THE ONES I LOVED THE DEEPEST AND THE BEST

THE ONES I LOVED THE DEEPEST AND THE BEST

 

The ones I loved the deepest and the best

turned into strangers and enemies

or worse, friends.

Now I’d trust evil

before I’d trust stupid

because stupid will get you killed faster than evil

almost any night of the week

when I’m out with my demonic acquaintances

like a gangland constellation

that wants to burn the house down

to get even with the astrologers

who talk too much

about the eloquent future

they see in our illiterate past.

And it isn’t as if

I’ve been emptied of human content

and I don’t care

if I feel anything or not

about the unspooling

of my emotional life

as just another way of breathing in and out

or the indifference and separation

that has passed between me and all these people

like a knife looking for something holy to wound.

Sometimes the river

just tears the roots of things

away from the shore

in a torrential downpour

that wakes the desert up

and a judas-goat tempts a bad messiah.

Compounded of too many different parts

to belong solely to any one of them,

a bag of starwater punctured

by nine black holes

that haemorage like an oilslick

that’s trying to pretend

it’s just another eclipse in passing

and endowed at birth

by the black beatitude

of an intensely acquisitive intelligence

that approaches knowledge like a Mongol,

I put a Zen finish on the agony of my solitude

and hold my ground against the approaching abyss.

What does it mean to be a human?

What else but this?

Just this as it is and isn’t?

The river flows by the skull of the swan

and the bones of its wings

that once swam upright

like a harp on the water

and played to the moon in tears

slow songs about the stark beauty

in the sadness of passing things;

the river flows by extemporaneously

true to the nature of water

going along indifferently

with what’s missing by the mouthful

when death rises from the bottom

like a snapping turtle

to the lunar surface of things

and hunger’s the only meaning in life

that satisfies the doubtful.

The opposites engender each other

like predator and prey.

If I didn’t know you were listening

I wouldn’t know what to say.

The words may be male,

stars on a lonely night,

fireflies and lightning bolts

but the voice is the dark female

behind all this commotion of light

raising waves on the ocean of life

like thresholds and sails

that cling to the coasts of their thoughts

for fear of drowning alone in their tears

like a lifeboat

all tied up in the nets and knots

of the last navigator

that swore he’d send a continent back

to look for them

as soon as he made landfall

like a dove from the Bible.

What’s the meaning of an open door

when you approach your own house

as if it were the house

of someone you once knew

who doesn’t live there anymore?

That’s what the stars feel like

denuded of light

like the meaning of words

in an expanding universe

driven by the engine of dark energy

into the strange empty spaces

older than light

of the black muse-mother

that keeps out of sight

of her offspring inspirations

so they can exist on their own

to look for the meaning of her absence

when they get home

like thieves

on the backstairs of everywhere

who don’t know where to go

or what to steal that’s real.

Who stole the moon from the window

of the cosmic view

I used to take

of my human relationships?

I put a finger to my own lips

and listen to the silence

rolling over like hard evidence

there’s no truth in facts or words

that isn’t a complicit witness

to the crime-scene

that chalks the sidewalks of my mind

with the ghosts of old friends

outlining where they fell

when the past caught up with them

like someone they once knew well.

I drink the eyes of yesterday’s lovers

like wine from my own skull

and fall down drunk in the doorway

of a stranger’s afterlife

as if it were the gates of Eden

hidden like the petal of a dream

that clung like an eyelid

to the vision of the black rose

that only revealed its mystery

in the dead end of the light.

How could I help it

if I kept falling in love over the years

with women of the first magnitude

always a night shy of shining?

And it didn’t matter

what shape of darkness

I took in their minds

to enhance their outlook by contrast

they weren’t any brighter for it

by the time they left

and I wasn’t any less blind.

And it’s hard to say

who got the best

of whose worst

but I always thought of it

as my last loveletter

to what they were

and would never be again

if they left first.

Life and love

like the food of angels

who don’t eat

because they’re above all that

goes better with an earthly appetite

and a clean place-mat

in an allnight restaurant alone

looking out through the window

like a rogue constellation lost

in the artificial glare of things

like a bottomless cup of coffee

or a blackhole

where the moon used to be

before they fenced it for money

and the cow ran away with the spoon

like the Milky Way with a lean junkie

she suckles like baby Zeus

snorting stars from the mirror

of a stone-cold Titan

that wants to eat him like a cannibal Dad.

