I'M GOING TO STARE

I’M GOING TO STARE

I’m going to stare the sweet, white oblivion

behind the purity of this page down

until it breaks its vow of silence

like the hymen of a nun

and there are little scarlet letters

of red-blooded apostasy

lying like rose petals all over the snow.

I’m going to track birds all over this page

like the linearity of an unknown Etruscan alphabet

everybody’s trying to translate into their native language

like the lozenge of a sacred syllable

that disappears on their mother tongue

like the first spring thaw of the year.

I don’t care if the hunters in my rear view mirror

scratch their heads at the strange signs they’re tracking,

I’m going to expand their vocabulary

with beasts that have never appeared

on anyone’s wall before.

I’m going to teach the Neanderthals

to paint like Hieronymus Bosch.

I don’t really care if it means anything

because someone somewhere

is going to interpret it as something.

So I’m going to follow the circuitous blossoming

of my own mindstream ignoring

the sexually frustrated logic of those who think

if you link a lot of empty words like cattle cars

up in a row syntactically

somehow that makes you a grapevine

and the smell of diesel is not that far off

from the bouquet of the industrial wine

you think you can serve up to Dionysus

without having him spit you out of his mouth.

Doesn’t bother me if a lot of half-wits

want to break their brains

trying to see what the other one means

biting into black walnuts

like the prophetic skulls of Rinzai koans,

this is my poem

and it’s going to mean what it sees.

I’m going to ride this wavelength of insight out

until it breaks like the arm of a spiral galaxy

on the shores of sunny California.

I wouldn’t abuse the prayer mats of those

who want to touch their knees

and foreheads to the ground

like the landing gear of space modules

making a lunar touchdown

but I’m going to ride this poem out like a flying carpet

as if the direction of prayer were everywhere

and nowhere at all at the same time.

I’m going to veer, bank, soar, and glide

down the bannisters of my own thermal stairwells as I will

and let the wild, unwed daughters

of joy and freedom move me as they will

like a red-tailed hawk until the air cools down

in the late summer sunset above the abandoned fields

rumpled as unmade beds with bruised pillows

and Venus is the first to carry her radiant candle

down the long darkening hall to bed.

I’m going to do a ghost dance on the moon.

I’m going to leave my footprints heaped up

like junkmail that found its way back to your threshold

like a cat that you just can’t get rid of.

I didn’t learn to go on the warpath

like Sitting Bull or Geronimo

by following the footsteps painted on the floor

of a Fred Astaire dance studio.

This poem’s going to expose

the sterling lies of the good guys

and undermine the romantic myths

of their anti-heroes like house flies.

Profusion of white, albino prairie

I’m not going to just sit here

staring at this empty page like the first time

I saw the cover of the Beatles’ white album

and my first wife on acid.

I’m not going to o.d. on all this white

rejectionism that sticks its nose up

at all colours of the rainbow

or look at it like the last thing a junkie sees

like an overexposed flashback of his life

before he passes out permanently

like a snow globe that’s learned to breathe underwater.

I’m not going to freeze to death

like a blizzard in a syringe.

I’m going to piss on it and bleed on it

and cast my shadow upon it

like an extra dimension

that knows how to stand up for itself

like a heretic at the fire stick of a stake

who rubbed all that’s suspiciously

homogeneous and pure about death the wrong way

just to get something going

that would spread like wild fire

and leave a mark upon life as indelibly black

as this page is intolerably white.

PATRICK WHITE