THESE LATE NIGHT SESSIONS WITH MYSELF

THESE LATE NIGHT SESSIONS WITH MYSELF

These late night sessions with myself

that crowd the world out

to make room for me to be alone

delinquently with myself

while the rest of the town sleeps,

barring a cabbie, a cop, the grocery clerk

that works at the all night Mac’s Milk.

Can’t sleep.

My pillow’s a hive of killer bees.

I’m swarmed by the lethal trivia

of high-maintenance anxieties.

The picture-music’s running the rapids

in a jazzy clash of high hats

and I was hoping for something like Paul Simon.

The medium waits like a seance

for me to appear

like the message that was summoned.

Something resonates like a wavelength

from a tiny point in space

and calls me home like a Martian rover

though I can’t say for sure where I’ve been

like a shadow at noon

I know the sun shines at midnight

when I’m together enough again

to remember what I’ve seen.

And when the dawn makes the fieldstones

of the bank across the street

blush with pink

like some shrink’s idea of a more quiescent prison,

I’m pinching the wicks of all my feelings

like candles in the morning

just to see if I’m still awake or not.

Between now and then

I’m watching a poem evolve like a chromosome

that’s trying to make me up on the go

in a game of snakes and ladders

as one enzyme opens the door to six others

like a Chinese puzzle box

or a Higg’s boson particle accelerator

and after awhile I’m looking at the genome

of a mirror image of myself

that refuses to recognize me.

As if a dragonfly

crawled out of the chrysalis of a fortune-cookie

and spread its wings to dry

like a winning lottery ticket

that just went through the laundry

in effusive elations of wind and sky.

One grey thread

of stray cigarette smoke on my shoulder

and I accuse myself of having a love affair

behind my own back

with someone more exciting than I am

when I wasn’t looking

and walk out on myself swearing

I’ll never trust anyone like me ever again.

Vagaries of unconditioned consciousness

feeling the first continental shudders

of seismic archetypes

slipping their continental plates

like a bad clutch on a fault line

pushing their seabeds up to the surface

to expose what lurks beneath

on the highest slopes of a mountain top

just to call the poker-playing stars’ bluff

as they lay their constellations down

like the losing hand of a Japanese fan club.

In the timelessness of this aloof hour

when it feels as if I’m the only one left alive

to know how the town died in its sleep

and there’s no one out on the desolate street to tell

no one to call,

awareness is all

as I drift off disembodied into all my past lives

to ask them if they’ve got any clue

about where I went

and what I’ve been doing for the last ten years.

I’m a snowman waltzing in an ice storm

under the brittle chandeliers

of the brutal stars of the first of December.

Warm blood in a cold northwest wind

there’s a scent of wolf in the ravenous air

and a death panic in the hearts of the rabbits

who risk a nightcrossing of Wilson Street

out in the open under the noses

of the dozy heritage streetlamps.

The ice age perils of Pauline

tormented by Oil Can Harry.

Where does the dream begin

like a myth of origin

that keeps you awake

second-guessing

when the next firefly of insight

is going to appear in your rear-view mirror

as if you were being followed

by the ball lightning

of some great revelation of reality

that promises to return your eyes to you

as soon as it’s opened them to what isn’t there.

I’m sleepwalking like the Bolshoi Ballet across Swan Lake.

I’m miming the sidereal signage

of blind men with prophetic vision

like a journey man among master seers

with hundreds of billions of stars in their eyes

looking for a planet that’s human enough

to cry like this one sitting alone at a desk

for the enormities of starless sadness

that underwhelm the trophies of those

who’ve lived a life of risk

and were victorious long enough

to be able to squander a living on their own defeat.

Picture this.

A bull elk being run to death

through deep snow,

the cold air slicing its lungs

like frozen strawberries,

turning to face a wolfpack

rack to fang

to wound them into

respecting their noblest prey

with a last act

of self-destructive defiance,

incite a little wolf fear

in those who fear none

to return the compliment

water to water

blood to blood

heart to heart

as if all parties realized

from the very start

it doesn’t mean much

but it accounts for everything

and that’s the way it’s supposed to go down.

PATRICK WHITE