Wednesday, May 19, 2010

IF YOU WERE A THOUGHT AND I WERE AN EMOTION

IF YOU WERE A THOUGHT AND I WERE AN EMOTION

 

If you were a thought and I were an emotion

time would still be at cross-purposes with space

and we’d still be sitting here

dangling our bare feet like two kids

over the edge of the abyss

when we go fishing for stars

not really caring if we catch anything

as we throw them back in with our blessings.

You can taste the jewels the light’s been through

sometimes when you close your eyes

and the revealed and the revealing

are just the water and fish of a feeling

idling in the shadows and reeds of the mindstream.

There’s a way of being lost within yourself that’s starbound.

And there’s a way of being found

where people scatter flowers before you

all the way to a hole in the ground

you’re expected to fill like someone else’s shoes.

You can lie under a gravestone

like a man behind a desk with his name on it

who’s been practising for years

to lie very very still

in case he wakes the others up in the snakepit.

Or you can keep the music on

all through the long uneventful night

and feel things that have nothing to do with you

like stray bits of your neighbour’s dreams on the internet.

Or you can put a finger up to your lips and counsel silence.

Three approaches. Three gates. No difference.

Everyone enters the same garden

as if Eden were a cemetery in slow motion

but that old angel with the flaming sword at the gate

burnt out like a candle a long time ago

and the serpent’s a tour guide for fanatical purists

who can’t get out of the closets of hell

and the apple of knowledge

finally took a bite out of itself

and has been falling down crazy drunk

with the cranky wasps of autumn ever since.

Wonder’s the passive sister of interactive madness

and twice as alluring in her self-restraint

than Rasputin in a burlap sack in the river.

Wonder sails off the coasts of the clouds like the moon

and doesn’t lay a claim to what she discovers.

She can see and be seen

but she doesn’t put a name on it.

She doesn’t need to turn the leaf over

like an unopened loveletter

to know what the tree means

because it’s always been her lover.

So if you were a thought and I were an emotion

would you be the brainwave

that rides the night ocean

of my passion at the flood

or would you be into me

like water into mud

like insight into a ripening lamp

about to fall toward paradise again

to see what I’ve been missing?

If you were a thought and I were an emotion

and we were to hold hands like a bridge

on both sides of the mindstream

would the bridge flow as the water does

or would you think of the two of us

you were the more solid

and I was less real?

Looking upon me from all angles

like a sphere that fills the room

like a habitable planet

with a dead moon in its arms

its only daughter

all ashes and shadows and frozen water

and nowhere to bury her skull in the earth

tell me the truth.

If you were a thought and I were an emotion

if you were land and I were an ocean

because thoughts have legs

and feelings have fins

(or is it scales and feathers?)

if we could bring her back to life

like the weather

and mend her battered body

would it be better to think than feel?

Would the solid turn into the real?

Would she wake up like a koan

with the answer to cancer

and the sound of one hand clapping

high-five the lightning with thunderous compassion

until it rained on the moon?

Would she heal?

If you were a thought and I were an emotion

would all the petals of your loves me loves me nots

you scatter like thoughts on the wind

feel like one whole flower again

that blossoms in the heart

and roots in the brain?

Illusory cures for illusory diseases

would beauty be enough to bluff the pain?

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


IF YOU WERE A THOUGHT AND I WERE AN EMOTION

IF YOU WERE A THOUGHT AND I WERE AN EMOTION

 

If you were a thought and I were an emotion

time would still be at cross-purposes with space

and we’d still be sitting here

dangling our bare feet like two kids

over the edge of the abyss

when we go fishing for stars

not really caring if we catch anything

as we throw them back in with our blessings.

You can taste the jewels the light’s been through

sometimes when you close your eyes

and the revealed and the revealing

are just the water and fish of a feeling

idling in the shadows and reeds of the mindstream.

There’s a way of being lost within yourself that’s starbound.

And there’s a way of being found

where people scatter flowers before you

all the way to a hole in the ground

you’re expected to fill like someone else’s shoes.

You can lie under a gravestone

like a man behind a desk with his name on it

who’s been practising for years

to lie very very still

in case he wakes the others up in the snakepit.

Or you can keep the music on

all through the long uneventful night

and feel things that have nothing to do with you

like stray bits of your neighbour’s dreams on the internet.

Or you can put a finger up to your lips and counsel silence.

Three approaches. Three gates. No difference.

Everyone enters the same garden

as if Eden were a cemetery in slow motion

but that old angel with the flaming sword at the gate

burnt out like a candle a long time ago

and the serpent’s a tour guide for fanatical purists

who can’t get out of the closets of hell

and the apple of knowledge

finally took a bite out of itself

and has been falling down crazy drunk

with the cranky wasps of autumn ever since.

Wonder’s the passive sister of interactive madness

and twice as alluring in her self-restraint

than Rasputin in a burlap sack in the river.

Wonder sails off the coasts of the clouds like the moon

and doesn’t lay a claim to what she discovers.

She can see and be seen

but she doesn’t put a name on it.

She doesn’t need to turn the leaf over

like an unopened loveletter

to know what the tree means

because it’s always been her lover.

So if you were a thought and I were an emotion

would you be the brainwave

that rides the night ocean

of my passion at the flood

or would you be into me

like water into mud

like insight into a ripening lamp

about to fall toward paradise again

to see what I’ve been missing?

If you were a thought and I were an emotion

and we were to hold hands like a bridge

on both sides of the mindstream

would the bridge flow as the water does

or would you think of the two of us

you were the more solid

and I was less real?

Looking upon me from all angles

like a sphere that fills the room

like a habitable planet

with a dead moon in its arms

its only daughter

all ashes and shadows and frozen water

and nowhere to bury her skull in the earth

tell me the truth.

If you were a thought and I were an emotion

if you were land and I were an ocean

because thoughts have legs

and feelings have fins

(or is it scales and feathers?)

if we could bring her back to life

like the weather

and mend her battered body

would it be better to think than feel?

Would the solid turn into the real?

Would she wake up like a koan

with the answer to cancer

and the sound of one hand clapping

high-five the lightning with thunderous compassion

until it rained on the moon?

Would she heal?

If you were a thought and I were an emotion

would all the petals of your loves me loves me nots

you scatter like thoughts on the wind

feel like one whole flower again

that blossoms in the heart

and roots in the brain?

Illusory cures for illusory diseases

would beauty be enough to bluff the pain?

 

PATRICK WHITE