I'VE STOPPED MISTAKING MY LIFE

I’VE STOPPED MISTAKING MY LIFE

 

I’ve stopped mistaking my life

for evidence I exist.

I’ve stopped watering

palm-trees in a mirage.

I’m leaking out of myself

like sand through a crack

in a wounded hourglass.

I’ve stopped doing my time

standing up

and approach things more

like a circle

that’s been squared

by a reclusive hypoteneuse.

I’ve stopped asking

how many legs are on a snake

or what does it mean

when things don’t mean anything.

For all the auditions I held

I never did find a stand-in

for the meaning of meaning.

I can hear crutches breaking

like dead branches

from the tree of knowledge

that rails like an ice-storm in hell

there’s no light for its chandeliers.

How many voices are in a secret?

How many theories in a thought?

How many lovers had to die

to keep one feeling alive?

I deserted the circus of high ideals.

I unfeathered my heels

and stopped trying to invent

new alphabets that would read like birds

before the first snow.

When you’re everywhere

there’s nowhere left to go.

I stopped telling time to its face

what hour it was and wasn’t

and started listening to it

as if it had nothing to say.

I stopped asking space for i.d.

and it stopped showing me

an old picture of me

with one eye.

A voice spoke

out of the purposeless undoing of the fire

and everything went up like smoke

trying to get a little higher.

I wasn’t on a mission

to save the souls of the trees

like native peoples

by converting them

to doors and ladders.

I swept through steeples

like a forest-fire

And the judgment came down:

Nothing matters.

And I knew I was free

to take liberties with the abyss.

And everywhere I rode

a flying carpet of karma

through the infinite darkness

unspooling like a wavelength of light

I made up my own myths

about the stars that were passing

clandestine lovenotes through my eyes

as if they were doves

sent out to look for me like land.

But I had a hell of a flood

of my own going on

and took wing for Atlantis.

I’ve given up trying to walk on water

but I can go for miles on quicksand.

Stars are another matter.

A firewalk you take alone.

I live in a house

where the windows

are lightyears across

and a black hole

is my last known address

surrounded by trees

that keep opening my mail

like leaves of their own

to see who signed

what the light confessed

when it wanted to get

the night off its chest.

Tell me your sorrows.

Tell me your fears.

Tell me your hopes and passions

and I’ll listen like a universe

to its own afterbirth

like a flawed soul

listens with compassion to the rain.

Illusory cures for illusory diseases

perhaps

detailed maps

of rivers that never flowed.

But I take a deep breath

and put my shoulder to the wind like a bell

that’s taken on a heavy load

like a backhoe in heaven

excavating graves

to see if anything

can truly save us from ourselves.

I come up like the full moon

of a mushroom in the night

and I wait for elves

to enthrone me like a footstool

under everybody’s feet

as the last of the hanging judges

takes his seat.

But I know like a man

who wrestles with angels

how to grow stronger with every defeat.

I am no longer defined by things

that don’t know the limits

of what I’m becoming

now that I’ve dropped off my body and mind

like a demon jumping from paradise

without a parachute.

And this is the anti-papal decretal

of the fallible man

they stone with churches on earth

for showing up blessed like a human

who took the shape of the world

from the inside out

not the outside in.

This way lies redemption.

That way, too.

Fire’s not a heresy

that’s committed to its flames

anymore than autumn consumes

the heartwood of its orthodoxies

when it burns the trees.

Desire doesn’t cut the tongue

out of the mouth of love

for saying the secret name of God

as if it weren’t junkmail

on the threshold

of the old neighbourhood

the cornerstones of sounder reasons

had torn down like a slum

to make room

for better things to come.

There are still scarlet geraniums

blooming in red brick clay pots

on the windowsills of longing

that haven’t lost their faith

like leaves yet

one day they’ll return to the garden.

And baby boys born

like heartsongs with hards on

that are not the cliches

of impish cherubs

in a painting of original sin

but angels holding burning swords

at the gates of the mothers

they’ve been driven out of

to guard the way in.

It’s deeply ontological.

But if things didn’t happen this way

how could you ever find

your own way back

to that shortcut you took

like time off at the beginning?

And haven’t you noticed yet

how the universe keeps showing up

a star too late for the end of things

making up excuses along the way

like a touring playhouse on wheels

rehearsing what to say

for the long delay

in catching up to itself like a thief?

You can tell a lot about a man

by what he steals.

You can tell a lot about a world

by the way your life feels

when there’s no one around

to make a sound

as you fall like a tree in the forest.

How many koans need to be cracked

like skulls full of insight

before you get the gist of the joke

that everything you see

is whole and perfect and broke.

Hell and heaven

are only the first two stairs

on this fire-escape

the stars have lowered to earth.

And then there’s a bridge to the other side

of a river that’s given up looking

for its lost shores

to put an end to its weeping.

And I don’t know who she is yet

but beyond that

there’s a woman on her knees

crying like one of life’s immensities              

for her dead baby

as she washes its blood off the floors

with her hair

for safe-keeping.

 

PATRICK WHITE