Friday, October 28, 2011

MANICALLY SLASHING PAINT LATE AT NIGHT

MANICALLY SLASHING PAINT LATE AT NIGHT

Manically slashing paint late at night

on a white canvas.

Blood on the snow.

Chewing my limbs off to get out of a leg-hold trap.

Tearing my heart out like that of a noble enemy

to eat it for the homoeopathic courage

to make something out of the chaos

of conditioned consciousness

like a small tent in this homeless desert of stars

that might let me enter

like a loveletter into an envelope

that’s empty enough to offer shelter to anyone

with a return address on the point of no return.

The dove is bleeding down the handle of my brush.

Insomniac poppies are haemorrhaging on their feet

after they got caught sleepwalking

down the dark alley of a dead end street

and a bad moon rising cut their throats

like a serial killer exploring the creative potential

of blood spatter as an expressive form of forensic art.

And now here come

the chameleonic mood swings of the cyanotic blues

like painted Pictish corpses with talismanic tattoos

buried in the mass graves of violet underworlds

that bloom like deadly nightshade with hot spots of yellow

at the one way entrance with no exit

to the cave mouth of Tartarus.

That ought to make a big splash

among the abstract expressionists.

A Payne’s grey black hole goes supernova

and I’m caught in the crossfire

of gamma radiation against the greens and blues

of a small habitable planet that got in the way.

And maybe if I eat enough cadmium yellow

the way Van Gogh did

to get closer to his subject

than he’d ever been

I’d be able to paint sunflowers

with great solar flares of harvest gold

lying on the table

like the manes of magnificent dead lions

that still threaten the still lives of the village

to this very day

with the carnivorous intensity

of hungry predators

picking up the spoor of their prey.

A sum of destructions a painting is

said Picasso

but there’s got to be something there

to destroy in the first place.

He did it to a beautiful woman’s face.

But I prefer to splash acid into my own eyes

for the things they’ve seen

than take it out on a sunset

that’s done nothing to me

but put an end to another glaring day

trying to stare the stars down

to see which of us will be the first to blink.

Slowly life emerges out of the bright vacancy

of my random spontaneity

like a black waterlily of sumi ink.

Slowly the polymorphous perversity

and atavistic complexity

of my creative rage

begins to take the shape of a star map

where all the animals have escaped from their cages

and left the maniacs on their own

like vampires at the break of dawn

to seek asylum in caves and attics and graves

like bats in the belfry

of the thirteenth house of the zodiac

as a sign that nobody’s home.

Beginning to look like someone I know.

A face rises from the depths of the ultramarine

like Ophelia in a negligee of moonlight

and then slowly descends back into the darkness

as if somebody turned around to look

on their way up out of hell

and all I’ve got left are her eyes

as a momento mori.

If I were the Taliban

I’d throw acid in them at this point.

As it is I veil them in a wash of alizarin crimson

like oxygen rich blood

and watch them turn violet

in case there’s an iris scan among the dead

and she has to prove she can see in the dark.

PATRICK WHITE

SIT WARMLY HERE WITH ME AWHILE

SIT WARMLY HERE WITH ME AWHILE

Sit warmly here with me awhile

and I will smother you in fireflies

until your aura looks like

a dandelion constellation

or a globular cluster of first magnitude stars.

My scars have exhumed the knives of old wounds.

And though I confide in the void

like an echo returning to its own voice

or a breath to the sacred groves of the lungs at sunset

and superseded my quota of regrets

to make an expandable universe liveable

every firefly of insight’s

got the engine of a dragon behind it

and it burns like a dark clarity within me.

Wrap your silence and mystery around me

like a chrysalis or cloak

and let me rest in your indivisibility awhile

until I disappear deep in your eyes

like a nightbird into its longing.

Let me sit around the lonely fire of your heart

as if I were the only house of the zodiac

who comes to you like an illicit love affair

with its lights still on

long after all the others have gone out.

My solitude is bruised by an abyss

that keeps digging deeper into me

and sometimes it feels as if

it’s looking for water and a well

and then other times it’s a midnight burial

of someone I can only catch a glimpse of

once and a while under a full moon

that looks like an undertaker

through the leafless veils of the weeping willows

digging his own grave

but feels just like a spade hitting my skull

like a strange form of paydirt

buried like the black pearl of the new moon

in a hope chest of star mud.

Take the coin from under my tongue

like the last sacred syllable

of my unconditional humanity

and throw it down this black hole in my heart

like the moon in a wishing well

and embrace me as if I were not dead awhile.

Out of the ashes the smoke and the flames

like two candles under the stars

let’s make up myths of origin

where the gods have no names

until the wildflowers that have outgrown

the gates of the Garden of Eden

look back at where they come from

like a long way away

and give them one

like the elders of an Ojibway tribe

decide on the names of the new born

each according to the totem of a dream.

Pull this thorn from my eye

like the eyelash of the last crescent of the moon

and let me see you face to face

without a thousand and one tears between us.

I shall glorify you like a mosque in lapis lazuli

that can no more contain your image

than the day the night

or one constellation

the whole of the Milky Way.

I shall paint your portrait in picture-music

like the moon reflected on the black water gardens

of the Taj Mahal in mystic hues

of nocturnal waterlilies and cobalt blues

to highlight your eyelids when you sleep

and on your lips rose drops of blood

to wake you like a kiss from your dream

when the waterbirds rise from the lake.

Receive me like a sword into your depths

I throw in tribute from a bridge that crosses over

to the other side of myself

as if you were the far shore of my mindstream

come near to sit with me here awhile

and reminisce like water

on the things that have been and passed

as we listen to the tender laughter of the waves.

I will lift up my shirt

and show you the scars of all the holy wars

I’ve fought with myself like a faithful heretic

who knew he was doomed to lose

and the spots where the spearheads of insight

penetrated my heart like a voodoo doll

baptized in hot whiskey and cold blood

to take a message to the gods

about human suffering

in a language they could understand

wasn’t just the echo of their own voices.

Sit with me here awhile like a face beside a mirror

looking out upon the same starfields

without a trace of our own reflections in the view

and I will teach you

the healing powers of a wounded mouth

like the secret grammar of a grail that seeks itself.

PATRICK WHITE