LINES FROM THE BLOODHOUSE

LINES FROM THE BLOODHOUSE

Expecting the worst because it is always now

and now is always the downfall of time,

the doomstroke of the present pulse

that goes off like an alarm clock in the grave

that no one will wake up to

but a lonely few raving in their sleep

feverish with dream, I look upon

the tribulation of the willow beyond tears,

the fury of the flagellant pines

that thrash the troubled air to keep from breaking,

the garbled flight plans of the veering birds,

and, prophet of the obvious, presage

the coming of a storm to break you

like a mirror of stagnant water

on the meteoritic thrones

of your igneous foundation stones.

Were you elected by the stars

to skull the earth with bombs,

to crater, gouge and scorch the playgrounds

of the obsolete children

waiting in their makeshift hospitals

for arms you tore from them like daisies; “she

loves me; she loves me not,” until

the night pours metal in their eyes

to seed the fire-fruits of their flowering

that has suddenly matured

in front of the guns and cameras

into a windfall of silent, acrid hearts

buried like landmines in the dazzling road

of their scorned flesh?

And they die for oil, they die

for the corporate spiders pulling the strings

of the Punch and Judy puppet governments

that tour the morgues like spring;

for bridges and contractors, power-lines

and power lunches, foreign policies

that brain them like the jawbone of an ass

they die, in their pyjamas, in their beds,

a kiss goodnight, and their prayers

imploring the disconnected dark to enlarge

the acceptable quotas of civilian dead

like the posters of the martyrs

on the walls of their rooms

shaken by the distant thunder

of computer-guided patriots and prophets

cooking their cities like God. And tomorrow

and tomorrow and tomorrow they die

in twisted, tormented convulsions

of agony and baffled blood they die and die,

learning to read and count

the names and years of their relatives

in the liberated souks of democratic cemeteries, alif

beh teh theh jim, F-l8, they master their lessons

and die in their thousands

because an executive cabal of miserable old men

with platitudes and prosthetic missiles for dicks

are into kiddie-porn snuff flicks

and biblical memoirs of all they begot

for the providence and profits

that redress the way they rot.

Acknowledging that this is not a hallmark greeting card,

I put it to you in the name

of your own enlightened self-interest,

in the name of a heart that isn’t

congested with a fashionable indifference,

in the name of a natural decency

that doesn’t need a teacher, in the name

of the families you came from

and the families you work for,

the daughter that falls asleep with you on the couch

like an island in the eye of a hurricane, the son

who listens to everything you say

as if he were kicking through bushels of autumn leaves

and then steals your car keys,

and your half-estranged wife, hoping

you’ll notice her hair-do at dinner, your mother,

the evangelist of baby pictures, and your father

softly overgrown like an old stone wall;

in the name of teen-age lovers

and their sophomoric glues, in the name

of calcium postal-clerks who smile

like Easter seals; in the name of iron men

with empty wallets, in the name

of the huge, lonely roses in all night bars

that bloom like scabs on the moon and know

they’re not pretty, in the name of physicists

and cabdrivers with chunks of quantum hash,

in the name of the angry crossroads in the singer’s voice,

in the name of the name of the insecure poet

whose last word fell like a drop of water

from a trembling blade of stargrass, I put it to you

because you are not a toad in front of a football game,

because you are not

a pebble-minded cosmetician in a delirium of pink, because

even in a shopping-mall you can feel and bleed and think,

and though you may be slow, you’re thorough

when it comes to putting on new brakes,

and though I know you don’t know what I mean

when I tell you that even the rocks, even

the rarest of ores we draw from the earth

like secret kings and artificial hearts

are freaked with seams of mystic gangrene

that will sever us like bells of blood

from the gardens of the gods we hope for,

rotten hinges from the gates,

bad meat from the starwells; you’re seer enough

to intuit the theme. It’s not about honey,

it’s about lies and death and money

devouring families like yours; it’s about

rich men gigantic with greed

and nations of thugs and thieves

infesting the earth like maggots in an abattoir,

manipulating what everyone believes,

defaming the weak and the poor, war after war,

to glut themselves on more and more and more

until all of life is nothing but a toxic insight,

and there are children everywhere tonight

making the news, hoping

they’ll need their shoes in the morning,

bleeding through their bandages like dawn.

Famine, disease, war, poverty and ignorance,

under what sign was this planet born

that this should be the birthmark of black stars

that forsake the constellation

burning like a kite

tangled in the powerlines?

And do not tell me these abominations, these

ominous eclipses of the heart

that fit the skull with lichens and cataracts

sunspots, polar caps and death shroud victory flags

are the labour of mineral casinos

playing the sluts and slots of chance

for a material immortality composing sexual requiems

on the keyboards of our genes. These

are the smiles of old scythes,

rusted and bloody,

that reap what they do not sow,

the chronic harvest of blood, bone, tears and flesh

threshed by the rotating blades of the moon;

these are the wounds and gashes,

the indecipherable science and scripture of scars

that stroke the lunar fury of the wild boars who plough with tusks,

the salt and lime and ashes that spice

the tasteless, eyeless, childless grave

with famous reasons for murder. These

are the ballroom courtesies of dancing cannibals,

these are the mothering headphones

of a twenty year old tank commander

who smothers the screams of casual children

in his video line of fire

with the curative gasolines of American rock and roll.

These are the occult imperatives

of cosmic ghouls whose mouths

are roses of blood, whose idols and ethics

are praying mantises dismembering the world,

tent-caterpillars and locusts

blighting the leaf and the grain

with the eggs and afterlives of imperial insects.

These are the arcane scales

of old serpents sloughing skins

like epochs and empires and straitjackets

that couldn’t contain the life within

the market gardens of original sin, these

are the hinges of its gaping jaws

and these the fangs and poisons

of its septic laws undone like lynch pins

to take the whole world in, disgorging again

the used condoms, the withered shells

of the nations and nests they’ve plundered.

Let the blind ambassador

whose morals are as breezy as his teeth

number the spoon-fed nightmares

propped up like dolls in unnegotiated corners,

their glass eyes open for keeps

like guide dogs at the fatal intersections

of dark, delinquent streets

that only the children cross,

hysterical in sleep. Let him explain

to the pillows of the children in the furnace

why their feathers will never make a bird that flys;

let him explain to the bracelets and bells,

the twilight of hair in the comb,

the glacial sages preserved in the cracks of the mirror,

the drowned lumber of mothers

dismantled by violent coasts, their children

snagged like cod in the purses of political fishing nets,

why death is the only guarantor of human liberty,

let him choose his words carefully

as if he were loading a gun with birthday candles,

let him drop seedlings in the bullet holes

and talk of future forests gleefully

to the press corps generals

spewing pulp fiction like chainsaws in a feeding frenzy.

Let him mark well the small graves in the footnotes

of his text, the fragile starmaps of braille

that will later come forward like witnesses

to accuse his sterling composition

of the mountainous corals of the dead,

all the polyp people that he brained into stone bread.

And when like death he’s out of a job,

let him run eagerly door to door

delivering newspapers to the mob

like personal resumes, or let him carve gravestones

for unofficial children

on the dead letterhead of his own.

Then take the presidents, the bankers,

the ministers, executives, and pimps

equipped with the long spoons and supple shovels

of their death-divining tongues

and let them dig like star-nosed moles

deep holes in the earth for the corpses of the young,

black poppies in the shadow of a white-washed bloodhouse

enthroned on a summit of dung.

PATRICK WHITE