IF YOU WANT TO LIE APART
If you want to lie apart from your lover
like the Red Sea in bed
there’s no need to thrash the water with a sword
when the tone of one word will do it.
If you’re angry and dispossessed as the full moon
and you’re holding your lover like a viper to your breast
because he appeals to you like death
and no one could guess how good it feels
to slough off his mortal coil like skin
no need to cauterize your constellations like tatoos
and vex the moonlight with the ashes of doves
rising from the smoke of the angelic X
you painted on your door
to text you away from contagion
because no one lives there anymore
and the hex of a whore
is a stronger medicine
than the exlixir of virgins
that come running with a cure.
Time to wash the watercolours out of your eyes
that run like blood in the rain.
Time to realize even the universe
can’t keep it together
and everything is flying off into space
like a fifteen billion year old tantrum
and no one knows why.
Maybe God was a hidden secret in his solitude
who wished to be known
and committed suicide
just to see his own life
flashing before his eyes
in the company of you and me
before he returned to himself like death
on the last breath he let go of like creation.
Point is: it’s time to stop looking for a suicide note
he might have left you like a sacred text
of his hidden gospel by the Dead Sea
and realize that just being here
is enough of a cosmology
to get you through the night
and the only direction
you should heed in the light
are your own eyes. It’s time
to stop thinking you showed up in the world
like some kind of unlooked-for surprise
and that your life is a bonus
that puts the onus on the lucky to be grateful
because you know better than I do
how hard it is to love the unlucky
when sad luck turns into the hateful
and the falling stars of scar-crossed lovers
pit and pummel the moon
until it swells over the horizon
like a palatte of black and blue
to smudge the bruises on its face
in the mirrors of the lakes and the dew
with ontological cosmetics
that indelibly paint the view
over the broken window
that murders the birds with lies and illusions.
Those aren’t lovemaps on your cheek.
They’re contusions.
PATRICK WHITE