Thursday, May 13, 2010

NO TIME NO SPACE NO MIND

NO TIME NO SPACE NO MIND

 

No time no space no mind.

A star falls.

A drop of water falls from a leaf.

Nothing’s diminished.

Nothing’s enhanced.

If you want to believe in something

believe in the silence

the stars dance to

and the trees when they’re trying

to grow like music.

How can the center

judge the circumference

of its own boundlessness?

Nothing’s enclosed.

Nothing’s set free.

Everything’s perfectly defined

by its lack of identity.

And yet here we are together

on planet earth

monadically living ourselves

as the embodiment of an intelligent species

trying to grasp its own mind

like the head of a poisonous snake.

But what’s the point of getting bit

by trying to take your thoughts by the tail

as they disappear down their blackholes

when you’ve already turned to stone

looking in the mirror

at the new hair-do

you’re sporting like the Medusa?

The snakepit fell into you.

And even when you have your tatoo done

by the fangs of the moon

to remind you of what you love

it’s still only as indelible as skin.

So many long agonizing hours

trying to figure things out

like a short thread in a labyrinth

or a long one in the Bayeux Tapestry.

And even when you put out to sea

like a disciplined sailor

on the theta waves of a guru

you’re following like a star

that’s shining in all directions at once

you’re still sitting in the corner with a dunce

wearing a sail for a hat

consulting a map to nowhere.

The world is in turmoil because we are.

The world is in pain because we are enslaved by ideas.

The world is impoverished because we have forgotten

how rich and generous it’s well within our means to be.

The world seems dark and hopeless

because we keep our eyes closed in the light

and open them at night like nocturnal flowers

mistaking the stars for bees.

We keep our mouths shut in the rain

and drown like fish in our own water.

Noah fills his mind like an ark

with two of every kind

and ends up selling real estate in Atlantis

with the morals of a praying mantis.

If you still think of yourself as a good person

wholesome as a homemade loaf of bread

cooling on a country windowsill

you’re not dying hard enough

to make your life credible

in the eyes of all you see perishing before you.

If you’re still running your constellations aground

like dolphins into the nets of your braille starmaps

that glow in the dark like dice and fireflies

then you might be surprised to learn

not just the truths

but the lies have their mystics too

and it’s dangerous when you listen to what they teach

and all you hear is you.

You can’t liberate your face from the mirror

or pick the moon’s reflection up

like a lily-pad from the water

or a stray dime by a telephone booth.

And eternity’s just a monstrosity of time.

But there are no chains of iron

no chains of gold to throw off

like umbilical cords that have been keeping you back

from being born in your own image.

Why perjure the witness of your own clarity

by trying to define who you are moment by moment

like the sea trying to predict its own weather?

You can’t distill the inspiration

from the expression like wine

anymore than you can kill time with space

or separate the mortal from the divine

like filth you can wash off with the stars.

You’re just falling like the rain into your own halos

and smearing rainbow lipstick on the blackhole

that seeks the light like you

but to different effect.

You want to feed on perfection.

You want to eat beauty and God and inorganic ideas.

You want to eat your paints like Van Gogh

so that you can become as they are

but they keep changing into someone else

you begrudgingly acknowledge is you.

And it’s impossible to know

what blackholes change into

or what they do with the light

they consume like krill

but my bet is

they don’t recognize themselves in the light

when the light’s so drastically deranged.

Both sides of the mirror distort space

when the moon’s estranged

by the water that reflects it.

Whales don’t listen to the prophets they swallow.

You stare into the infinite eyes

of the face behind everything

hoping to see your own

in a mirror that blossoms like water.

It shows you an orchard

you forgot to gather up into your arms

like a lost daughter that disowned you

for not seeing yourself in her.

It shows you what a failure you really are.

It shows you the flowers you want to see.

But no star.

No tree.

Nothing but the sad mystery

of a man by himself in a garden at moonrise

with eyes that are lonelier than an abandoned tv.

 

PATRICK WHITE