HERE

HERE

Here. But I can’t say where this is.

Now. But it’s hard to determine the time zone

when the sun shines at midnight

like an X-ray of my skull.

Obviously, I’m thinking of you,

but I’m mapping myself like a lie detector

that’s trying to forge my neverending signature

on a pardon that didn’t come through.

And when the priests come like the last rites

to my holding cell

to compare confessions,

I’m wired to the night like a buddha

with his hand on the switch to enlightenment

and I burn for things God did on his own

though I’d be the last to throw the first stone

or plead like a judas-goat at the foot of a tiger-throne.

There’s no honour among thieves

when the shit hits the fan

and the only loyal man

is not a man born of a mother

but there are codes that you can keep to yourself

like ashes in the urns of the constellations

that have never been fingered out

like a suspect in a line-up.

I’m not rolling around in myself

like a thumb in ink

to see what I think

through a crack in the cup of the case,

and I’m not trying to conceal myself

behind the surgically-altered face of the moon

that sags like an old movie-star

over its reflection in the eyes of the morning dew.

For years I lived in isolation

like a message in the eye of a bottle lost at sea

but now I’ve forgotten what it was

I was meant to reveal

when the seal was broken

like DNA on the shard of mirror that slashed my throat

to keep me from singing

like a bubble of light in a lifeboat

or the last flash of a breath in the depths

from the mouth of drowning messiah

who mistook his feet for waves and stairs

and burnt them walking on stars.

PATRICK WHITE