DON'T CARE IF I DO

DON’T CARE IF I DO

 

Don’t care if I do don’t care if I don’t.

I’m letting go of the spinal cord

I’ve been hanging on to for years

to pull myself up over the edge of my mind

safe at last safe at last safe at last

to enjoy the view

like a man standing upright on a precipice

without a gnawing urge to jump.

One mile up is one mile down

and letting go

is my only way of hanging on.

Letting myself go over the cliff

will I revive from my annihilation like water?

Will daring say feathers and falling take flight

or will the lights just go out

before the movie begins

and I’m inconceivably not there to see it?

The abyss of my calling

is an intimately impersonal voice

that whispers of other dimensions

just under my skin

well within the comprehension of jumpers like me

who have fallen so long through the same blackhole

they’ve reversed directions

and now they’re falling up

as if a course correction

had been beamed up to Icarus

and now he were plunging into the sun like a spent satellite

sending little blips and beeps back

like illuminating details of his annihilation

not knowing if anyone is listening or not.

I’m so bright I’m blind.

Too much light can hurt the mind.

So I live by night and die by day

like stars that need a lot of darkness to shine.

I don’t struggle anymore to keep up with myself

like the shadow of an ambulance

because the darkness lasts longer than the radiance

and there’s a dark halo of comets

that rolls like the barrel

of a midnight special around the sun

that likes to play Russian roulette with its planets

but it takes lightyears after the gun goes off

for the bullet to strike home like a prophecy

that came true long long before

any of us were born

to see the light through our ears.

Don’t care if I do don’t care if I don’t

have a dark past or a bright future.

Now is enough of a mile

to keep me walking for awhile

whether I know where I’m going or not.

First you hurt from the exertion

of pushing yourself

like a rock up a hill

that keeps rolling back down upon you

like a stone over the entrance of the same tomb

that gave birth to you like luggage

in the locker of a bus-stop.

And then you give up.

You donate your rock

like a vital organ

or kissing stone

to some local Kaaba

and then join Amnesty International

to help indict

the genocidal asteroids

for past war crimes against the dinosaurs

forgetting that nuclear winter

was the sign of the times

that led to us.

A mammal’s just a reptile

that pulled one over on the rest

like a neo-cortex.

And if you go extinct?

Well

you can always say

you did your best

and tomorrow’s a new day.

You could see it that way

but I don’t

because it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference

whether I’ve got a point of view

or not.

Either way

I’m as clueless as my name

about why things change to stay the same

as if first you’re born of fire

and then you’re born of water

and then the night cuts you free

of your spinal cord like a kite

or a snake

moving through the grass

like the eye of the needle

that’s just been threaded

by a forked tongue

that gets you into paradise

faster than greased lightning

can be feathered with light

and you catch sight of yourself

in an oxymoronic corner

of the black mind mirror

as if the lowest of things

had just been given the wings of a dragon

and there were the eggs of all your past lives

lying around like fat moons

you could live on like an eclipse forever

burying and exhuming the light

like the white doves of old loveletters

in the hands of a black magician

that doesn’t believe in superstition.

 

PATRICK WHITE