COUNTING THE HAIRS IN MY FIVE-TIERED, TERRACED RAZOR BLADE

COUNTING THE HAIRS IN MY FIVE-TIERED, TERRACED RAZOR BLADE

Counting the hairs in my five-tiered, terraced razor blade

trying to decide if this is the hanging gardens of Babylon

or life among the Incas at Machu Picha. Second hand

increments of time I’m threshing like a big, old paddlewheel

that’s a legend on the river of its own mindstream.

Maybe a wheat field. This one’s mine. It’ll do fine.

Good crop of sundials this year. And then the lean

silo of dreams that leave you as empty as one of the plagues

of Egypt. Black dwarf. Dark halo. Evil gill of blades

on a grey nurse and a thresher shark. I’ll lead them

across the desert to the Red Sea like a feeding frenzy

and drown them like pharoah’s chariots in their own blood.

How do you make a glacier part? Ice pick through the heart

like Trotsky in Mexico, or shave off some ice

with my new Fusion razor blades like Freddy Krueger

with his switchblade bouquet of pentagonal hands?

Time, ekaksana, the sensation of a gap between

thoughts. What’s in there? Just thought I’d ask

because I just think I slipped through the cracks of one

like Castor and Pollux jumping into a chasm to save Rome.

Leucippus and Democritus, Romulus and Remus, Castor and Pollux?

God, there are a lot more twins in the world than I thought.

Things are a lot quieter now. Diesel percolating the coffee

outside my window while a trucker walks into a bank.

If you learn to play with your delusions correctly,

and Isadora Duncan in her fragrances of silk and northern lights,

or better yet, feathered boas, flying snakes, her veils, her veils, her veils.

Janis Joplin when her plumage was a flamingo on heroin

will back me up on this. Separation, not money

is the root of all evil. Evil doesn’t have a root on it.

That tree bears nothing but leaves. No fruit.

Squander your heart on the world if you want to make a big impression

on your bathroom mirror. Or your green room. Smooth. Clear. Aromatic

as a talced baby’s ass. But just remember you’re mowing weeds

not stargrass. Nicks and tics of a waterclock

pouring out of the hot water tap as you lather your face

in quantum foam and begin to shave like a wave

running up on the beach a little higher each time

the tractor turns around boustrophically to make

a labyrinth you’re trying too hard not be lost in

because you want to look as good and prepared

as any other corpse in Perth when you go out there.

That’s drastic. But probably true. But you never know.

Probably lets enough light through the storm shutters

of my hurricane, science fiction razor for small miracles

to show up on the powerlines like a sparrow making a pitstop.

Sometimes. Though I feel uneasy about relying upon that

because I don’t want to give any more offence to my karma

by putting out food for thought for a bluebird under the feeders

when it might be a turkey vulture unlacing an old boot of roadkill.

PATRICK WHITE