tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72902605829372219142023-11-16T11:05:56.382-08:00LIGHTNING AND FIREFLIESPATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.comBlogger2119125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-54982561982174198832013-12-05T10:25:00.000-08:002013-12-05T10:25:07.875-08:00AS THE EVENING PORTENDS TOWARD ITS MORE OCCULT PROPHETIC ENDS<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">AS THE EVENING PORTENDS TOWARD ITS MORE
OCCULT PROPHETIC ENDS</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the evening portends toward its more
occult prophetic ends</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of candles and incense and blue glass
skulls on the windowsills</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of perception the marshmellow emotions
of the day as the darkness</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that is here to stay overwhelms them
into writing little thing
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">razorblades of suicidally incisive
poetry unquestionably influenced</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by the exhaustive torment of light and
shadow going on in my body.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The piebald clown takes on a serious
tenor
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and forgets to laugh at himself in the
mirror</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">when he sees the six crows feet
streaming
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like bicycle handlebar comets from his
eyes</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">six weeks ago have frayed into the
thirty-three tributaries
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of the split end strong rope rootfires
of the Nile delta shrieking mandrake.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m emptying into the Mediterranean
sea. I’m an old sphinx</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with rainmarks from when the desert was
green.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve aged five years around my eyes
in the last thirty-three days.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dorian Grey is crackling. The varnish
is yellow
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as amber eras of age. Time take your
foot off the gas.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m going to pass. Dark energy cover
your eyes and face and move over
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m expanding too fast for the stars
to keep up with the pace.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe if I go far enough into the abyss
with this</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ll start moving backward in time
and the next time I look
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ll be a boy again begging salmon
from the fishermen</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that came in to port at sunset to
unload and oil their boats
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">at Johnson Street Harbour with the
ballast block cast iron bridge</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that swung like the pendulum of Thor’s
hammer
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to keep time with the pulse of our
comings and goings
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as they stacked my forklift arms up
like cubic cord wood time capsules</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to take home to my mother to make her
proud of me,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and say, hey, kid, tell us when enough
is enough is enough.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span> </div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-68530220763483965122013-12-05T10:23:00.003-08:002013-12-05T10:23:39.567-08:00THE EVENING DEEPENS INTO THE LEES OF ITS MORDANCY<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THE EVENING DEEPENS INTO THE LEES OF
ITS MORDANCY</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The evening deepens into the lees of
its mordancy.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The broken pines seem more tragic. The
corpses in the cemetery</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">less lifelike. Spirits move over the
face of the leaf littered grass</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as if someone were throwing thousands
of loveletters away in disgust.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The darkness is more threatening. You
can feel the presence of the dead</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">slipping under the doors and the cracks
in the windowsill</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like smoke and cold wind and life
threatening protestations</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of undying love. Not a rumour of sound
from the town.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The wind is holed up somewhere in a bar
that doubles as a lair
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">knocking another one down for the
obliterate illiterate night ahead.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recite. Recite. Recite. The unlettered
prophet was told</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by the angel of light. I don’t recite
so much as I let it write me</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">into the destiny scribbled on the lines
of my forehead,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">birds coming and going like musical
notes on hydro line staves</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with ivy treble clefs coiling around
the pole like medical snakes.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Baby, I’m a caduceus. You be the dove
above it all.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The silence pregnant with
manifestation. The furnace</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">has stopped cracking its knuckles. The
flanks
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of the American flag above the real
estate office downstairs
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">has stopped flexing its muscles at the
command of the wind</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and the horse whisperers are out in
style trying to calm things down</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to a ghastly serenity. The stillness is
a bread knife
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">cocked diagonally on the white vinyl
kitchen sink counter
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like a sabre of the new moon sitting
there the koan</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of a blank but focused stare with an
essential existential question to ask you</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">about whether you want to live or die
by seppiku.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The mirrors are hiding their eyes.
Someone’s in bed
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">bleeding to death because of a
loveletter they’d just read</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that said life was better off without
you falling in love with it</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">all over again with the unbearable pain
and joy</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of having to leave it this way through
a hole in the wall
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">they just painted over to sell the
thralls to a new slumlord</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">from the underworld who keeps bragging
about his dirty jewels</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and excoriating the fools who are not
dead enough yet to appreciate them.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-36637429506794969542013-12-05T10:22:00.000-08:002013-12-05T10:22:15.672-08:00WAITING TO TALK TO THE RADIOLOGIST<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">WAITING TO TALK TO THE RADIOLOGIST</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Waiting to talk to the radiologist at
the Burr Cancer Wing</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in Kingston Ontario by a fortified lake
of grey round houses.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Homogenized labyrinth of anonymous
posters in the halls
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of undecorated functional duplicate
rooms doubling arithmetically</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as moonlight incommensurables. Where
the hell am I?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I ask for directions from sympathetic
lighthouses eager</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to guide me like Rubrich’s cubes
deeper into my bafflement</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">pharmaceutically emotionally
isotopically induced.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I want to carry my own road sign
protest placard
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">wherever I go from now on like a cross
I’m willing to bear
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the name of knowing where where
where am I going.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cancer Clinic Burr Wing Level l. The
doctor will see
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you earlier. Wait here please. Fill out
these forms.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cold black plastic vinyl chairs with
people sitting in them</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">sporadically like the last of their
teeth in an ass’s jawbone.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sad foggy faraway look on everyone’s
faces and a few
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like me trying to face the whole
situation a bit too cheerfully.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dr. Phain. Great name. Epiphany. Sends
two interns</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in advance like Rosenbrendancrantz and
Guildenhilda</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to interview me too mechanically
inquisitively
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to make me feel they’re not so much
interested
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in interviewing me as a symptom they
read about
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in their medical texts who suddenly
incarnated
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as the skeleton of Pygmalion who is
answering</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">them in his bones like bamboo
windchimes of what
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">they want to hear until the doctor gets
here and makes
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">everthing muggy and clear as musical
chairs on a merry go round</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and round and round and round as a
jinxed plaid prayerwheel.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m in a hostage situation with
Munich syndrome centred</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on the radiologist explaining to me the
half life of the patient</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as all the U-238 in the room slowly
turns to dead lead
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">base metal iron pyrite stoned
philosopher’s fool’s gold
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">disenchanting him of the false dawn of
the false hope</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">he’s going to live more than another
six months of this.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Everybody writes that down like check
mark quill feathers</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">dipped in the ink pots of little boxes
little blue boxes on forms.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meantime I stare out the window at
northern Lake Ontario</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gusting deep midnight Prussian blue
with angry white caps</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">cantering out of suffrage instead of
galloping with gusto
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">through a Tom Thomson painting of a
bleak northern lake
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as over on the further shore dozens of
windmills, windmills, windmills</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">tall as the war of the worlds bouquet
and spread
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like wildflowers along the borders of
mournful grass leafless elms</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and some sad woman always walking off
into nowhere</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as a sundog light burst breaks through
the clouds</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">it halos in the encircling sky as a
sign of the fact</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m not going to conquer anything
like Constantine in the name
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of a sign like this no matter how
alluringly beautiful and soothing
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">it is through the dirty grime of the
grey cancer clinic windows.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have my prescription renewed for
thrush, 100 more \</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4 milligram pills of apo-dexamethasone
and an ointment that will help
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">soften the scales in the crack of my
ass like moonlight in a niche</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of silver. Rosenbrendancrantz takes a
look. Says. It’s got</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">nothing to do with me. You better see
your GP.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Must be nice to be an expert that