I’ve learned to feel sad about things

the way the mad do

when they wear they’re feelings

inside out like skin and clothes

as if nothing were weird or strange

about living without fear of a straitjacket

that’s been bruised and abused by bad tattoos.

The impersonality of life

that shepherds my memories like moons

through these echoless valleys of death

that have disembodied my voice

in the vastness of an unanswerable space

like a bird disappearing into the nightsky

crying like a wounded thing

struck by the cold stone of the moon on the wing

can’t be expressed in a lot of sentimental boo-hoos

that run amok like the ink of a loveletter in the rain

and stain the last known address

on the rainbow envelope

like the name

on the watercolour

of a miscarriage of the moon

framed by a family album

like a face at the window of an empty house.

So I don’t raid the tombs of the dead

as if I had no respect for bones

or couldn’t keep faith

with the sacred whims of chaos

that makes pyramids

out of the dust of our afterlives

as if we were pharoahs

aiming our souls at Orion

like long-shot snipers

through the wrong end of the telescope.

I’m an enlightened cynic.

I take the shot

with the hollow-point

of a higher calibre of hope.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE ONES I LOVED THE DEEPEST AND THE BEST

THE ONES I LOVED THE DEEPEST AND THE BEST

 

The ones I loved the deepest and the best

turned into strangers and enemies

or worse, friends.

Now I’d trust evil

before I’d trust stupid

because stupid will get you killed faster than evil

almost any night of the week

when I’m out with my demonic acquaintances

like a gangland constellation

that wants to burn the house down

to get even with the astrologers

who talk too much

about the eloquent future

they see in our illiterate past.

And it isn’t as if

I’ve been emptied of human content

and I don’t care

if I feel anything or not

about the unspooling

of my emotional life

as just another way of breathing in and out

or the indifference and separation

that has passed between me and all these people

like a knife looking for something holy to wound.

Sometimes the river

just tears the roots of things

away from the shore

in a torrential downpour

that wakes the desert up

and a judas-goat tempts a bad messiah.

Compounded of too many different parts

to belong solely to any one of them,

a bag of starwater punctured

by nine black holes

that haemorage like an oilslick

that’s trying to pretend

it’s just another eclipse in passing

and endowed at birth

by the black beatitude

of an intensely acquisitive intelligence

that approaches knowledge like a Mongol,

I put a Zen finish on the agony of my solitude

and hold my ground against the approaching abyss.

What does it mean to be a human?

What else but this?

Just this as it is and isn’t?

The river flows by the skull of the swan

and the bones of its wings

that once swam upright

like a harp on the water

and played to the moon in tears

slow songs about the stark beauty

in the sadness of passing things;

the river flows by extemporaneously

true to the nature of water

going along indifferently

with what’s missing by the mouthful

when death rises from the bottom

like a snapping turtle

to the lunar surface of things

and hunger’s the only meaning in life

that satisfies the doubtful.

The opposites engender each other

like predator and prey.

If I didn’t know you were listening

I wouldn’t know what to say.

The words may be male,

stars on a lonely night,

fireflies and lightning bolts

but the voice is the dark female

behind all this commotion of light

raising waves on the ocean of life

like thresholds and sails

that cling to the coasts of their thoughts

for fear of drowning alone in their tears

like a lifeboat

all tied up in the nets and knots

of the last navigator

that swore he’d send a continent back

to look for them

as soon as he made landfall

like a dove from the Bible.

What’s the meaning of an open door

when you approach your own house

as if it were the house

of someone you once knew

who doesn’t live there anymore?

That’s what the stars feel like

denuded of light

like the meaning of words

in an expanding universe

driven by the engine of dark energy

into the strange empty spaces

older than light

of the black muse-mother

that keeps out of sight

of her offspring inspirations

so they can exist on their own

to look for the meaning of her absence

when they get home

like thieves

on the backstairs of everywhere

who don’t know where to go

or what to steal that’s real.

