O LITTLE SISTER

O LITTLE SISTER

O little sister you’re an alley-cat alto-sax

howling on the fire escape

under a blue moon

that’s driven you into heat

just outside my window

for that arsonist boyfriend of yours

who used to puke in my potted geraniums

every time the two of you got drunk enough

to crash across my coffee-table laughing

even with each other for a crutch

you haven’t got a leg to stand on.

I was charmed by your romantic desolation.

I was intrigued by how much original sincerity

you both saw fit to squander on a cliche.

C’est la vie, c’est l’amor, c’est le guerre.

Elvis Presley is well and living in Tweed.

And Arthur Rimbaud is running guns

with Jim Morrison in Ethiopia for Al-Shabab.

Most people work harder at hope

than they do at achieving their downfall

and you were a fire hydrant

and now you haven’t got a hose.

No pun intended

I’ve known you too long

to see you this upended slurring your words

like the simultaneous translator

of an hourglass speaking

out of both sides of its mouth at once.

I don’t know why he left you.

Maybe there was nothing left to put out.

You burned out.

A piece flew off your heat shield upon re-entry.

Maybe any man who couldn’t hold his liquor

realizes sooner than later he couldn’t hold you.

I don’t know.

Go ask my geraniums.

They’ve got more to say about him than I do.

You make your death bed.

You got to die in it.

Next time build your house on stilts

in Stanthorpe Queensland

to keep the snakes away from your pillow.

What can I say?

He had a shoulder on his chip

that just couldn’t hold his end of the world up?

And don’t get me wrong.

I’m not laughing at your pain.

I don’t laugh at pain.

Pain is pain.

Different planets.

Different moons.

Who hasn’t gone swimming with dolphins

in the saturnine seas of Titan

or dropped a comet like a match

on a methane moon of Neptune?

Endomorphs and dopamines

can make you do a lot of funny things

that love is at a loss for words to justify.

Even if just for one wild night

of occult hunting magic

everyone longs to run with the wolves.

And howl, o little sister, you can hear them howling

in their blood agony at the waxing moon

as if something had died within them

that was so deep and crucial

it tore their hearts out

in an ecstasy of unrepentant pain.

And many many years later

when the solid abyss and hollowness of life

has grown even greater

you can still hear their voices

screaming like winter winds

above the timber-line

so high-pitched no echo

has ever been able to reach that high again

without shattering like a night bird

against the mirage of the open sky in the window.

Like you, little sister, now.

I’m not a sump-pump for anybody’s tears

not even my own

but I’ve been known

to throw a little heavy water

on a nuclear meltdown every now and again.

Pain. Separation. Loss. Dream death

you keep reliving like an afterlife in your sleep

you’re dying to wake up from

like a coma that’s lost everything worth waking up to.

Not two. Not two. Not two.

That’s the way it is here.

That’s as far as words go.

That’s where Statius takes over

from Vergil on the nightshift

and the stars nod off like children

who couldn’t finish the story

and the quality of the poetry drops

as dark genius opts out

of the company of bright mediocrities

trying too hard to make it a better world

than it needs to be.

For things it didn’t do.

And in a merciful world

that lived up to its teachings

and didn’t shrink the heart

with fear of its own extremes

while everything else is expanding

shouldn’t be asked to suffer like a placebo

in the glands of spurious cure.

And, yes, I know sometimes

it’s hard to keep up with the mysteries

like the elements of life on a geometric scale.

How many jugulars does a woman have

for someone to cut

like the downed powerlines

of the Medusa’s head

for having cast the first stone at herself?

You can wake the serpent fire

at the base of your spine

just above your coccyx

the hardest bone in your body

the little throne

the modest gravestone

you’ll be resurrected on

when you’re summoned from the dead,

but you can’t train love

to bite the people you want it too

and run like an antidote to the rescue.

That’s why you’re getting high

on your own poison right now.

That’s why your drunken tears

oscillate between a broken chandelier

that’s bleeding out

and acid rain that burns like love

congealing into a new ice age.

However deep you dig the grave

to bury someone you once really loved

even a desert at night

when the stars weren’t looking

wouldn’t be enough to fill it in.

It’s a wound without scar tissue

for the rest of your life.

The ghosts keep being pulled out of the box

like that kleenex you keep using

to dry your eyes at this seance

you’ve called on the spur of the moment

to be appalled by how lonely it is

to plead with the dead for severance.

PATRICK WHITE

CHEWING ON MEMORIES LIKE BROKEN MIRRORS IN HER SLEEP

CHEWING ON MEMORIES LIKE BROKEN MIRRORS IN HER SLEEP

Chewing on memories like broken mirrors in her sleep

tears of blood run from her eyes.

She doesn’t know I’m watching

but I’ve got windows everywhere.

But for her

just for her

because nobody else cares

third eye satellites with unlimited airspace

in her choice of skies to match her eyes.

A haemorrhage of sunsets.

Fly little bird fly

as if you weren’t the shattered sparrow

God took his eye off

when you fell.