doesn’t help without permission.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-88910023841675152762013-12-05T10:20:00.004-08:002013-12-05T10:20:58.944-08:00THE LACHRYMOSE SHINE OF DAMP POLISHED BLACK WORKBOOTS<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THE LACHRYMOSE SHINE OF DAMP POLISHED
BLACK WORKBOOTS</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The lachrymose shine of damp polished
black workboots.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The leather of the asphalt street
suffused with a patina of storelight</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as the ghoulish banks of snow startle
the colour white</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with albino ranges of impassable
blockades from the ice age.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The white’s unreal in the tungsten
lamp posts. Blue apricot</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">titanium corpse. Sybil priestess in a
California laundry sheet
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in a cult of 1111 who died before the
mothership could</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">take her back. My dear, my darling, do
you hear me where you sleep?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Again, tonight, awake and at the window
waxing pellucid</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">about absolutely nothing. The faint
cachet of someone’s</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">distant dreams. No stars, No flowers. A
garden of traffic lights</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and lamp posts and parking meters. No
people. And the trees</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">garlanded in Christmas tree lights
looking like fattened forlorn bulls
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for a sacrifice to Mithras Tauroctonus
Tautologous whose come back
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to claim his birthday from Jesus when
the sun is born again</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the winter Roman solstice hammering
in the golden nail of the New Year</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">which is the only poem Horace ever
wrote for Augustus.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What am I doing here like a strung out
line of Canada geese</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">migrating like a prayer bead abacus
skull nugget calendar</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">from the studio into the den the
kitchen the hall and then
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">back again as if I were caught up in
migration older than my own?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What am I walking off like an exiled
hourglass across
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the Rub al kali desert full of stars
and mirages and itty</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">little white gravestone pills that give
me the shakes when
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I try to lie down under them and
everything quakes
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as if the fault lifelines in my life
were about to change for the drastic.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sick of the drastic. Sick of the
catastrophic. Sick of the apocalyptic.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sick of the climacteric. Sick of the
asterisk. Suddenly</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a hundred little white pills go running
over the precipice
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like lemmings in a year of
overpopulation balancing the books
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of evolution with Malthusian mass
suicide chuteless fruitless jumps.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The same way Neanderthals used to kill
mammoth and stag moose</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the Pleistocene. Driving them over a
cliff
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with heritage lampost streetlight
torches with reduced Led lumens.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not much life left after they were
wiped out like an extinction event</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for humans with an appetite for living
it a little bit differently.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Where else should I be? That wants to
make me live my death
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as bad and deep and bleak as this
beatifically condemned place.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-54867409546912432052013-12-05T10:19:00.000-08:002013-12-05T10:19:17.954-08:00MY CAT LIES FULL LENGTH OUT SLACK ON THE GLASS COFFEE TABLE<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MY CAT LIES FULL LENGTH OUT SLACK ON
THE GLASS COFFEE TABLE</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My cat lies full length out slack on
the glass coffee table</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but for her head poised like a minor
sphinx looking
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">into the long, foggy distances of grey
longing</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">blued by a mood of moving away from
things
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in a kind of emotional aerial
perspective the same
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as I’m looking into the open with
about as many answers</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">maybe less than she does. Female feral
cat three month</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">old kitten unfleaed unfixed on facebook
I think</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I saved a little bit of both our lives
that day
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I could still drive and got in the car
and picked her up.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Took her right out of Rain Dumoulin’s
good moon arms</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the embryonic studio of someone who
was</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">learning how to paint to celebrate and
counteract</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the widow walk dance of her husband’s
recent suicide.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What a cruel world that has such
lovingly tragic fools in it.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bang the screen door and we were all
the way</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">back to my red Starfire and you to the
back window</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to see where you might be going now
that</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you’ve been captured again all the
windows done up</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">until you learned that I fed you
because I intended</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to love you and I wanted you to live as
an affable familiar
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of me who’s got goldfish but they’re
awful hard to caress</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">when you want to reach out and just
touch something soft
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as smoke wafting across your cheek like
the echo of a dream</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">somebody’s having about being loved
in bad economic times</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and I was willing to clean up your
methane mess for it.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m pampering you. You’re living
almost exclusively
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on treats. If not now when? When do you
get a small
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">special consideration for the emptiness
that’s going
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to build a little coffin in your heart</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and put a picture of me in it like a
locket
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of Temptations seafood medley singing
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">softly to you from the tower of Cohen’s
song.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Simon’s going to take you. He’s a
good man. Loves cats.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-74632548704769948682013-12-05T10:17:00.001-08:002013-12-05T10:17:18.401-08:00I CAN'T SLEEP IN THIS BEAUTIFUL STORM OF TEARS<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I CAN’T SLEEP IN THIS BEAUTIFUL STORM
OF TEARS</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I can’t sleep in this beautiful storm
of tears</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that keeps showing me how much love
there is in the world</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">now that I’m leaving it through the
rose trellis exit
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where there’s a drop of water on
every
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">anointed thorn of my thoroughly wet
eyelashes.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s beautiful loss that’s sad and
scary all at the same time.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s a flashflood of emotion that
thaws the frogs out</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and gets them singing like small ice
floes in a lily pond</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">clinging with polar bears to what’s
left of the Arctic ice cap
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that’s unravelling all around me like
a snowman
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">riding its own melting into an
oblivious mindstream.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Easy to love ordinary things now as if
they were sacred,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">domestic rituals, chores, objects, dust
in the air,
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">dirt in an organized drawer, cracks in
the plaster</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">diversifying the dinosaurs like
fractured Pangaea’s skull.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The thunder and pulse of a lost
drumbeat in the jungles of time.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Everything glows. Even the dark shines.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With an aura of beautiful mysterious
numinosity</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that polishes the dawn like a dusty
abalone shell
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on an opalescent day at deserted beach
as long and wet as yourself.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-70519569054943234582013-12-05T10:15:00.002-08:002013-12-05T10:15:25.611-08:00WASTED IN THE MORNING<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">WASTED IN THE MORNING</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wasted in the morning luxuriating in
the semi-comatose</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">numbness to the last ghost you’ve
seem returning
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to its grave without being bothered by
it like an immune system</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you could take for granted as a sign of
the state</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of the health you’re in when you
can’t get to sleep with tumours</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and all you want to do is disappoint
pillows. Vita brevis. Arta longa.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Look out the window at the enlargements
of the dawn</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as much as you can when you’re able
to stand.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pet the cat. Have a long blue drag on a
fat cigarette</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that’s beginning to look like a
pregnant guppy</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">humping a seahorse in my hands. Remark</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to myself that I’m not the first man
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to see the pigeons flying over the
tarpaper roofops</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as if it were fun to be a pigeon with
the northern lights</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">around your neck and I wished I was one
of them</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">waking up in a happy town to throw
myself around</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like wedding confetti at a morning
marriage of bells</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or a scrapped manuscript torn to bits
because it’s got talent</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or apple bloom and mailmen trying to
get some coffee into them</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">cooped up in a restaurant like one of
hidden wonders of the age.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-28833514297255034032013-12-05T10:14:00.001-08:002013-12-05T10:14:17.529-08:00HOW MUCH PAIN CAN YOU HOLD INSIDE UNTIL THE RESERVOIR EVAPORATES?<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">HOW MUCH PAIN CAN YOU HOLD INSIDE UNTIL
THE RESERVOIR EVAPORATES</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How much pain can you hold inside
before the reservoir evaporates</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">into the great sky of awareness like a
watershed waterbird
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">crying out in anguish for something
that’s frightened it
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">looking into the long dwindling journey
ahead.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The distances. The distances. The