Who stole the moon from the window

of the cosmic view

I used to take

of my human relationships?

I put a finger to my own lips

and listen to the silence

rolling over like hard evidence

there’s no truth in facts or words

that isn’t a complicit witness

to the crime-scene

that chalks the sidewalks of my mind

with the ghosts of old friends

outlining where they fell

when the past caught up with them

like someone they once knew well.

I drink the eyes of yesterday’s lovers

like wine from my own skull

and fall down drunk in the doorway

of a stranger’s afterlife

as if it were the gates of Eden

hidden like the petal of a dream

that clung like an eyelid

to the vision of the black rose

that only revealed its mystery

in the dead end of the light.

How could I help it

if I kept falling in love over the years

with women of the first magnitude

always a night shy of shining?

And it didn’t matter

what shape of darkness

I took in their minds

to enhance their outlook by contrast

they weren’t any brighter for it

by the time they left

and I wasn’t any less blind.

And it’s hard to say

who got the best

of whose worst

but I always thought of it

as my last loveletter

to what they were

and would never be again

if they left first.

Life and love

like the food of angels

who don’t eat

because they’re above all that

goes better with an earthly appetite

and a clean place-mat

in an allnight restaurant alone

looking out through the window

like a rogue constellation lost

in the artificial glare of things

like a bottomless cup of coffee

or a blackhole

where the moon used to be

before they fenced it for money

and the cow ran away with the spoon

like the Milky Way with a lean junkie

she suckles like baby Zeus

snorting stars from the mirror

of a stone-cold Titan

that wants to eat him like a cannibal Dad.

I’ve learned to feel sad about things

the way the mad do

when they wear they’re feelings

inside out like skin and clothes

as if nothing were weird or strange

about living without fear of a straitjacket

that’s been bruised and abused by bad tattoos.

The impersonality of life

that shepherds my memories like moons

through these echoless valleys of death

that have disembodied my voice

in the vastness of an unanswerable space

like a bird disappearing into the nightsky

crying like a wounded thing

struck by the cold stone of the moon on the wing

can’t be expressed in a lot of sentimental boo-hoos

that run amok like the ink of a loveletter in the rain

and stain the last known address

on the rainbow envelope

like the name

on the watercolour

of a miscarriage of the moon

framed by a family album

like a face at the window of an empty house.

So I don’t raid the tombs of the dead

as if I had no respect for bones

or couldn’t keep faith

with the sacred whims of chaos

that makes pyramids

out of the dust of our afterlives

as if we were pharoahs

aiming our souls at Orion

like long-shot snipers

through the wrong end of the telescope.

I’m an enlightened cynic.

I take the shot

with the hollow-point

of a higher calibre of hope.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I LEFT YOUR IMAGE OF ME SHINING

I LEFT YOUR IMAGE OF ME SHINING

 

I left your image of me shining

just where you wanted it

in that glass menagerie

of broken mirrors

you’ve hung from the ceilings

like chandeliers

like constellations of frozen tears

in the thirteenth house

of the misbegotten

on the wrong side of the tracks

off the beaten paths of the zodiacs

that sometimes like to go slumming down here

when the sun shines at midnight

and the moon’s out of town.

I left the light on

but this star is long gone

past these extremities of shining

into the abyss of an unseeable future

that disappears into its own illumination

like an eye into its own seeing

or a bad likeness of God

into a human being.

I leave you handcuffed to the dead

like the Standard Model of the Universe

that lost it all

like the physics of the Mad Hatter

to the singularity at the bottom of a blackhole.

I would have met you half way like anti-matter.

I would have found a way

to bend that negative space

that so often distorts your face

into a more comely illusion of time

that isn’t stitched together so clumsily

like some patchwork bride of Frankenstein

taking it out on the mirrors

that keep dodging your reflection

by turning their eyes to the wall

everytime you insist

you’re the most beautiful of all.

So be it.

You are.

Good-bye.

You’re trying to impose

a habitable order on the universe

like the cube of the sphere of life

that would allow you to get by

like Tolstoy

who built a shoemaker’s hovel

in the middle of his aristocratic palace

to improve the commonality of his inferiors.

You’re like the Taj Mahal looking for a room to rent.

