I'M TRYING TO CARE

I’M TRYING TO CARE

 

I’m trying to care that you lied to me.

I thought that if you ever did

it would hit me like a tsumani

but it lies lightly on my shoulders

like a shawl of dew on the grass

that will evaporate soon.

I’m just sorry

you didn’t take

the path of least resistance

and tell me the truth.

Maybe in retrospect

you can blame it on your infamous youth

but it will sadden me

in some remote space in the future

that’s never heard of time and death and separation

where I sit alone at the end

of a rocky peninsula

and trust my thoughts

to the moon and the ocean

to remember what you did to yourself

when you pimped your emotions out to your mind.

Good-bye is such a harsh word

to use on those

who cried out for your love

and you tried to love them back. 

I doubt that even years from now

when things are more

the negative space of a silhouette

than they are the shape of a human

I’ll be able to say it and mean it.

How far and wide the leaves might travel

they’re still attached to the tree

and though I might be

a dead branch in autumn by then

I will still reach out to the full moon

like the last thing to ever blossom in me

that wasn’t eclipsed by the far side of the night

that couldn’t look into the light

without turning away.

And I imagine I’ll try to say to myself

something wise and cogent and grand as the stars

about this intimately lyrical life

I live with both feet on the ground.

How sad it was so much of the time.

How destructively creative

and how creatively mad

to live this dream of flesh and blood

for the sake of someone

I’ve never known.

And how much space it took

to wash the starmud off my face

to see that it wasn’t my own.

I let the earth take the weight

when the heaviness of life

is heavier than the weight of things.

I let the wind blow away my sorrows.

I wield a sword of water

against the titanium dragons in the mirror

knowing the soft and yielding

will overcome the hardness of my anger

and rescue the princess

chained to the rock of my heart

like that locket around her neck

with no one’s picture in it but her own.  

But I’ve always preferred to drown

in the company of sirens

who know how to sing

if I’m going to go down with the ship

named for a woman I loved

and trusted like a lifeboat on the moon.

It’s a diamond discipline of grace

I’ve honed over the years

to cut myself lose of my tears

like a river in an ice-age

that doesn’t flow anymore.

I have tried to live in such a way

that I never shamed

the wonder of being alive

by smearing it with a mirror of myself

that lied to my eyes

about what they were seeing.

I don’t know is a small religion

that encompasses everything

from the shrine of an atom

to the great temples of the galaxies.

It doesn’t try to convert deceivers into believers

It’s three and a half words of scripture

written by birds in the air at night in passing

to remind the perceivers that nothing’s lasting

but the silence beyond what they’ve heard.

The darkness that illuminates the stars.

The stillness of the perpetual motion machine

beyond the waxing and waning

the ebbing and neaping

of our lunar scars

keeping watch over our wounds

as we dream away the pain of staying alive.

I don’t know holds everyone accountable spontaneously

because it doesn’t ask anything of anyone

extraneously.

It makes you answer to yourself.

It doesn’t prophecy.

It doesn’t curse or bless.

It isn’t the fulfillment of anything.

It doesn’t have heretics.

It doesn’t have saints.

And yet it’s the holiest inspiration

to ever express itself as a human

looking into the nature of things

without knowing what it is

that’s looking back.

Or whether anyone can even tell

when things come to light

like stars and fireflies

far off in the intimate distance

of a limitless darkness

or a loveletter like a sail

crossing the zenith

of its own event horizon

without an adress to go back to

if life is a white lie or a black.

I don’t know is purer than mercy.

It doesn’t diminish its echoes

or raise its voice.

There’s nothing to affirm.

Nothing to deny.

It doesn’t send children to confession

like original sin

because it doesn’t know

if things start

where they begin

or if a good heart waiting

at the traffic light

for the red apple to turn green again

like an impressionist painting of innocence

is on its way out

or on its way back to Eden

like Monet in his gardens at Giverny.

But I’ve seen the waterlilies

enlightened at night by the moon

and drank real water

from mirages in a desert of stars

that longed to be taken seriously.

And I’ve seen Aquarius in love

when she pours her heart out inexhaustibly

like rain from above

on the burnt roots of dead trees

that bloom in the urns of their ashs

as if they didn’t know when to stop.

It’s the curse of courage

for someone to keep on keepin on

long after they know for sure

they’ve wasted their life on nothing

but hungry ghosts

begging for illusory bread

they could feed on for life

like real flesh and blood.

But it’s worse to put words

in a dead man’s mouth

and expect him to live up to them

like a necromantic norm of cupidity.

It’s a twitch of mystic stupidity

to talk through God

like the dummy on your knee

and believe every word he says

as if for every ventiloquist

that says she loves you

there’s a burning bush

deep in the shadlowless valleys of her thighs

that lies.

But doesn’t it take the fun out of lying

for people like you

when people like me

accept everything as true?

And it’s hard to pull the wool over someone’s eyes

like a Las Vegas of lights that blindsides the stars

by playing at love like a casino

when they can see just as well

in the dark without them

the braille constellations

that punctuate the dice

like a starmap in a snakepit

trying not to get bit twice

by the same sting

that dragged you down

into the rootless underworld

by the heel

just last spring.

You’ll come up somewhere

rooted in manure

pure as a crocus again

and just as beautiful 

I’m sure.

But try not to con the rain

or deceive yourself into believing

that the truth is just a lie in pain

you can tell to anyone

to excuse the agony of living

underground.

Just say I don’t know to everything

like I do

and all the lies come true.

 

PATRICK WHITE