Thursday, February 18, 2010

SHOULD I SPEAK OF THINGS BACKWARDS

SHOULD I SPEAK OF THINGS BACKWARDS

 

Should I speak of things backwards

as if the only things I could know and say

were always behind me

like starlight in my wake

or turn and look out into the abysmal darkness

not knowing what road to take

if the carpet will fly

if the theme I’m following

like my own shadow through time

will ever drop the veil from her face like Isis

and look into mine?

Stars evaporate in their own intensity like gods.

The spirit of the universe

is a shapeshifter

that never wears the same thing twice.

Every day shows up with a new face.

Every night’s a new lover in my place.

And the plot gets thicker and quicker

as the past asks the future

as if it read a lot of history

how things turned out

and the future asks the past

as if it were the watershed of the mystery

who came first and who came last

to the mindstream they both drink from.

Learning wisdom is learning space.

And it’s a big place.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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