distances
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">from one sea to the next like a
waterclock that never stops.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like the human heart with a wheelhouse
pulse.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The eye of the storm your only oasis
for miles around.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You become spectral, dissociated,
unglued, unbound</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as a Promethean god freed by Shelley,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">metastasizing in your liver like
vultures eating it</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for crimes of fire you were a good
thief at.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The damage unto the privilege of the
fatuous gods
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you have done and there’s nothing but
nothing</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">they can do back to you now for it but
chain you</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to a rock in the Caucasus and hope it
hurts.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There’s a fire in the starfields I
can see from here
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and a scarecrow poet try to blow the
flames out
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on his jester’s long sleeves. The
fire god came looking for fire</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and he found it under my t shirt like a
burning fox
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I didn’t tell anybody about on the
bridges I’ve crossed.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-41326139847106582762013-12-05T10:12:00.000-08:002013-12-05T10:12:05.019-08:00YOUR EYES ARE A BLUE CRACK OF SKY TO ME<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">YOUR EYES ARE A BLUE CRACK OF SKY TO ME</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your eyes are a blue crack of sky to me
at the bottom</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of a very deep mine. And when your
heart shines down</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">it’s not a flashlight but a majestic
sunset I’m looking up at.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Under this avalanche of gravestones
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m trying to sing the dead back to
life.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m beguiling the gibbering shades
with picture music</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that sings like deadly nightshade
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to the bruised darkness within me
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">people keep stepping out of
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like the ghosts of white nocturnal
orchids</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">pale as the ghoulish moon on the limbs
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of the naked dead trees the herons
build their nests in.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s the function of a prophetic
Orphic skull
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to walk among the dark jewels of the
underworld</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with all the eyes open in its blood
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but none to see into the blue sky above
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">what you’re looking at when when you</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">see how blind I am to the wavelengths
copulating in your eyes</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like the twining of two snakes on a
caduceus
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">topped with the snowflake of a dove.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hermes Trismegistus for a companion
guide</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and a little girl who leads me around
like a seeing eye dog.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m sort of the Teresian Orpheus of
my own hybridization</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">who keeps falling back like Sisyphus
with a gravestone</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">when nothing’s coming back above
ground</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but the stars in another round of your
zodiacally clear eyes.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-48810139522731223262013-12-05T10:10:00.004-08:002013-12-05T10:10:41.041-08:00OFF INTO THE MORNING<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">OFF INTO THE MORNING</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Off into the morning like a bird with
insomnia</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that sings its choral part in the tree
as it sleepwalks</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">into the dawn not knowing if it’s the
beginning of a new day</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or the end of a dream it was having
about flying away
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">forever forever forever free as a
shadow on a cloud</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">before it ruins the radiance of the
dawn shining in its blood.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Blood Drop. Cardinal? You push the
limits of scarlet</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">way over into the infrared redshifting
into a total black out</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">during a saturated firestorm of British
Lancasters</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">over Hamburg trying to sow the
whirlwind with incendiaries.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For a little flag you go way too far
with the banner oriflamme</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of dragon fire heating up the furnaces
of your heart</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with prophets and art and burnished
gold as white
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as the eyes of the diamonds looking out
from the coals</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with tears in their eyes they’re so
happy to see you</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">so clear and adamantinely insistent
upon staying fluid as tears.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I waited three years once looking out
my studio window</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in winter at the slim lone candelabra
of a tree with a bird feeder</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as I painted for you to come to the
candle and assume</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">your proper place as the flame. Even
wrote</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a ten page poem about it. The Writing
Lesson.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How to take a little spark like you and
start a forest fire</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with someone who’s distantly related
to the stars</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and the chimney sparks in a high wind
that keep flaring</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">incendiarily against the pines as if
they were lashing them</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with whips of fire with stars for barbs
like the rainmaker Pleiades</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">at the end of it all. Star shower.
Phosphorus power. Cocked spur.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The ability to shine underwater as if
you were burning</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">it was that hot and you had nothing to
cool off your blue stars with
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like Fukushima trying not to kill the
fish or evacuate Tokyo</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or curtail the tinny blue fish tin
business on the west coast</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with laving tides of radiation to
counteract the filth</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of having tumours to contend with when
all you want to do
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">is fly off into the morning with an
intense infernal glee
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">your shadow comet and you are immensely
free.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-44009292773576864862013-12-05T10:09:00.001-08:002013-12-05T10:09:24.537-08:00I'M DROPPING ASHES ON BUDDHA PINOCCHIO<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’M DROPPING ASHES ON BUDDHA
PINOCCHIO</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m dropping ashes on Buddha
Pinocchio.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Brushing them off his lap, sweeping
them off the desk,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">trying to keep urns of them away from
the keyboard</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with a stubby little brush that looks
like Hitler’s moustache.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or Goring’s toothbrush. So much
soiled purity.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the acts of love we attend to. So
much swamp</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with the waterlilies. So much ore with
the gold.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So much rain in a glass of trees. So
many ashes to scatter</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like a dead storm that’s snuffed
itself out on a grey wind</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that rises like a smoke bandanna over
the sun on the horizon.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cherry red. Like a tumour. But enough
said. It’s not</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">about that eraser head. Pink nibbling
nipple.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s about lunettes and nibs like
spearheads that penetrate
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">your heart like Clovis points flint
knapped plalanged in Solutria
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as they inched around the ice age page
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by snow white page by page by glacial
ice sheet</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to make it all the way to North America</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in time to disappoint the natives in
the Bering Strait</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as founding peoples of two entire
continents</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with what a dust storm induced by the
Younger Dryas ice age</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">can do to wipe people out with most of
the larger animals</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">buried whether they lay down for or
stood up to the dust.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whole two continents kissing an
hourglass isthmus</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">just like an image in Buddha
Pinocchio’s blind mind.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You’ve got to attend to this as if
you were responsible
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for the death blossoms of his pygmy
apple trees
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and Japanese plums losing their eyelids
to squanderous visions
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that rain back down to earth volcanic
down</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like Pompey and Herculaneum sculpting
dogs in agony.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-21678327410810596272013-11-14T12:42:00.005-08:002013-11-14T12:42:50.972-08:00DAY FOURTEEN:<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">DAY FOURTEEN:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-right: 1.63cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
keep waiting for some mountain of gravestones to fall on me and bury
me in the valley of death, but it hasn’t happened yet. I’m not
terrified or paranoid about it, which may be folly on my part, but
I’ve been a poet all my life and so the habit persists of seeing
and being this way, buttressed by my almost hallucinogenic
fascination with the light as it flowers in astronomy and painting.
There is no way in the world I would ever discard my emotions, like
trying to cancel the weather of an ocean to save it from drowning as
far as I’m concerned, or to alleviate it’s fear of drowning in
itself. I entertain no boyish pretensions of cocksure, unambivalent
heroism about all this, but I do earnestly hope and am endeavouring
to walk this last green mile like a man, like a peasant king, like a
poet. You, see? Death hasn’t knocked the playfulness out of me yet?
Or I’m flirting coyly with it. There’s a transmorphic aspect
about its gender, nothing psychological, but in the way all the
abstractions about it metaphorize into a body of feeling-thought in
my mind, and in the way I perceive it, and look into its eyes. It’s
sometimes as remote as a terrifying father, but more delightfully and
more often, seems to manifest as an allurement I can relate to.
Unaccusing, unjudgmental, engaging. I think of Odysseus and Circe
more in this regard with a touch of mermaid just to keep my
attention. And no, I’m not tying myself to any mast this time, not
that I ever did much of that. I want to hear. Of course, you wonder,
and I do, if there’s some kind of subconscious death wish in all of
this I’m overlooking, and the last, cruel last laugh will be on me.
If it is, let it be, I’m still going to look. Habit of mine to
stare dragons into the eyes straight and see what’s there. Kiss
your dragons back into princesses Rilke says somewhere. Think it’s
got something to do with looking into a lifetime of telescopes.
