Sunday, June 13, 2010

AN ANTI-DREAMCATCHER

AN ANTI-DREAMCATCHER

 

An anti-dreamcatcher

who likes to give the cool jewels

that take her place in the window

a taste of the spider.

She’s catches stars

and unwary butterflies in her web

that she can read like music

and gives them each their own myth

and a place in her constellation.

She’s a blues guitar that’s not

on the straight and narrow.

She weaves her own strings

into any rendition of chaos she wants.

The darkness is a friend of hers.

She’s been maltreated by the light.

Her eyes are a secret experiment

deep underground

where she’s looking for anti-matter

like proof of the night she was born.

Everything about her is new

and darkly modern

but if you look more closely

at the circular firing squad of Stonehenge

you’ll see that she’s the revenge

of an extinct species

that’s learned to live on nothing.  

She’s a black equinox in handcuffs

that jingle like bracelets

she swears she made

from the old ecliptics and equators

that used to ring her wrists like a tree.

Fossils of rain

embedded in her heartwood

you can still see the scars

climbing up her arm like a calendar

or the rungs of snakes on rope-ladders.

And you just know

she’s looked into the eye of the dragon

and it was the dragon that turned to stone.

She’s got sisters

but this Medusa cut out on her own

to see what the snake-pit of the world looks like

when you peer into it like a mirror

that doesn’t dread your eyes.

Compassion isn’t sharing

forgivable lies with the cold truth.

The immeasureable abyss

doesn’t sit at the feet of blackholes

but she doesn’t get caught up

in those old fishing nets.

She sheds her skin like lingerie

and finds her own way in the way she is

so much like water on the moon 

still enthralled by the last eclipse

that showed Alice her true reflection

in the looking glass

just before everything turned to stone.

The snake knows more than the rabbit

and she’s got a tongue on her

that’s the tuning fork of a lightning strike

and despite how she tries to disguise it

her intelligence is an ineradicable habit

she bears like a curse

and flaunts like a blessing.

And she’ll dance for you

when she’s in the right mood

to flow along with the music.

She’ll rise like serpent fire up your spine

and open all your chakras

like blossoms on a dead vine

but you’ve got to find the right flute

and you’ve got to play like wine

that’s been aged a long time in a dark place.

 

PATRICK WHITE