A REMINDER

A REMINDER

 

A reminder to the positivist thought police

when they're mainlining their fairy dust

not to be negative about my negativity.

There’s a lot of dark matter in the universe

that’s unaccounted for

and if you were born and grew up

in a black hole

it’s hard to think like a fridge magnet.

Do you really think the far side of the moon

spurns the light and grows horns

just to jump out of the darkness at you like an ambush?

I know the night startles you.

You might swim like a swan

on a sleazy river in moonlight

and adorn yourself in feathers of light

to fool your own reflection

but down deep

where your blood turns into mud

you’re just another snapping turtle in disguise.

If I have two eyes. One for the day.

And one for the night

and a third when it’s open

that conjoins them both

into the seeing of a mystic hermaphrodite

that practises love like an occult science

that refuses to husk the light of its shadows

just to make popcorn under a harvest moon,

what the fuck is that to you

who walk around with your eyes

fitted like jewels in your nostrils

to sniff out the darkness in people

like drugs at an international airport?

You can follow the fireflies all the way to the outhouse

if you wish,

you can set an example for us all

with your sterling constellations

hung like messianic traffic lights

above all these T-boned moral crossroads

where you keep slamming into yourself

everytime you change gears to put on the brakes.

You’re a seat-belt away from becoming a straitjacket

as the whole asylum puts the moon on its tongue like a pill

and if by their fruits ye shall know them,

then your straight and narrow way

of threading your spinal cord

through the eye of your needle of insight

to sew up the wounded world like a mouth

is littered with roadkill.

Trying to reform

what will always be perfect

is the Iago of violence

in the ear of the purist

who doesn’t believe anyone

can achieve themselves on their own.

 

PATRICK WHITE