Pointing them at the stars, my heart, my soul, my poetry, gardens
that came up in the night while I slept. Watching the mind walk its
own waters within me. Beautiful even when it’s horrible sometimes,
eerie or alone. I feel a bit like Chauncey the Gardener here, I like
to watch, and so I do, because for the life of me, I have not been
able to find any other mindstream within to sit beside. Nor am I
about to ask this great sea of unbounded awareness to pick out its
favourite waves and streams or direct me to those that are more
important than others to keep an eye on. Form through matter. Within.
The way a seed manifests a flower. I don’t impose it, and I sense
we’re all shapeshifters anyway. Vertumnus, Morpheus, where the
river turns. I’ve been meeting my life at one bend in the river
after the other for lightyears now. Good place to write in while I’m
waiting, musing on the stars, as Dylan sings, watching the river
flow. Deepening my relationship with the moon. Peaceful there, though
not always, calm most of the time, though I’ve known it to roil as
well. Let it. I never ask for anything, so it’s somewhat of a
falsehood to me to ever feel disappointed. This experience is akin to
that, or perhaps more of the same. Few clouds passing across the
moon, but they’ll pass at their own pace, and I’m used to that.
Cowboy clouds, you loosen your nervous system, you tighten your spine
like a bow some friend taught you to use when all the cowboys and
Indians went Zen, and you watch, perhaps that’s all you can do.
Watch. Calm, continuous awareness. Sometimes minutely, the mystic
specificity of the world, the grain of sand that contains the whole
of the universe in each detail. And sometimes macrocosmically when
your eyes want to be enlightened starmaps. Not an agenda, a menu, or
an expectation. The world like the flowers blooms of its own accord.
I let it sleep, if it dreams, and go on quietly contented to work in
an adjoining room, pursuing, as Blake so eloquently expresses it, my
persistent folly. Surprise it with a poem when it gets up. Even the
fool would grow wise if he would persist in his folly. That’s
Blake’s line, not mine, but isn’t it true? Once you’ve got your
hydra-headed ego delusion out of the way even for a moment, a
glimpse, a nanosecond, isn’t it clear every nervous system, tree
reaching up to the stars, dendritic notion of evolution and dark
matter, empties into a great, vast sea of unknowing, call it the
godhead, nirvana, the clear light of the void, dark night of the
soul, fana, baqua, the plenum-void, a dream, nothingness manifested
as being, or just a bad molecular joke some random, impersonal,
indifference played upon you without meaning to, whatever metaphors
you’re most comfortable in because they’ve broken you in like a
pair of comfortable boots you’ve walked a long way in, listening to
the stars jingle like constellations at your heels, for the musical
effect on dark nights that make you nervous enough to whistle in the
dark, not goading or spurring so much, if you’ve got a good horse,
and I fancy I have, you don’t need to do anything but watch it work
the herd, be they words, or thoughts or emotions, loosen the reins so
you don’t end up making a noose of them and hanging some innocent
man or woman in your despair. Not a philosophy, but my bumbling,
approximate approach. More intuitive than precise, but things keep
appearing out of the mist in the valley the moon’s saturating with
light, and I’ve spent a lifetime of agonizingly, intensely,
delightfully, mesmerizingly, radiantly, darkly, abundantly, brightly,
beatifically, demonically, vacantly watching these fireflies of
insight trying to make earthbound constellations out of white-tailed
does that step out from behind those veils. Usually after a
thunderstorm. I still can’t think of a better or more blessed way
to spend my time here. Alone with the Alone, as Plotinus phrases it,
but alone together with everyone else the Alone flowers in. That’s
you, darlin, you’re on. What’s this? Outside the green room.
Forgive the impertinence of my nomenclature, I like to pretend
sometimes I’m Gus in Lonesome Dove sometimes. But I hope I’ve
made the point clear. What’s this? Angels can’t answer that
question without being told, demons have more proficiency because
they’ve usually seen more, they’ve been to both places, heaven
and hell, but I’m still of the persuasion, that question belongs to
humans, indefensibly, imperfectible as they seem they are sometimes,
and even just to ask it is answer enough. See Montaigne’s motto
carved into his rafter. Que sais je? Perhaps nothing, but you know
it, and that nothing is human. A lingering cachet of us, a flavour, a
taste, a fragrance, a bouquet, a ghost as it pursues its aimless,
musical path among the stars as if they could hear a whisper of
flowers singing sweetly to themselves within it that reminds them of
a garden they used to tend like a woman as the sun goes down. And the
song she’s singing to herself. Alone with the Alone. Is it scary,
sometimes, you bet it is, almost inconceivably so, but then so have a
lot of things that have occurred in my life. And you know what? The
dark shines. I’ve always said so, and more than ever, that’s my
story and I’m sticking to it. I see that more than ever now, in a
soggy cigarette butt someone flicked to the side walk, and in the
roaring black hole engines of the galaxies. You want to see a star.
Look into the darkness it’s emerging from as if someone just handed
you a flower, and you’re wondering where to fix to your hat. Put
that rose in the skull of your rattlesnake hatband. Between the
fangs. Make it a wicked flower pot. It’s oxymoronic, isn’t it?
Union of opposites. Two wings on one bird. Actually there’s a
third, but we won’t get into that. But include it all, no part left
out as some Zen mendicant realized one day watching the moon and the
sun at opposite ends of the sky. Moonset, sunrise. The way we
breathe, the way we live and die. Do you see a discontinuity in it? I
don’t. What do you do with your life then? You celebrate it, you
say thanks, even if you don’t know what form of a host you’re
addressing in the doorway as you leave. I hear God doesn’t have any
characteristics. You might want to think of lending him or her a few
of your own. Thanks. That’ll do it, but you say it with your blood
and your eyes, and your mind and your heart and your soul. Thanks.
Quite a show. And the ticket was free, unless you got more glee
sneaking under the fence. But que sais je? What do I know? This is my
good guess. What’s yours?</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-76942182910230897472013-11-14T12:40:00.000-08:002013-11-14T12:40:24.638-08:00NOW NOTHING. THE DREAM FIGURES HAVE GONE TO BED<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">NOW NOTHING. THE DREAM FIGURES HAVE
GONE TO BED</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now nothing. The dream figures have
gone to bed.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The painters have have entered their
dreams as if
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">everything were better said in the
morning and they’ve
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">left their half-finished paintings of
muscular women</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">into Tae Kwon Do sex on their easels,
and they come</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and they come and they come to nothing
with
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a pretty little idea of the flower in
their head</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">blooming like ball lightning in the
rear view of the night.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Peace. Relief. Poof. And it’s gone as
the mirages
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">come on for more. Something settles. Is
it dark?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is it dust? Is it light? Are there
stars on the tarpaper roofs?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Quiet. You can hear the silence
breathe. Me wheeze</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">softly with death and ashes on my
breath. God
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wish there were stars on the tarpaper
roofs.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But that’s the way of it. Does
anybody need any proof?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are memories that recoup the
moment.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Birch trees and gardens shaped like
icons of a woman
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I knew once I was trying to please.
Elecampane
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and eglantine, and always, always,
always</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the wild grape vine. Locust and apple
trees. The moon.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When it’s up. The way I’m edging
this like a fluid
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">jeweller with my tongue to make it run.
So nicely</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">it almost seems like compensation for
taking
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">my breath away. Ting. Ting. But it’s
lower than that.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The hospital ward is absorbed in it on
the nightshift.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Soft-shoed silence. And the musings of
the dead
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in a hospital bed on what they’ve
lived, what they’ve loved,
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">what they died for. My turn. I’ll try
to be their equal</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">not peer of anything. Maybe a fun
companion at the end</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to help relieve my suffering with their
laughter. It’ll work out.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m almost sure. I can bumble my way
through this</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">black out with a kiss on the forehead
for good luck.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Full stop. No more birch trees. No more
gardens.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No more full stops. Isn’t that
ridiculous? No socks.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is it brutal as a snowflake? Does the
soul leave
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the body when it dies? Have I got one.
