YOU TALK TO ME

YOU TALK TO ME

 

You talk to me about sorrow and pain

as if your mouth were a wound

that couldn’t be healed with a kiss

and your heart were a vast abyss

with a worm theory at the core

of an apple like this we’re living on

that circles the sun like a planet.

An ice-storm breaks the branches

of your candleabra

and I can hear the sound of smashing glass.

You pull the night down

like an executioner’s hood

over the skull of the moon

as it raises its ax over the hills

and my head rolls across the living room floor.

But I’m not trying to outhink you.

What you feel is what you feel.

I’m not saying it isn’t real.

The stars aren’t looking down upon you

and the candles aren’t trying to make a point

by knapping their flames into spears.

I’m not trying to teach an army of snakes to march

in good order toward some emotional victory

over the things that make you cry.

And there’s no window on the way

to replace the one you broke

that’s dying to give you 

a different perspective on your fears.

We’re all afraid

of what we don’t know how to love.

And if you’re suggesting suicide

I’m sorry you’re such a stranger to yourself

you don’t know whose doorway you’re standing in

like the emergency exit of a bad guest

who just showed up for appearance sake

like church bells extolling fake farewells in your wake.

But Orpheus isn’t trying to sing

your way out of Hades again

or trying to charm death

with his prophetic head

to let you go.

It was wrong to look back the first time.

And my music isn’t a valium for savage hearts

when the beast rages at its own wound

like an infuriated Maenad

and tears at its flesh

like a voodoo doll insane with pain.

Me?

I’m still working on how to make

a graceful entrance

with my back to the wall.

I’m walking from precipice to precipice

like a feather on a tight rope in the fall

trying to get through it all

as if it mattered that I did.

And I don’t care

what direction I’m headed in.

Any moment I could be downed by a crosswind

and as far as I’m concerned

death can make a bow for me if it wants

and if I lose my balance

I lose my balance.

I’ll take the chance.

And if I’ve been falling for years

like Icarus in tears

as you intimate I have been

then maybe if I fall long enough

I’ll grow wings

and rise above my shortcomings

like geese returning on a spring night

without wax and string

to hold it all together.

You can sit down on the ground

and wrapped in your deathshroud like a bat

have a good cry if you wish

then take eternity home as a shortcut

across your wrists.

But when I meet my ghost on the path

coming the other way

and look it in the eye like my afterlife

we both sit down together

on the sure-footed earth

like a mountain with a good view

of its own reflection

and have a good laugh.

 

PATRICK WHITE