Saturday, March 10, 2012

I TRY NOT TO CARE THAT IT HURTS


I TRY NOT TO CARE THAT IT HURTS

I try not to care that it hurts
that everytime I find a branch to perch on
and think about putting down roots
I send myself into exile
as if I were condemned
to keep abandoning my mother
like my father did
though I suspect
that’s too profoundly obvious and neat.
It’s not a true eureka moment
if it doesn’t liberate.
It’s not a true insight
if it doesn’t shed light photonically.
If it doesn’t burn holes in your starmap
it’s only another mirror.
Stars through the dirty windowpanes
on a sweltering night.
And down below on the street
drunk cowgirls on coke screaming
and pulling each other’s hair out
after the bars close
rather than go home
to lead lives of quiet desperation
the way they do the rest of the week.
I lie to myself about how things are looking up
as if I were adding another litre of oil
to a dying engine.
I still love the stars
but I feel like the third eye
of a blind telescope on crutches
tapping his way along the Road of Ghosts
with a white cane.
Somewhere along one of my lifelines
I must have seen
my chromosomes copulating like snakes
to live in the prophetic darkness I do now
like some eyeless Tiresias
being lead around
by this tiny homunculus of a child
that never ages inside of me.
I am the bastard alloy
dethroned from the royal quatternio
of the alchemical union
of the king and queen
who failed to turn base metal into gold
in the coniunction of man and woman
signifying holy matrimony
and the residue at the bottom
of the Vas Hermeticum is me.
I taste like the hot tears
of a demon in its solitude
knowing it doesn’t do much good
when you’re up to your eyeballs in hell to cry.
I’ve met a lot of messiahs
out here in this wilderness
I was driven into
like a scapegoat for the Jewish tribes
hoping I would show up and tempt them like Sarah Palin
but they’re all snakeoil salesmen in disguise
with cash registers for eyes
so I don’t even try.
I leave it to the politicians
and the corporations
to do the dirty work.
They’re better at leaving children to die than I am.
Christ’s blood streams across the firmament
like a wounded banner
in a crusade of immaculate logos
spinning their greed into a holy war
against the lamps and candles
of individual human lucidity
that engulfs the planet like big oil.
The dragon is slain.
An eclipse swallows the moon.
But it never rains.
When God was declared dead
the prince of darkness took to his bed too
and all his court jesters
who made fools of themselves
just for a laugh
were replaced by evil buffoons
who mistook themselves so seriously
for the real thing
the maggots forgot
they were the descendents of houseflies
and ran for office
like butterflies on the wing.
But Beelzebub knows better.
He rules their genes down to the letter.
And then there are creatures like me
who revel in the subtleties of seduction
like Ovid in Tomis at the edge of the Black Sea
trying on one metamorphoses after another
like alternative identities
to escape the Promethean agony of what he had to be
to steal fire like an industrial secret
from the libidinous gods and hypocrites
so everyone could hold the cold mirror
of a stolen passion
up to their lips
and kiss her like a frying pan.
The last mad sad sacrificial gift of a poet in exile.
You can judge the depths
of his silence
by the quality of his sorrows.
You can hear what could not be said
by putting your ear up
to the keyhole of what he did
and watching the shadows of picture-music
he keeps casting under your door
like a personal loveletter
he knows is bound to fail
because you keep throwing it away
like just another tree
wasted on spiritual junkmail
recognize that it’s your voice not his
that keeps the secret to itself
like an illicit affair you’re having with life.
I don’t know how much love
there is in it
but there comes a time
when a smile turns into a knife
and you run your tongue along it
in your immaculate lunar solitude
like a cultivated taste for blood.
And you put love aside
until a day later
like the last fire-hydrant in hell
that might have a chance
at ringing your bell
but the day never comes
like a phoenix in full plumage
to the ashes of your urn
and you burn your poetry
as if you were prosecuting heresy
for believing there’s always been more to you
than you were willing to let on.
The rain beats on a shallow drum.
And the cowgirls have gone home
all bloodied and muddied
to their hobby farms
and I’m sitting up here
the only homely light on the block
watching my goldfish swim
around his aquarium
like a thought
I just can’t get out of my mind.
Is life just a scar
at the growing edge of the universe
trying to remember which came first
the eye or the star
the herb or the wound
the offence or its redressal?
Is it mad
to stray from the air corridor
of the flightplan of the word
like Icarus who flew too close to the sun
carried away by the elation of his freedom
and try to earn your own wings
all the way down?
Icarus falls like this dark rain tonight
all over the inconceivable earth.
Those are his tears
running like mirrors down the window
with the broken shutter.
And those are mine
snaking through the gutter.

PATRICK WHITE

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