Do you?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is it bearable, durable and wise? Does
it lie to you?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mine does sometimes. I wonder about
that. Not much.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But some. This is creation. Who knows
what to come?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Court jesters in a heavenly kingdom? Or
sunflower angels</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with deadly nightshade in their eyes to
make up for it?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">See? It lies in the way it tries to
make me feel better.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It doesn’t have to try so hard. I’m
mellow as a bride
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of the lamp posts outside. I’m wise
as a blade saw</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that knows how to cut its own umbilical
cord. Midwife.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not trapline I’ve got to eat my way
out of. Or be eaten alive.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But that’s another matter. What’s
everything for now</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">is looking into this while the night
surrounds me
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as if I were a gold fish in the
submarine pens of my aquarium.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Digits of time. Thumbnail sketches
immersed in it.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Should I say the waters of life? The
evanescent
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">exit and entrance. You breathe it in
you breathe it out.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And then you die. No trick to it if
that’s all there is to it.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ll try. Take a good run at it and
fly like a waterbird</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with nothing on my mind but taking off
on time to go blind</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or enter another space, maybe a lot
like this place</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where I’m fine for the moment
unlocking the sky
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like a diary of stars way back in the
woods of my mind.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-12900057137181889962013-11-13T09:52:00.002-08:002013-11-13T09:52:47.104-08:00EPISTOLARY FACEBOOK MESSAGE NUMBER THREE<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">EPISTOLARY FACEBOOK MESSAGE NUMBER
THREE</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No pennies on my eyes this morning. But
I slept with these
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on my eyelids like bells, like moons,
like kisses on the forehead of a bruise,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as I fell through a mist of
pharmaceuticals in a cloud of unknowing,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">weightless with both my children in my
arms like shepherd moons</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and tumours. Two poems, two hills, two
tombs, listening
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to the anapestic trill of my mindstream
hair braiding its way
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">through the woods. And the silence and
the silence and the silence</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that scans. When I see a skull there’s
always a flower in it
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and a star that wants to start a
constellation in my eyes.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shaking like an aspen in the rags of
its last leaves in a frosty wind</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">hoping this chassis of a body can live
up to its engine. Time</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to look under my tongue. So I can tell
the morning
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">how grateful I am to be so warm inside
here with everyone</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like a cat or a bird or man in the
pewter lustre
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of another morning on earth. Where did
all the flowers
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">come from? I swear, Gus, I love the way
the things of the world</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">are always getting out of hand. And the
silence, and the silence</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and the silence that scans.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can’t imagine how much love there
is in my heart
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for you right now. All of you, though
I’ve known many of you</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">since I was an upstart. New friends in
the schoolyard, all of you.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m going to see what my mother
packed for lunch.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Love, Patrick</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-68739302686150688082013-11-13T09:48:00.002-08:002013-11-13T09:48:26.582-08:00DARK SHEDDING<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">DARK SHEDDING</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dark shedding. Translucent shadows of
the leaves
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on a lake without a name you once made
famous for nothing</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">because you saw it dance in your
awareness of enough</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and touched it with your eyes like a
secret that was meant</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to be kept like the silence in the
roots of the bracken.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Regrets? What was there to cry about
that didn’t bloom</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in retrospect? Did you miss the moon?
Did you run</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to the window in time? Have you seen it
yet
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">through the rain and the smoke? Do you
see a woman</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or do you see a ghost in the garden
that reminds you</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of someone you knew when were young
among
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the sunflowers you grew? And the moon
and the locust tree
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you hung from like someone pendulous
and blue
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as time on the air of the unweaving
hills? Is that</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">still true as a road that goes nowhere
without you</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like the sumac in the fall when it
fails? Do the gates
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">still open as if they recognized you by
the grace
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and the colour of the bouquets you made
of your skelton keys?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gardens of scars in your eyes. Did you
leave the stars</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to the sage when you wept like smoke at
the feet
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of everything it didn’t say but you
could foretell
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by the silence that befell you before
and after that you
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">heard it anyway like the flight of a
homing heron</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to the shrines of its sacred syllable
in the heart of time,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the eye of the light, in the mouth
of the wind,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the crowns of the fire, in the
flowers weeping
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on the dark waters within as if you’d
been their only friend</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to understand their solitude as a gift
from their wayward ends?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-51765586835051138212013-11-13T09:46:00.003-08:002013-11-13T09:46:52.035-08:00I TOUCHED THINGS DEEPLY TO REMIND MYSELF THEY WERE NOT MINE<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I TOUCHED THINGS DEEPLY TO REMIND
MYSELF THEY WERE NOT MINE</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I touched things deeply to remind
myself they were not mine</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but the fingerprints and echoes of time
the way</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the mind seizes whatever it befriends,
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a handful of nothing that clings to the
wind,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the ghost of the moon when its bones
are dust
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and the juniper weeps at the eastern
door
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of a stranger’s burial hut deep in
its heart</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and love, love must come and depart
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like a curse and a blessing from the
miraculous occult</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and wonder is the atmosphere we wander
in</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">wounded by the blessings of a hurt
metaphor</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that waves its crutch to the silence
and says farewell</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to the candle in the lantern with the
wick of midnight</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">still in its spell. You don’t have to
doubt it anymore, you can tell</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as the words fall sweetly from the urn
and the bell.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-71244232402487354562013-11-12T10:45:00.002-08:002013-11-12T10:45:19.104-08:00WATCHING MY MIND WALK ITS OWN WATERS<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">WATCHING MY MIND WALK ITS OWN WATERS</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Day 13:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two hours sleep out of the last
twenty-four. Exhausted. Blurred.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even the smudges have medicinal value.
The lightning definitely
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">hit the transformer yesterday. Here are
the fireworks. Ignore, read,
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">scratch your head, speculate on the
comparative creative psychodynamics of
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sisyphus and Chernobyl, whatever you
want to do. Ok with me.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Read them serially like a totem pole.
Or pick them up individually</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like an occasional interesting leaf you
findd at your feet. These</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">poems feel supercharged with a
significance that seems to be
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">resonating throughout out everything I
say, do, love, write, think and feel.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pages turning, but the book’s a tree.
Given the number of poems</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">from yesterday I’m about to post, and
how taxing and time consuming the act</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of posting them seriatim en masse is, I
think from now on, I will post them
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as they’re tentatively finished.
Easier on you, that way. And easier
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on me. Matter of husbanding chores and
energies. Also think it’s more</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">open that way for both writer and
reader. Puts more unbounded sky
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">into each flightpath and gives them
room to shed, flap, fly. Or decide</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">they’re not a bird, they’re a tent.
Doesn’t monumentalize the air with an avalanche</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or meteor shower of gravestones at a
bingo of extinction events, keeping,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in mind, we owe one them, at least,
partially, our own mammalian proliferation.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Solar flaring, then, not publishing.
I’d love to hang on to a fat head. Carry it</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">around with me under my arm. Consult it
at parties like a Ouji board. But, I
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">don’t have the space for it. And if
it starts to develop an ego where am I going</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to put it? Lot of space out here, but
I’m not sure about the living room yet.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Little tight I’d say at this point
for an ego. Letting the light go. Though
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">no less care I assure you goes into
writing one of these than has gone
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">into anything I’ve ever written.
Possibly more because I am surgically
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">curious to know how deeply the meds
have dug down into Mt. Helicon to establish their own wellspring,
inclusive, but separate from the others I’m used to drawing upon.