You’re a shore-hugger trying to teach

a jumper how to fall toward paradise

without a parachute.

And if I ignore your raging advice

as I do now and have done

it’s only because I play Russian roulette

with the lightning

and you come to the table with a cap-gun.

And I’m wholly at home

even immortally alone

in this compatible chaos

that improvises my life

sometimes as a dirty joke

I go along with for a lark

and other times

raises me up above

the web of my furthest horizons

like a spider that’s transcended clinging to anything

and dancing in my radiance

like a star that isn’t afraid of the dark:

listen to me bitch

I’m singing.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WANT TO FEEL SAD AND LYRICAL

WANT TO FEEL SAD AND LYRICAL

 

Want to feel sad and lyrical

but everything’s dull and gray.

The stars have been filtered out of my tears

and there’s no inspiration

in the local drinking water.

Given I’m made of starmud

it’s my nature to shine

but the darkness overwhelms me

like space turned in on itself

and the light leaves no sign

of my red shift off the spectrum

as I move away from myself

in the opposite direction.

What else can you do

but trust your own mindstream

even when it goes underground

or flows into a blackhole like a snake

that wants to get the sun off its back for awhile?

I’m tired of swallowing the cosmic glain

and disgorging the remains

like a collapsed parachute

that didn’t open in time

to fly from the nest.

I’m sick of the taste of baby birds

and the broken yokes of sunny outlooks

that come on like positive books

that lie about negative words.

And everytime the dragon eats the moon

like the communion wafer

of an unholy eclipse

it rains like a sacrifice

in a desert on earth

that gives in to temptation like water.

And things bloom long enough

to appall me with their passage

and just enough life goes on

to make the scorpions happy

and keep me

from slipping into a coma

like a frog in a dry creekbed

that wakes up like an alarm clock

with just enough time to procreate

and die like a mirage in an hourglass.

I want to throw joy around

like good money

after a bad depression

but there are still sunspots in the honey

that look a bit cancerous

and there’s no one around to get drunk with

who hasn’t grown paranoid of their own tattoos

or can stare for long

into the snake-eyes of their meaning

without turning into stone

like a snake-bit constellation

at the revelation

of how a toxin

can burn like the white phosphorus

of the fire-bug stars

no elixir of water can put out.

I am urgent with exits

but never seem to make it to the door

before the rafters fall down upon me

like the bones of a stressed-out dinosaur

in an extinct museum no one’s discovered yet.

And it’s getting harder to conceive

of butterflies and full moons 

emerging from the leftover cocoons

that hang from the dead branch

among the autumn leaves

like empty urns

that hold the ashes of the clouds

that don’t remind me of anything anymore

except they were once the shape of happier things

I called lovers and friends.

Inspirational beginnings

with unjustifiable ends.

The river doesn’t indict

the great night sea it flows into

like time disappearing into space

and the sea doesn’t make amends.

The green bough

may be proud of its first blossom

and hold it up like the full moon

with the wingspan of a swan

on the far horizon of fair weather

but the dead branch

is a scar of orchards and ghosts

that weren’t very frightening

until they went witching for lightning

and the lightning found them.

The green bough writes a loveletter

to the dead branch

and the dead branch writes a requiem back

that reads like cold water on dark roots

that bloom in fire

that can’t burn the desire

of a seasoned phoenix

out the heartwood

of so many past springs

preserved like ripples of rain.

Green bough.

Dead branch.

Same song.

Two wings of the same bird.

But tell me if you know.

When the phoenix sings

is it the lightning of the first

or last firefly of a word

embering in the ashes

of our lucid beginnings

that means the most?

Is alpha the creative guest

and omega the destructive host

or do they both share the same lifeboat

from coast to coast

like the pioneering survivors

of a sunken continent

that followed the whales

back into the water

but hasn’t come up for air yet?

I’ve learned to suffer the meaning of things

without regret for their passing

like a rootless tree

in an echoless valley

that can’t put a name to my voice

when it rises like a mountain out of the sea

to keep the prophet true to his prophecy

from the inside out.

I’ve stayed faithful as a backdoor

to the doubt

that I raised like my own assassin

in the shadows of the house of certainty

that didn’t leave a forwarding address

when the neighbours moved out of the zodiac.

