UNSPOOLING

UNSPOOLING

 

Unspooling.

As if my spine were a thread.

A triple helix.

The fingerprint of an anthropod.

Theseus in the labyrinth

making classical references to bulls.

Horns on the skull of a god.

No emergency exits.

Regard the dead parachutes of Babylon.

No one can understand you.

Probably right.

Something I have in common

with the darker freaks of the light.

Sunspots and eclipses.

Voids in the cosmic net

that lets everything through.

Where the stars don’t grow.

Where there’s no one left to kill

on desolation row

and no Lymon alpha blobs

embryo into baby galaxies.

Only lowly orphans are born

in the dead air of that womb.

The irisless ace of a shark’s eye.

I can hear dark matter

when it cries the light out

taking the shapes of things

no one can see.

God said Let there be light.

And that was the end of me.

Now I’ve got nerves of black lightning

tatooing constellations on my back

with a blackhole that doesn’have the eyes

to read a starmap backwards.

You said you loved me in the past.

But I thought you were only confessing.

And still you say you’ll love me forever.

But now I know you’re guessing.

I abide in the shadows of a deranged blessing

not knowing which is worse,

a flawed beatitude

or the perfect curse.

 

PATRICK WHITE