See if</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the pharmaceuticals are fracking my
good housewells. Good. This part done.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Never thought I’d ever be so happy to
see prose on daylight savings time again. Lol</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nurse called. Pulmonary esophogeal
biopsy in Kingston on Friday. Feel like</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dorothy skipping down the yellow brick
road to defrock the Wizard of Oz</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in a strange kind of way. Possibly a
black lightning bolt from the brain pan</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of the Sahara. But I’m staying as
open and alert to whatever comes next.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Till then plan to use the unperturbed
time in between as wisely and vividly
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as I can. Write poems in the eye of the
hurricane happy as a bird enthroned
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as a peasant king on one of his own
thermals. Ride the bannisters. Love, Patrick.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Watching my mind walk its own waters</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like a long-legged spider off the wharf
of the moon at Long Bay.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A syringe just before it breaks the
skin.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The moon’s a junkie. So am I. But
it’s called medicine.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ghostly, lonely, blue aura rise like
the spiritual life of milk.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Glow softly. Shine. Teach all these
tears they’re light.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Veils. Melancholic solar flares bruised
by the night they entered.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Marigolds among the waterlilies. Stars
in the dark when they’re wet.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How easy the water pulses through its
own veins like love</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and a dark circus on stilts. Horror
with a thorax
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and a tumour to compare to. Perish the
thought,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yorik’s got better things to do than
be afraid of you.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gonna fly. Gonna fly over the whole
earth
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and prove there are extraterrestrials
though that’s a sad joke.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ambivalence wrecks everything like
crumpled tinfoil.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Should have been a star. But I never
wanted to shine like that.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not sharp. Blunted by the heart. I took
an edge off.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Looks better on me I think than all
that warpaint.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How to teach scalpels to build their
own aquarium.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Flowers how to make the bed. And live
through the leaves.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Startling I said that like a star in
the east above the treeline.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such a small space to couch enormity in</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as if it had seasons. My mother knows
about this. She’s wise
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as a bell that’s been crying. Me? I’m
a waterbird
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">when I want to be. My solitude’s
almost a woman.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So that’s me. I was curious. And
little fella I think we’re fucked.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No more riverboats. Maybe one, but it
sunk. Glad
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I got that out of the way of that old,
Medusan tree stump.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And got away with a rhyme that makes me
look cleverer
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">than I am, but I think I’m going to
take the bow anyway.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m feeling sorry for myself. You,
too, if you want to know the truth.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Milky moonlight. It’s Celtic as snow
in summer, beautiful
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but cold as a flower that treasures its
loneliness.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’d rather sleep with a rose than a
waterlily.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But I suppose that’s all over now,
baby blue.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let the feelings come through as they
will
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like freshwater dreams from the woods.
Hey, that’s pretty good.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What am I looking at? Data. Raw data.
Brutal mercy</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with a quiet told you so. As if it was
my fault
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and I don’t care if it is. I got to
see this, didn’t I?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Picture it as a kind of beautiful blue
moon in late October
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that sings in a choir of razorblades
that haven’t
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">been threshed yet. Ever see a cornfield
of trashed ribbons?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That’s what I’m afraid of. The
snapping turtle
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that unfeathered the moon. Feels a
little bit like rape to me.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Am I in prison? Or is this Promethean?
What do you say?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Want to look at the moon with me? Hear
me expiate
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on everything under the sun at midnight
as if it had gone somewhere?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I sing like time got stuck in my voice
like a grackle or a black box</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in a morning chimney pipe. And so it
goes, and so it goes, and so it goes
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like a waterclock. Is there meaning in
that enough</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to drink from your skull cup down to
the lees of your heart.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That old fortune teller with an
eyepatch and a scarf</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for a bloodstream. Can you see the
sphinx underneath</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">her mascara? She’s wearing midnight
with partial eclipses.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And it’s a delusion. I’m sure about
that. But I think
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">she just winked at me like a starmap.
Old bat. Imagine that.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m showing off. And it’s sad as
the tears deep down
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the nature of things. The lachrymae
dolorosae that beads
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the leaves like lampshades and party
clowns.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hand me that waterfall. I think I want
to drown.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Be serious. There are people around.
Listening
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to the shedding of the leaves that
whisper something about autumn</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in their ears. Eyes like the embers of
an old fire
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">going through its jewels in the dark.
Who loved you?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Did he treat you right? Or do you still
carry a bruise on your heart
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like a poison apple you want to give
somebody as a surprise?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And miss all this for that. I’m the
plague rat. You
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">be somebody else. And we’ll look at
the moon together
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on the edge of the world. We’ll
resonate with our assessment
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of what it is to stand here and just
look. Just look.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-91151813105020137362013-11-12T10:38:00.004-08:002013-11-12T10:38:49.829-08:00IN THE GREEN ROOM WITH THE HAY OUT OF A MAGICAL SCARECROW<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">IN THE GREEN ROOM WITH THE HAY OUT OF A
MAGICAL SCARECROW</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the green room with the hay out of a
magical scarecrow,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m putting tarpaper on my pyramid
like a suspicious eclipse.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tar and honey on a biscuit that breaks
like a stale cartouche.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Swoosh. That’s the wing of a sabre in
the saddle. The moon’s</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in Pegasus. I didn’t think that was
possible. Has my head
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">come off like a narcissus bud at the
end of a golf club?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Am I liberated enough? Or is this still
the foodstall?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gotta stop asking that as if I didn’t
know any better.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It doesn’t matter. And I’m happy
about that. Peasant King
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">when I’m not Buddha Pinocchio.
Wouldn’t want to hurt
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his feelings. He’s a friend of mine.
I don’t take him for granted.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But you relate to him as the mood suits
you. Ah, Cohen,
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you lovely man, he’s flexible as a
Zen ventriloquist.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An embarrassment of riches. A
motherlode. Mountain gold
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gleaming in the fissures of the night
like a mended teacup.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mystic scar tissue. The shining goes
dark before it blinds you
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">into a supercharged photonic
significance of covert insight
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">into the nature of life resonating with
everything
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like an old guitar humming to itself in
a corner of dust</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">though that has a way of making me feel
like the sex life of the Hubble Telescope
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in a degenerating orbit. Quick. A
candle. A moth. Luna.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What are you willing to die for as a
way of life?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-75043814587382902522013-11-12T10:37:00.003-08:002013-11-12T10:37:43.734-08:00YOU CAN'T DRINK SPIT FROM ANOTHER MAN'S MOUTH THOUGH I JUST DID<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">YOU CAN’T DRINK SPIT FROM ANOTHER
MAN’S MOUTH THOUGH I JUST DID</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can’t drink spit from another
man’s mouth though I just did</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and convince me it’s a desertwell in
an hourglass.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wrote a book about the Tuarig. They
teach their camels to dance.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And play the cithara like a
synchronized guitar.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Point is. You’ve got to taste the
water for yourself
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to know what’s hot, what’s cold.
Bifurcated faucets. It’s an optical delusion.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dust devils of stars. Poof. It’s a
magic trick of the heart.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To be so cruelly lonely you want to
fool somebody good.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cling to your loneliness. Cling to your
solitude.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do you good if you can hang in there
until you bloom</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but I’m not your living room. That
is. At the tip of your nose
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like a rosebud. Like a black horned
rhinocerus in a parachute.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Parking meters in veils and rattlesnake
hoods
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that make them look either like a
medicine bag
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or an executioner. Am I making myself
understood?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s apparitional. A dream. A mirage.
A ghost
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you stub your heart on like a prophetic
skull that isn’t
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where it’s suppose to be like
Christmas dinnerware at Easter.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The coasters are wrong for the
occasion. This isn’t
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a delirium you can see through easily
as if you were someone</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and the Queen of Heaven didn’t mind.
