THE BIG PIGS EAT AT THE TROUGH

THE BIG PIGS EAT AT THE TROUGH

 

The big pigs eat at the trough like Nazi swine

nibbling on the white blossoms

of their pure bloodline

thinking the flowers might not last

but there’s iron in the vine

to stay the course.

But all the little pigs have on their plate

is a lotto-ticket and a fortune-cookie

with one little sentence of fate

with two spelling mistakes

in a broken skull.

Let the obese circumferences

shepherd their corrupt centers

like sheep where they will.

Even if you know a goatpath back to Eden,

the gate’s unhinged

and only the silence

still clings to the bars

of the abandoned asylum

where even the flowers went mad

trying to open their petals in a straitjacket.

And only a fool would go looking for the bones

of the fallen angels

who swallowed their flaming swords

to keep us out.

And these days the demons

are worried about being possessed by a human

rooting in their souls like a polluted bloodstream

that flows into the dark rivers of fire and death they drink from.

And heaven doesn’t look the same through a smashed window.

And there’s a prophetic guitar in the corner

begging for time like a beggar

but necessity isn’t a moral choice

and I can hear the thorns in his voice

that tear at his heart like a rose.

Illuminated by the means of seeing

as if we could hide in our multi-faceted compound eyes like flies

behind the wallpaper

of a million points of view

we keep looking for brighter ways

of blinding ourselves in our own light.

And we revere the womb of the dark mother like a hearse

though we’re many genes closer to the night

that holds up its black mirror to the light

to show us how we shine on the inside like her

than we are to the new mutation

that makes us blur the world

through the eyes of the good

instead of the wise.

Cataracts in your eyes. Flowers in the sky.

Evil is born of the good of a degenerate insight

that wants to paint loin cloths

over Michelangelo’s balls

to neuter heaven of desire

as if creative fire were a weed

you could pull up by the roots.

And it’s okay if your blood blooms

like a geranium in a jackboot

to ward off poisonous snakes

and you can’t see any further

than the back of the next guy’s head in line in front of you.

But however safe you feel

when you plunge your igneous heart

into the womb of the abyss

to temper it into cold steel,

be sure of this:

the serpent’s still got you by the heel

and the last breath you take

won’t be the wind under your wings.

And when the point you’ve made of your heart

pierces your flesh like a killer bee

in a wounded hive

it won’t be the honey that stings.

And as for all the fireflies and lightning bolts

and constellations in series

you wired like the flashpoints of your fanatical youth

to go off like a firebomb of insight

to reform the world in the image

of your one-eyed disguise

it was you in the third person

who was hoist by his own petard.

If you want to be spiritually free of yourself

like an opressive religion

you made of your youth polyp by polyp

thought by thought,

that Great Barrier Reef

that keeps tearing the bottom out of your lifeboat

and keel-hauls you on the moon

whenever you run aground

in the karmic squalls on your sea of shadows

as if you could navigate your way to true north

by mastering the seamanship of a mirage

that weeps like a desert in an hourglass

for everything it isn’t;

whether you’re a sad old woman

a mad old man

or a neon chameleon of embittered youth

wondering what colour you were on your own

before you were a flash in the mirror:

it isn’t a matter of the ignorant who listen

and the wise who hear

or one who looks

for what another sees.

The sound of the sea is the same

in the fortune-cookie of everybody’s shell

and the light that was the first to know

what it’s like to be young in hell

shines down on everyone alike.

And is the wine truly any older

than the vines of those feelings

that blossomed into the endless loveletters

that piled up at the doors they couldn’t open

like junkmail on the thresholds of your youth?

When you feel pain

do you insist on proof?

And enlightenment is even easier.

Just stop mistaking clarity for the truth.

 

PATRICK WHITE