BUDDHA PINOCCHIO

BUDDHA PINOCCHIO

The more he tells the truth, the longer his nose grows.

Buddha Pinocchio steps out from behind his slapstick

veils of paint and poetry to take his black clown masks off,

throw strawdogs on the fire now that the ritual

is over, everything tumours and black walnuts,

the desolate autumn leaves, hungry stray dogs

in the cold-hearted wind as I let my shadow lead

as if it were its turn for the first time in my life

and it seems fair, turn and counter turn, stand,

we’re waltzing and walking together as if we were

friends, Blue Flower, Black Dog, from years ago

I don’t remember when, but the dark, cold air

of farewell on my skin is a fathom more than

I wish to sink, and the lights of the hospital

don’t wink at me anymore through their skeletal

keyholes, and there’s no mercy in the window

with the x-ray geranium on the fire-escape

that isn’t an exit anymore from anything more dangerous

than this beautiful, beautiful world for all

its gruesomeness, trying so hard to think

of something more uplifting than good-bye

to me and my broken arrow of a shadow

out there somewhere, or is it maggots

and a poultice of leaves to draw me out of the earth

like a fever or a thorn of the moon from my dream?

The night doesn’t sing to me in its linear B

of stars. This is too eyeless. Where are the Pleiades?

A democracy of pulchritudes among the store front

mannequins. How lucky they are to not have

to feel their way through this with me. I never asked

for anything I wasn’t prepared to give back

full measure and a bit beside. That made them cry.

And I’ve almost kept my word. What do you say

to the people with Chinese lanterns for hearts,

everybody trying so earnestly to show you a way

out of this, as if you were a wounded emergency door?

Is this great poetry? I can’t tell anymore. It hurts

to go there as I see scalpels on my grave laid

like bouquets of wildflowers, poppies, starwheat,

and the laurels of abandoned changelings I forgot to bathe.

The art of life is long and brief. It’s true.

An arsonist of roses in a volunteer fire brigade

that seldom makes it to this house of life on time

for anything but foundation stones. The Taj Mahal.

The black one. The dark mirror. Waterlilies

and the moon. Unassuagable lovers building tombs.

But o the miracle, not how, not why, not when,

but that we are here at all. That we’re here, though

the firefly eludes us, though the lightning branch,

the strong rafter, the ladder walking beside us

like a shadow with one rung no higher than we can

lift it to save ourselves, though we meant to save

everyone else first. Dark shedding, I could teach

these leaves a thing or two about letting go

but I save it for another day that’s never going to come.

Let’s look at it that way. The quiet doesn’t stain

the silhouettes of the maple leaves reading yesterday’s paper

as if it were news of the day on grey, grey, grey cement.

It glows with a light that’s happily bemused with itself

but you can’t tell if it’s a candle or a tunnel or something else

nobody’s ever guessed before. And my body so full

of strangers trying to party with death in the nude.

If not now. When? There’s a new exactitude

in life and it’s got a friend with a scalpel

that looks like a crooked, little smile with a twist,

almost a clown with a smirk that’s pleased with itself

it’s done its work. It’s done it well. And it’s done it fast.

Could almost admire that if it were human.

Shining, yes. A motherlode of blind pearls

at the bottom of a hopeless sea of shipwrecks.

That’s not despair. That’s seeing it straight. It’s dark

out, less so inside, and I’ve passed by these windows

many times before. Life inside going on

like mystic crosswalks that have grown lazy

labouring at not believing in themselves enough

to make it shine, even when they cry like I do,

though it’s not required. The drugs have spliced me

into their circuitry to put a smile on the world

they’re not faking this time. No migraines

and I’m not wobbling like a drunk in orbit

as the violins take to the stage like Jerusalem artichokes.

Fiddleheads of death. From Kaladar to Calabogie.

It’s ancient enough to dance to for a man facing

his own exit, both doors open, with a silhouette of himself

projected ahead as if we both knew where

we were going in black cowboy boots with

bevelled heels and Texas toes. Life was

an arduous guest we taught to shut the cupboard doors.

O, more than that. O so much more than that.

I was a happy arduous passionate apple with a star

for a heart, believe I was, condemned to be demonic and blessed,

or silver Russian olive full of hermit thrushes and nightingales,

peacocks and stars, trying like the sea when it labours for the moon

to say it, page by page, leaf by leaf over the years.

Minding the shedding. Minding the budding. Minding the threshing.

Not minding anything at all as if it were a long lost art not to.

My light burned late into the night as if someone

were still awake, doing something, who can say,

he believed in as if the stars depended on him to get it right.

Reduced to what you are, black dwarf or supernova

in the galaxy next door, you drank eclipses

from the eyes of beautiful women who thought

they saw something in you worth living for awhile.

It was a gift not to have to convince them. And you didn’t.

The full moon, and the lake, and the farmhouse

and the stars, o yes, the stars and their apprentice wildflowers

with the winding road took care of that for you.

Animals in the night, wary of their severities on sight.

Not numb. Not resigned. Flashing a little attitude

at time like an angry star on the horizon

of a cold bath in your own grave with no one

to scrub your back again to get the dust of the stars

and the gardens and the flowers you walked among, off.

And the poems, and the paintings, all the craziness of love.

As if it mattered you didn’t know why or where.

You were there. And that was more than worth asking for.

PATRICK WHITE