But don’t
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">approach it feverishly. It sleeps. And
you don’t want to wake the lotus</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">before she’s finished her dream. Of
you and me, bud. Who else?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the world as it is and always has
been and will be
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">past tense by the time you think about
it. Gone
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like yesterday’s sunset that made
even the crows hesitate</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or Basho in the autumn looking up. Even
so. Even so . . .</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The blue thrush calls over by the
waterfalls that sound
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like the Pleiades mourning for somebody
with bells.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Forget that. This is as crucial as an
abyss. Emptiness.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Endless emptiness where nothing is but
the stars as if
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">they’d just been winnowed by time.
Stillness. Silence.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the stained glass windows, your
eyes turning back
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on themselves like a memory losing its
mirrors</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of something eternal as sand in a wine
vat.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stars in an hourglass timing cosmic
eggs with Sufi flutes</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">at the still point of the crossroads
where the equinoxes meet</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like mystic weathervanes an octave
lower than light.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sing it. Sing it like you mean it like
an unsigned loveletter to your soul.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trample the grapes like mistletoe
pawnbroker moons</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and saccharine snow globes. I hesitate
to say it
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but this is all you know on earth, all
you need to know.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s a sad, sad, sad, sad gift from
somebody you don’t know.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But they gave it to you anyway. And
it’s meant to be opened</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in gratitude and anticipation. Then
give away some</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like a cake that begs to be shared with
desolation.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Poetry. Here’s your hossu. Now you
can whisk the dust of the stars
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">off your shoulders like epaulets on a
fossil
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and address somebody from the heart
beside a well</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that can hear the stars in what you say
from so, so far away</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">they look like shortcircuiting
fireflies at Armageddon
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that are at peace with themselves over
the stillness of an ocean</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that thought it heard mermaids singing
just a while ago.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span> </div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-29010232658954382672013-11-12T09:42:00.000-08:002013-11-12T09:42:00.160-08:00THIN LOAM ON THE FOREST FLOOR OF THE TREES AT THEIR PODIUM<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THIN LOAM ON THE FOREST FLOOR OF THE
TREES AT THEIR PODIUM</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thin loam on the forest floor of the
trees at their podium.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the leaves flying around like
lecture notes
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and regatas of sulphur butterflies.
Sorry about that.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I didn’t mean to be so wise. This is
skin and starmud not bone.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It hurts when you touch it like that
with a compass needle
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and a blood transfusion for alley cats
in heat</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that want to get outside and look at
the stars for themselves.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meow. It ain’t me, babe. I’m not
worth looking for</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">anymore. But I want you to take the
window with you when you go.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Go. My name is Chernobyl. Fukushima mud
pies</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with a happy face that never smiles
these days.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not much anyway until I say something
sweet
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">about being handcuffed by the rain like
the tree rings
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in your heartwood. I can tell the time
by them. It’s late.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And there’s a blue hinge on the sky
that makes it look
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like the lapwing of a gate that’s
lain in the vetch</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a long, long time. Like a cry that
nobody heard for help.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What can you say to the street lights
as they’re coming on?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s open and private all at the same
time?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The hayrake in the grass you spilled
paint on
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like a comb with a Jew’s harp made
out of a thin skeleton?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Look at the tail on that one. A
chandelier for rats
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with skin problems you don’t want to
hear about</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">before lunch as if lunch were some kind
of dinner.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eat. It helps the pills go down better
like little gravestones.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pebbles in a wishing well. What did you
wish for?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m afraid of mine like a butcher’s
wife with three blind mice</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on drugs. Pulmonary esophogeal biopsy.
The big man.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Wizard of Oz in a ministerial
parachute. OK</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">we’ll listen to that too as if there
wasn’t anything left to say</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but thank-you. I just met an oracle I
can relate to.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hope so. We’ll have to wait and see
who takes me by the hand</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">at the crosswalk. Without a traffic
light looking for</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a manger like a prophetic fledgling. Or
a baby lapwing</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that plays on a Jew’s harp like the
skeleton of a snake</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or the rain plucking at the plectra of
the heart</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in cosmic water droplets and morphine
drips. Tick tock.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We’re back to waterclocks fused to
improvised explosive devices.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-53707352333656857942013-11-12T09:40:00.003-08:002013-11-12T09:40:50.135-08:00I'VE GOT THIS CONTAGIOUS SMILE ON MY FACE<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’VE GOT THIS CONTAGIOUS SMILE ON MY
FACE
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve got this contagious smile on my
face</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I traded a dentist friend for a
painting of a great blue heron</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">at the focal point of a lake with
irises and waterlilies in it.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now I understand that skull with crowns
above my desk.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He’s proud of his teeth, too. And the
dragon
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">from the R-complex at the back of my
brain.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He’s the tumour. And that must be me.
I’m Icarus falling.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hear it’s good to die with a smile
on your face.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But I mustn’t get worked up about
this. I’m tired.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the evening is as blue and
beautiful
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as a bruised Prussian uniform on parade</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for the very last time before it glows
in the dark
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like that smile of mine. Darkness work
your magic on me.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Deadly nightshade. Persian violets like
the lights
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of a city coming on. And the light, the
dark that shines,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">what a shade, caressing your skin like
a cat burglar
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you’re going to let in to take the
curtains off your bed</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like an empire of classical blue
velour. Stern stuff. But true.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe I was a sacred painter afterall.
The oracle
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">at Delphi in a funeral pall. With lemon
bitter on the side.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At least, it ain’t parsley. And
there’s a clown in it
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I always wondered about. Now I know.
This is crazy.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-12771274343822320182013-11-12T09:39:00.003-08:002013-11-12T09:39:51.235-08:00THE KITE UNDOES ITS OWN STRING<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THE KITE UNDOES ITS OWN STRING
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The kite undoes its own string like a
spinal cord hydro line</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">it stole like a line of poetry from the
sheet music
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of the Zeitgeist reading its own
crystal skull</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as if there were too many notes in it
to call.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">See stars. See birds on a stave. See
music x-rays</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">from the grave like the visual
fragrance of what we are.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All night long on the corner of Clinton
Street and Desolation Row.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gore and the Universe at a restaurant
called Passiflora.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the bright sunshine, tanning, at a
table outside,
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">so you didn’t look like a blade of
stargrass under a yellow board.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As if things were too good to be true.
When</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you didn’t think about things like
the raw, new moon of a tumour.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And tiny ice pellets flicked like whips
and ladyfingers
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">into your face like Tom Thomson
considering one of his paintings
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by firelight in the parking lot outside
the emergency entrance
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to suicide. Stark, bleak, helicopters,
I bet you weren’t expecting that,
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like dragonflies landing on a lily pad
that’s lost its flowers.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is this genius? Is this madness? Who
cares?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Come along for the ride and pretend
you’re sick.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sick people like sick people better in
a hospital</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">reading Jean Paul Sarte and Beckett
while they’re waiting for Godot</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like a fly on a wall they wished they
listened to but I don’t.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-14669788583998168742013-11-12T09:38:00.001-08:002013-11-12T09:38:41.276-08:00DEATH, THE UNRAVELLING. PENELOPE UNWEAVES THE MOON<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">DEATH, THE UNRAVELLING. PENELOPE
UNWEAVES THE MOON</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Death, the unravelling. Penelope
unweaves the moon.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the nightstream in the woods at
night, pouring the water</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I drank from back. Water of life. Water
of light. Dark elixir
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">widow-walking burnt bridges. The
lighthouse of a window
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the woods. Giving my silver sword of
moonlight</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">back to the water sylphs in tribute for
all the pain
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">they caused me so beautifully,
poetically, mysteriously wise
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the way they treated me. Well done,
guys.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ll be looking for Venus through the
trees for
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the rest of my life without a silver
sword. Thanks
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for letting me keep the spur. It
reminds me of the stars
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in your eyes when they come out like
chandeliers of sex.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Grasp your flesh as if it were the only
soft spot
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the world you’ve ever found to lie
down upon
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and pretend you were dead convincingly
as a pillow.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This gob of fat and excess, this deer
bed, these eyes,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with dawns and dusks of their own with
orbiting observatories
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in direct communication with the brain,
it’s a coolie
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of a vehicle at your disposal with a
good suspension bridge
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">made of spinal cords. Flat guitar
strings that haven’t
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">been boiled enough to keep their spring
dangling
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">above the abyss by the tail of a
misplaced participle</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the mouth of a snakepit that cheats
on its Fs with a capo.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Back in the Glebe when we all sat at
the same table</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and got drunk on ourselves lying like
young
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and middle-aged artists as we were
supposed to have done</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">because for everything there is a
season. And that was it.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wore mongoose and snakeskin boots
back then
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in this enormous freak show of dreams
and visions
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gone right and wrong. Liked the cowboy
show. And the wolf.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dark, drunk days when the whiskey
smelled
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like puke in the tungsten snowbanks of
the streetlamps.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sick nuns of the Tetragrammaton. I am
the world’s</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">most evil man said no one who was ever
serious about himself.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ah, Spanish roses in Jewish health food
stores</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">unrelated to the Outlaws of the time.
