DEATH, THE UNRAVELLING. PENELOPE UNWEAVES THE MOON

DEATH, THE UNRAVELLING. PENELOPE UNWEAVES THE MOON

Death, the unravelling. Penelope unweaves the moon.

In the nightstream in the woods at night, pouring the water

I drank from back. Water of life. Water of light. Dark elixir

widow-walking burnt bridges. The lighthouse of a window

in the woods. Giving my silver sword of moonlight

back to the water sylphs in tribute for all the pain

they caused me so beautifully, poetically, mysteriously wise

in the way they treated me. Well done, guys.

I’ll be looking for Venus through the trees for

the rest of my life without a silver sword. Thanks

for letting me keep the spur. It reminds me of the stars

in your eyes when they come out like chandeliers of sex.

Grasp your flesh as if it were the only soft spot

in the world you’ve ever found to lie down upon

and pretend you were dead convincingly as a pillow.

This gob of fat and excess, this deer bed, these eyes,

with dawns and dusks of their own with orbiting observatories

in direct communication with the brain, it’s a coolie

of a vehicle at your disposal with a good suspension bridge

made of spinal cords. Flat guitar strings that haven’t

been boiled enough to keep their spring dangling

above the abyss by the tail of a misplaced participle

in the mouth of a snakepit that cheats on its Fs with a capo.

Back in the Glebe when we all sat at the same table

and got drunk on ourselves lying like young

and middle-aged artists as we were supposed to have done

because for everything there is a season. And that was it.

I wore mongoose and snakeskin boots back then

in this enormous freak show of dreams and visions

gone right and wrong. Liked the cowboy show. And the wolf.

Dark, drunk days when the whiskey smelled

like puke in the tungsten snowbanks of the streetlamps.

Sick nuns of the Tetragrammaton. I am the world’s

most evil man said no one who was ever serious about himself.

Ah, Spanish roses in Jewish health food stores

unrelated to the Outlaws of the time. Golden Triangle

cowboy stuff with a lot of smashed glass that broke

your heart like a nasty beer glass on a road trip to the moon.

Art. Is it murder or suicide? Or Willie P. Bennet?

Though I sense it in the ashes of Wiffen on his highway

of poetry in tears. But there’s a limit.

And I took it when my life moved out like an exit

off the freeway to be with somebody else.

Because it was true love for a while there.

And you weren’t allowed to be with anybody else

who wasn’t true to your sequins and scales.

Inside of me there’s a lunatic fringe Zen cowboy

islander poet pirate painter prince trying to die extraromantically as if

he’s lived under the moon all of his life howling at it

as if he were in mystical agony like a shepherd of wolves

who knows the difference between the meaning of the words,

pack and flock. Baa. Baa. Black sheep. Black bird.

Anyway you want to put it. What suits you plum

tickles me to death. And I mean it like a rattlesnake

on drugs at your jugular vein. Never again, thank God

for all the haloes in my life I’ve ever grabbed at like brass rings.

All moondogs with an owly look about them

and something slightly carnivorous about the roses

we threw at each other like the silk purses and bullsears

of a dead matador. Ole as the crowd rises to its feet

like a flying carpet and a cape. And we all had to have

whiskey, music, poetry, and death on our very last breath.

It was life’s legendary way of cornering on two wheels

as if you were turning a car over like a card you’re peeking under

to see what you’ve got. Seven come eleven. Or snake eyes

on an inoculated starmap. Or a strawberry tart

with fangs like crucifixion nails on your birthday

for a heart. An art. A way of life I couldn’t compare anymore

to what? I always tried to. Then covered up the lies about it

if I were the only professional emergency exit stage left.

Say hi to Joanne for me. She’s the only woman in my life

I feel I owe something to more than I gave her

because I was arrogant and young. Hi, Joanne.

You were my apostate magdalene-madonna and I loved you for it.

You can research the rest in these Burgess Shales

like an old, beer and blood stained photograph of the past.

You must like to suffer or you wouldn’t have recognized me.

PATRICK WHITE