I CARE JUST ENOUGH

I CARE JUST ENOUGH

 

I care just enough to say

I couldn’t care less what you think of me,

or how many insights you try to stick like pins

into that little charred voodoo doll

you’ve made as an effigy of me

but is engendered from a likeness of you,

I’m sorry your life is not what you wanted it to be.

I deeply regret there are times

when I can’t understand you

though I’ve tried harder than an attic window

to see what your childhood must have been

buried under that pyramid

you carry around like a chip on your shoulder,

daring the world to knock it off.

I can only imagine the chronic rage

at the indignity and injustice

of the cards cutting like bad genes

at the beginning of a life

that survived the dawn like an accident.

And it’s not impossible to forgive

the occasional volcano

rising up over Herculaneum

like a demonic sculptor

wanting to recast

the perfect marbles of normalcy

into the writhing shapes of agony

that have fleshed clay

with the thousands of tiny, indigneous deaths

you suffer every day.

But you keep butting heads with the world

as if you were on a collision course with a continent

you want to shake down to its foundations

like an expiring god

tasting the same stars

you were born under

when he dies

like the bitter ghost of his own medicine.

You want to bulldoze the round earth flat

and plough the moon with your horns

and sow seeds under the cloak of an eclipse

that will fill the siloes of the heart with thorns

that strike like assassins from the shadows,

but my heart still breaks like bread

when I see how everyone is suffering

the same inequality of pain.

If the poor man laughs

at why the rich man weeps

his joy is still squalor;

and if the rich man keeps

what the poor man lacks,

his joy is an indebted dollar

withdrawn by a vampire at a bloodbank.

The donkey at the end of the line

is in the lead

when the line turns around,

but the unlocateable point

of the turning world is,

the braying of losers and winners aside,

they’re all still donkeys in a line

nose to butt under their unbearable burdens.

Happiness is an aristocrat

posing as a man of the people

who pursue it like a fox before a constitution,

but sorrow is a true democrat

and sooner or later comes to everyone

like the vote.

Why scandalize yourself

by running as a candidate for either

like the slug-line of a bitter joke?

Why narrow your eyes

like mean, little windows

that gossip about the stars

behind their backs

as if they were always talking about you?

You can hate some of the people

all of the time

and all of the people

some of the time

but you can’t hate

all of the people all of the time

without turning your hatred on you

like a scorpion stinging itself to death

in a ring of fire

that bites like a halo.

And there will be no way

to rose the gore on your sword

like a pope indulging Jerusalem

when you fall on it

like the rage of a murderous crusade

to liberate the victims from the victims,

the true believers from the infidels

in the killing fields 

of your own murderous self-afflictions.

More has been suffered by many

than what you have suffered,

agonies that would appall the deepest underworlds

of the darkest imagination.

But your ears are not tuned

to their high frequency screams for help

like bats flayed in a spider web

as the sun comes up like Chernobyl

or the wounded eye of a cannibal Cyclops

crying out in the darkness for the blood

of those who ran out on you

like Jesus at dinner

as soon as you unhinged

the stone at the door of your cave.

You let the sheep out

like a bad shepherd

who couldn’t distinguish

the defections of Judas

from the ruse of the blues

in the lament of your unbounded wound

justifying the ethnic cleansing

of the dove’s dirty needles

like a junkie hooked

on a rush of eagles

screaming down like the designer aerlirons

of a dive-bombing amphetamine

above an unending line of refugees like me

who just pack up their thresholds

like hearts and flowers

and flying carpets

and leave.

You couldn’t bring yourself to believe

in the blessings

that lay themselves down

like clean dressings

like the cool herbs

and prolonged kisses 

of the silver swords of the moon

on the oilslicks

that pour from your lips

like a snake eclipsing birds

or the caustic words

from the volcanic fissures

of an open wound

that scalds its own waters

with tears of acid rain

and fouls itself

like the mouth of a monostome

that talks its shit into leaving

the way it came.

 

PATRICK WHITE