Golden Triangle
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">cowboy stuff with a lot of smashed
glass that broke
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">your heart like a nasty beer glass on a
road trip to the moon.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Art. Is it murder or suicide? Or Willie
P. Bennet?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though I sense it in the ashes of
Wiffen on his highway
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of poetry in tears. But there’s a
limit.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And I took it when my life moved out
like an exit
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">off the freeway to be with somebody
else.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because it was true love for a while
there.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And you weren’t allowed to be with
anybody else
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">who wasn’t true to your sequins and
scales.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inside of me there’s a lunatic fringe
Zen cowboy
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">islander poet pirate painter prince
trying to die extraromantically as if
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">he’s lived under the moon all of his
life howling at it
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as if he were in mystical agony like a
shepherd of wolves
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">who knows the difference between the
meaning of the words,
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">pack and flock. Baa. Baa. Black sheep.
Black bird.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyway you want to put it. What suits
you plum</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">tickles me to death. And I mean it like
a rattlesnake</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on drugs at your jugular vein. Never
again, thank God</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for all the haloes in my life I’ve
ever grabbed at like brass rings.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All moondogs with an owly look about
them</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and something slightly carnivorous
about the roses
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">we threw at each other like the silk
purses and bullsears
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of a dead matador. Ole as the crowd
rises to its feet</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like a flying carpet and a cape. And we
all had to have</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">whiskey, music, poetry, and death on
our very last breath.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was life’s legendary way of
cornering on two wheels</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as if you were turning a car over like
a card you’re peeking under
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to see what you’ve got. Seven come
eleven. Or snake eyes
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on an inoculated starmap. Or a
strawberry tart
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with fangs like crucifixion nails on
your birthday</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for a heart. An art. A way of life I
couldn’t compare anymore
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to what? I always tried to. Then
covered up the lies about it</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">if I were the only professional
emergency exit stage left.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Say hi to Joanne for me. She’s the
only woman in my life
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I feel I owe something to more than I
gave her
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">because I was arrogant and young. Hi,
Joanne.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You were my apostate magdalene-madonna
and I loved you for it.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can research the rest in these
Burgess Shales</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like an old, beer and blood stained
photograph of the past.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You must like to suffer or you wouldn’t
have recognized me.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-8462354118889572252013-11-12T09:37:00.001-08:002013-11-12T09:37:24.228-08:00I ADJUSTED MYSELF LIKE CEMENT BLOCK BRICK BOOKS AT A PICNIC TABLE<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I ADJUSTED MYSELF LIKE CEMENT BLOCK
BRICK BOOKS AT A PICNIC TABLE</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I adjusted myself like cement block
brick books at a picnic table.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s not a funeral march to
immortality baking its starmud
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by the liongates of the sungods. I’m
just looking for a star
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">through the dirty window of the world.
How many opportunities
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in life do you get to see your own
death in the eyes
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of the way people love you? I’m
blessed. So says
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Buddha Pinocchio, but Azazel thinks
he’s evil cause he guessed.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And keeps on guessing, guess, after
guess, after guess.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But what’s the sun got to fear from
the fire when it’s all us?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alone together in the same liferaft.
How you exit like a peasant king
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">delirious with poetry. Summer wandering
into a mine field</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">should I say it, think I will, tumours.
Pop goes the weasel.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or is it Betelgeuse? Got to stop that
before I get carried away</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with myself. Ride your bannister like a
red tailed hawk.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Metaphoric code for an asphalt
wavelength of a joy ride.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Better to be a river than a highway. Or
a rat snake.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You’ve got to leave them alone to eat
the vermin.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Insanity, my friend. You write good
poetry. Sylvia Plath</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">says so. But you’ve got to watch all
those Anglo Saxon
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gutturals when you’re trying to pray
with
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a ventrologuial mantis on your knees
that talks like a cardinal</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">about debilities as if he had an oven
up his sleeves
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like an emotional crematorium for
broken hearts
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">trying to make it in the arts. Pray.
Now altogether pray.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Glad I got that out of the way. Hope
he’s happy.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let’s get on with this. Pass me a
cigarette through the bars.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think I see stars again. I’m a
Chinese mandarin
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">who reads Ovid in the original by the
Black Sea in the winter.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe I should put some city imagery
into this
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for oxymoronic effect. Tug boats off
Haidai Gwai in the distance</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and a lone heron on the fly who takes
the moon for granted
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">because it’s all so impersonal to
fake. Green moss
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on a totem pole lying in the bracken
and the seagrass
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as if someone fell off their seahorse.
And died with the moon.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">OOOOOOOOOO It’s calendrical.
Stonehenge, anybody?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7290260582937221914.post-26124373402678846502013-11-12T09:35:00.002-08:002013-11-12T09:35:58.381-08:00I DIDN'T MAKE A HOLY COLOURING BOOK OUT OF THE COSMIC SCRIPTURE OF MY LIFE<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I DIDN’T MAKE A HOLY COLOURING BOOK
OUT OF THE COSMIC SCRIPTURE OF MY LIFE</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I didn’t make a holy colouring book
out of the cosmic scripture of my life</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but I sure liked painting it. I’ve
got so much respect for stars</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">redshifting into longer wavelengths of
thought.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meditative x-rays cogitating on
themselves as if in each one them
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you could see a blood cell or the
seapoppy of a passionate B.C. Sunset
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">crumpled like a tropical duvet of
clouds on the far horizon
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of everything where the sun goes down
to die.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And be born again if the Egyptians get
it right. Maybe.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hell’s pretty this time of year. The
moon blooms in winter don’t forget.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Houris around the fountains of
Salsabil. With coral lips
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that no man has ever kissed before. And
veils, veils, veils</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">everywhere with eyes behind them like
star globes
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">at three in the morning out in this
desert of stars somewhere</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the sphinxes let down their hair like a
henna oilslick
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that’s cut like a crystalline goblet
apprenticed to a prophetic skull like mine.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I like them as women and they way they
keen. So convincing
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I believe it. Mean grief. Savagely
indignant widows enraged
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">like queens of the pride disturbed by
the funny smell of death.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seven parts, eclipse. Three parts,
leonine. Mix. It’s an elixir</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of poetry and madness embodied in the
persons of Laila and Majnun.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For mad poets the sun shines at
midnight. And the moon.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And it maybe that death is no more
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">than a pragmatic mystic who has learned
to use the silence well.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PATRICK WHITE</span></div>
PATRICK WHITEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02319884639861641066noreply@blogger.com0