Sometimes the mystic oversights

have more to say

about the great revelations of the world

than all the burning bushes in the valley of Tuwa.

Rumours and news.

Fly little bird fly.

Be an apostate waterbird

and let your skull skip out over the lake

like the moon through a glass house

that’s been asking for it for years.

There must be stars

that haven’t bloomed yet

somewhere in the corner of a leftover garden

that no one’s trampled on

like moon rocks

on a firewalk with a spoon

that hisses like the head of a viper

boiling with venom

at the tip of the tongue of a Zippo lighter.

Fly little bird fly

into a state of grace

that isn’t tainted by your experience

of the taste of humanity

that threw you like bad meat

down your own wishing well.

How they pried your innocence out of you

like a flower before it was ready to open

like a keepsake from a locket

your mother gave to you on her death bed

like a silver bullet that would keep you safe

from the grave robbers

the moment you used it on yourself.

Fly little bird fly.

I don’t know why

people attach more of an emergency

to the exit

than they do to the entrance

but I guess you’d have to ask a junkie about that

who’s used to coming in through the back door

with a ticket to ride

that’s better than a forged passport

to Disneyland

after you’ve done business with the Pentagon.

Fly little bird fly.

Don’t lose your nerve for enlightenment.

There’s the Bodhi tree.

There’s Venus in the dawn.

And there’s all this emptiness.

Isn’t it sweeter

than a hot fix

once you’ve gone beyond

the last judgment between right and wrong

like the pick up sticks of the I Ching

into the nirvanic bliss

of discovering nothing

was your best guess after all?

Fly little bird fly.

Disappear into your own eyes

like a candle

that’s stopped sticking its tongue out at the darkness

looking for a new place to hit.

Fly little bird fly

as if you weren’t tarred and feathered like Icarus.

And may the sun that shines at midnight

find you a lot more approachable

than apple blossoms

scattered like ashes on the wind

or fireflies that can’t hold their fixed positions

like the stars.

O it’s so anatomically true

that life on earth hurts

especially when you’ve fallen

out of love with love

like a baby out of the nest of a lullaby.

Down will come baby

shaman and all.

I see your bruised body on the bed

like the embryo of some past miscarriage

that taught you how flesh

can grieve for its own death

while it’s still alive.

I see the black haloes.

I see the bright horns.

I see the butterfly feelers

that have burnt out

like the short-lived filaments

of your average light bulb

and the place where you were anointed

with holy oil that hissed.

And it’s hard to miss where the apple sat

when William Burroughs

shot you through the head

pretending he was William Tel

like your crackhead boyfriend did last night.

Luckily he missed your heart.

He should have hired a firing squad

instead of relying on a sniper.

You don’t send a single viper

to do the job

of the whole snakepit

when you take out a contract

on anything as elusive as that.

I’ve made the bed

and you can lie in it alone

for as long as you want.

I’ll keep watch over you

like a mongoose or a lighthouse

over a bird that was stared to stone by snakes

and I won’t have anything to expiate

if I see their shadows

sliding hate mail under the door.

Fly little bird fly.

No more skies that lie like windows

about what you’re going through.

No more pretending

those bruises on your arm

are rare orchids of jungle love.

When you went to sleep

tangled up in the powerlines

you couldn’t teach to dance to your flute

and the rhythm of your body

like bullwhips

you might have felt

like a broken kite on a funeral pyre

but if my magic still works

by the time you wake up

I’ll make sure

you open your eyes like a phoenix.

So fly little bird fly.

The world won’t heal while you sleep.

Your lover won’t have a change of heart.

He broke you like a chandelier

he threw down the road

in a drunken rage

on a Friday night

like a bottle of beer.

One solitude denies another theirs.

Lovers take each other hostage.

The rest is the Stockholm syndrome.

One fanatic.

One addict.

It looks like devotion

It looks like a life raft on the sea of love

but the ocean’s gone rabid and mad.

Just look at the way it foams at the mouth.

Things are bad.

Fly little bird fly.

You’re not caught in the chimney

with no way out.

You’re the genie of the lamp.

You’re the one that tunes the power lines

that are humming along with you

like Mozart with a sparrow.

You’re the silence

that times the rhythm of the music.

You’re the tuning fork

not the lightning rod

of a wanna be god

in a pick-up truck

who keeps you around

to beat on like a false idol

who shalt not come before him.

Stop pecking at the crumbs of your dreams

like the leftovers of a garden

that used to be secret

That’s no way to get out of a labyrinth

when you’ve got wings.

So fly little bird fly.

Disappear into the depths of a starmap

that breaks into flames as you approach

the creative intensities of your own shining

like sumac in the fall.

Here’s the dead branch.

Here’s the green one.

You be the moon.

You be the blossom.

You be the firefly.

You be the hidden night bird

with the faraway call

that doesn’t make the distinction at all

because you’re too far gone to tell

by any feature of the light

you can often see things deeper

in a black mirror

than you can in a white.

PATRICK WHITE