And compassionate as water

I’ve washed the dirt of the friendless road

off the feet of the wise

and stars off the feet of the maniacs

that danced along the Milky Way

like a firewalk

for tormented insomniacs

still haunted by the living.

I need a better lie

than this one I call my life

to tell myself when I’m alone

with my personal history

of the impersonal mystery

of what I’m doing

walking around on the earth

like some tragic miscarriage of the light

with a wound as big as the night

that came of a womb as small

as the eye of the needle

it’s one thing to pass through

like a camel on its way to heaven

but it’s a bitch of a birth

to come back the other way

just for a change of direction.

I still want to believe

it’s all for the best

in some kind of brutal way

that doesn’t mistake us

for who we think we are.

And there are times

when I actually do

see through myself

with the cold clarity of a star

I can’t give a name to

in the black mirror

I must become

to escape detection

like the singularity

at the bottom of a blackhole

long enough to know

it might be shining down on nothing

but what a show!

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOU KEEP LOOKING

YOU KEEP LOOKING

 

You keep looking for meaning in a world

you say hasn’t given you one

worth living for

and you’re down and disappointed

and all that red passion

that used to burn like books and leaves

has turned as mystically brown

as the background of a Rembrandt painting

or gone up in smoke

at the Bonfire of the Vanities.

Now you’re a copycat Savanarola

in a faculty lounge

trying to turn God back like the Renaissance

for behaving like the Medici.

You used to be a little on the teachy side

but now you’re boring and preachy

having settled the whole issue

of what you’re doing on earth like a fist.

You once went looking for the point of life like a grail.

Now you plunge it through everyone’s heart like a spear.

Like the terrible angel at the garden-gate

to prove you’re sincere as fire

you’re ready to kill anyone

who likes what they see in the mirror

that never wears the same face twice

when it looks at you.

The truth is

since you’re fond of the word

you never found a meaning big enough

to accommodate that Delphic python of an ego

that’s kept sloughing you like skin over the years.

You were always too big

for any chrysalis or cocoon you ever crawled into

and the greatest miracle of transformation

as far as you were concerned

is the shape you took in the womb

like the pearl of the moon

from a grain of dirt

at the bottom of a seascape.

What unified field theory could ever contain you

like some cosmic Houdini in chains and locks

twisting upside down over a snakepit of thoughts

trying to think your way out of the box

as if you were the ultimate escape-artist

and could pour the universe out of the universe?

Even space wasn’t enough of an embrace

to hold you

and now time’s given up on you as well.

Eleven dimensions were never enough

to take your measure.

You wanted to be the golden Buddha

that wormed its way into the heart

of an enlightened rose.

The blackhole in the heart of the galaxy.

The exception that became the rule.

But you never understood

the candle of life that burns within us all

sheds more than one petal

over the course of a lifetime

spent gazing at the flame

fixed in the seeming stillness

like a flower that blooms in fire

every two thousand years

you can’t look at with the same eyes twice.

You never understood that when you look at things

long enough with an open heart

and an unbounded mind

they estrange your eyes

into new ways of seeing.

They bring you into being

like a star turning in its own light

or dark jewels of anti-matter

to see what value

you might place on them

when the gem looks through its own eyes

into the radiance of life without an appraiser.

But the flaws in perfection

are the laws of a fool

or to secularize a mystic dictum

the same eyes by which you see them

are the eyes by which they see you.

Two dunces on the same stool.

One a myth of origin

that got lost in its own meaning

chasing its own tail to see where it begins

and the other the head of a reform school

for black matter

absentee without permission.

Two abnormalities

looking for reality

in the corners of the human condition

that baffles it with the clarity

of a hundred million books

giving private lap dances

in sheep-eyed sylvan nooks

for the savage wolf-popes

with shepherd’s crooks

whose greed is the meaning of prayer.

