction of nothing is nothing.

Then a fraction of eternity

isn’t a brevity less than the eternal

and every fraction of anything is all.

There now that’s not too hard to follow.

The white face of the moon

veils the dark other you never see

because it’s all been timed to turn away.

The moon and its month are one day.

Things might be empty

but they’re not hollow.

And you’re free to go or stay.

 

PATRICK WHITE