But the universe whispers itself

into its own ear like a secret

even it couldn’t keep to itself

and everything in existence

from starfish galaxy to solitary night bird

cherishs what they’ve heard

each in their own awareness

not of the word at the beginning of things

as if things were created out of choice

but of the voice behind it

that sings freely to each alone

in the silence of their solitude 

like a fountain-mouth of light

that lavishs the world on everyone

without intention or design

as if everyone were privvy to the same mind

and it were thinking out loud

in the picture-music of colours

you can only see

before the arising of signs.

That’s why it looks empty and dark

beyond the blazing billboards

of your highway paradigms.

And for someone like you

who prefers to jump into snakepits

to ask for directions

when the whole world is free-falling

without a map or parachute

through a bottomless abyss

without any sense of up or down

it must dwarf you the same as it does

a featherless bird breaking out of the egg

like a new universe into a nest of flying serpents.

Daring says feathers

and falling takes flight

because it’s in the nature of the abyss

to heal itself like wounded water

when it bathes in its own light

like light and stars

or snakes in the talons of eagles

the lowest of the low

raised up to the highest of the high

like a constellation

when they suddenly realize

in the annihilation of opposites

how dragons win their wings.

You ask fraudulent questions

and expect honest answers.

You try to define what you’re seeking

even before you look.

You stir the starmud in the mirror

to make things clearer

but you still end up looking at things

with dirty eyes.

And out of the darkness

like bats to burdock

blinded by that porchlight of a mind

you keep on all night

in a frenzy of insects

your thoughts are glued

like kites that flew into the powerlines

or flies into a spider-web

of sticky views

on how to keep it together

like a shepherd of clouds

trying to pasture the weather

in the starfields of a mountain sky.

You want to be the mystic arachnid

with fangs like the moon

and radiant elixirs for toxins

you can cook in a spoon

without flagging the fit

with a pennant of blood

that puts its cosmic armour on

and shouldering its lance like a syringe

tilts at the windmill of your arm

like the meaning of Don Quixote

lost like a peduncle in the ensuing phylum

of a species that went extinct

for refusing to adapt

to a reformed chaos theory of evolution

flintknapping the future fossils

of an improved Stone Age.

You keep thinking

if you roll enough rocks up a hill

like Sisyphus

you can build a fortress

or the Al Hambra

or the Taj Mahal

or even the Parthenon

but things just keep coming down on you

like an avalanche down from the world mountain

into the valley of the kings

where the mummies wait for their afterlives

under pyramids of quicksand.

Only a fool would spend a whole lifetime

trying to learn

what he already knows. 

In order to understand such a thing

one must be such a person.

Already being such a person

why bother to understand such a thing?

You’re trying to map

the stars in your genome

to find your constellation

like a long lost home

that walked out on you like a threshold

when you went a step too far

and added yourself like a big capital I

to the beginning of that tongue-tied alphabet

that made profound spelling-mistakes

in your amino acids

the moment you started

to proof-read your protein

for punctuation marks

that were too big-hearted.

Vicarious mind!

Faecal pile and pit.

Snake-eyed jewel

at the bottom of the shit

that schools the fools’ laughter

by ignoring it

you can keep on looking for a kissing-stone

in a hail of Leonid meteors

that keep knocking you out

like a dinosaur

that takes it on the lip

like a quick jab

from an under-rated mammal

or you can hoard water in your humps

like a camel on the moon

that moves through the cool of the night

in a caravan of shadows

trading with the desert

toward ancient oases of ice

that taste like the frozen tears

of the ballroom chandeliers

that gathered like stars

to take advantage of the night

by twisting your words

like a speech impediment

that whispers like the sea in her ears

at a dance

for club-footed glaciers.

But you can’t wriggle out of the universe

like an anaconda in thin-skinned panty-hose

that’s just swallowed itself all the way up to the nose

like a mystic condom

playing it safe

down on its knees

to give itself a cosmic blowjob

without contracting an unforgivable disease.

And there are dangerous cave-bears

that live at the back of your mouth

among the skulls of your ancient ancestors

and bones like bad omens

so you won’t find much shelter there

to keep the fire alive long enough

through the long night ahead

to finish the painting

you were working on

without saying a word

that would discolour your voice with a meaning

that won’t be discovered for years

long after your words have moved on without you

like the common language

of a migrant tribe

in the direction of their spears.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the universe pours itself into its own ear like a secret

everything is meant to keep