HOW FAR
How far from who I thought I was I am.
A butterfly with paper wings
who mistook his cocoon for a fortune-cookie.
A gangster mystic who kills people into life.
Lighting it up and blowing it out it goes into action again.
A ghost in an asylum looking for his old inmates.
A demon condemned to do good against his will.
The nothing that makes everything bigger like zero.
A wheel that came off in the sixties.
The gift of a thorn in the lifeless palm of the moon.
The black hole just out of reach of my eyes.
A dispassionate gust of stars swept from the stairs.
A tiger tied to a stake like a judas-goat.
An unholy mountain of self
that comes down on me like an avalanche
everytime I think of developing it into a temple.
The lees in the eyes of the wine
that are the residue of many afterlives
that have lain down in me like leaves and cards
that have called my blood and bluff for good.
This urn of a heart
that has so gradually contracted
into the impervious mass
of a white dwarf
that still burns with radiant aspirations
though all its habitable planets are long gone.
The long shot that chalks its tongue with words
and sometimes makes the play
like a jinxed prayer-wheel.
This strange unprotected way I feel
about being online alone with myself
in a chat room with a unknown virus.
The lamp that casts me like a shadow of the truth
to stand vigil over the corpse of the lie
I had to tell myself to make it through the night.
And how could I have imagined
all the deranged occasions of myself
when I wasn’t even invited
to sit down at the same table
with everyone else like salt?
And the sorrows I’ve borne on my back
like glaciers and heavy bells I’ve refused
to melt down into cannon
until they crushed me under their weight
like mastodons too overdressed for global warming;
how did they become the unmapped rivers
of my subconcious watershed
flowing in tears out of Eden
like the crib-death of my innocence?
A hydra-headed family tree of mirrors
that looks down upon me genetically
like a mutant constellation whose house
is a little too far from theirs
on the wrong side of the tracks
where the neighbourhood watch
keeps an eye out for me
in case I wander like a rogue planet
into one of their upscale zodiacs.
And I keep trying to suck the poison
out of the fang marks on the dice
I carved from a bone of the moon
like a man from Eve’s rib
to seven come eleven all the way home
like the arrow of the winged serpent
that keeps biting into my heels like lightning.
I’m one of the dead parachutes of Babylon
that got tired of hanging around like gardens
and jumped to my death from a dream
under the eyelid of an iris
that couldn’t hear Icarus scream
when he fell from the light
for exceeding the reasonable bounds
of the usual filament.
Not everything you steal from the gods
is worth the paper it’s written on
or finds an available market
and there’s no point in raking the ashes
for orchids of fire
when the phoenix is already flown
and the garden gone back to the wild on its own.
Intense heat; unusal sprouts
that have overgrown me like the jungle
the Mayan pyramids of Mirador
that once laid out scarlet carpets of blood
like red tides on the Gulf coast
as a sacrifice to a black sun
that only shone at midnight
through a crack in the skull of the moon
as it entered a full eclipse.
I never wanted the light
that fell upon me within and without
while I walked in it here on earth
to waste its genius upon me
like another uninspired mundane commission.
Let the garden grow as it will.
Let the light play with the water and earth
and express itself completely
in whatever weeds and flowers it brings forth.
How far from who I thought I was I am.
A space probe leaving the solar system
sending back pixels and beeps in infra-red
like postcards from the edge of nowhere
wondering if anyone ever receives them;
a Cepheid variable of intraterrestrial intuition
still waiting for the astronomers
to discover the earth under their eyelids
bends them over their telescopes
like wicks in the candle-flame
of a lamplighter
that sets the heavens ablaze
whenever the darkness proves reliable.
The ugly sister of discipline is persistence
and there are times
when I’m a pauper gnawing on rock
and times when I’m a master of water.
I am the father of a son and daughter
that have wandered off like moons
the open palm of my gravity
that once held them up to the night like pearls
to show what can come of a grain of sand
can no longer reach.
And it’s true
for those who say
they have no time for children
there are no flowers,
and for those who say
they have no time for flowers
there are no children
but for me the rose overflowed
its own thorns and scars
like a sudden haemorrage
when it woke up one morning
without eyelids
like the evicted window
of a view without a face.
And the waterbirds leave no trace
of who I was then in the mirror.
And the rest is Carthage
to the ghosts of salt
that won’t let the roses come near.
So I am this and this and this and this
that has come of that
like a chameleon
trying on lives
in the eye of a winter rainbow
as if the best the broken covenant
of my heretical nature could hope for
were a truce with the unforgiven.
How far from who I thought I was I am
like a hidden secret that wished to be known
and went off like the Big Bang
into the eleven demented dimensions of everything
that binds these worlds to me like a straitjacket
to protect me against myself
whenever I’m left alone at night
with nothing to be
in this wax museum of myself
that distorts the demons and angels
of my personal history
into the false security
of a grin on a death mask
that fits me perfectly like skin
as if no one to be,
nowhere to go, nothing to do
were any more or less of a face
than the one I’m in.
How far from who I thought I was I am
guessing my way into
one afterlife after another
without advice from anyone
like the first star to break against the sky
into a million directions
that all lead away from me
like light from a blind man
who makes up where he’s going
without knowing the way.
And even in the ashes
of these visionary ladders of fire
that once aspired to heaven
like a lifelong siege
that was lifted like an eyelid
to gaze upon the muted glory
of the brutal victory true clarity is,
I have eyes that are crueller than volcanic glass
twisted by the fire
when hell goes primeval
over the firstborn son of the seventh son
leaving his birthmark on things
like the broken seal of the human navel
that proves he’s illegitimate.
And when I’m not the heir
of these tainted jewels
I keep throwing before swine
who never stop eating long enough
to taste them,
I’m as hard-pressed
as an Arctic grape is for wine
or stone for the blood of a lifeline
that comes with a sword of its own
that isn’t pulled like iron out of the wounded ore
or another blade out of the scabbard
of a face-saving moon
for me to fall upon
though it’s not often easy to distinquish
whether I’m playing Russian roulette
or committing seppiku
when I take up arms against
the imperial tyranny of my polytheistic mirrors
in an unholy crusade of one for all
and all for one,
already knowing
the unconsolable loneliness of the outcome.
I have heard it said
by the crazy sages of a dark wisdom
the lucky day is when you discover it’s all one day
and I take that to mean this specious moment now
without a dawn or a sunset
a death or a birth,
a beginning or an end
where time doesn’t always live me like a friend
at the door of the house of a stranger
who’s never in whenever I call out
to tell me his name
like a rock through the looking glass
of an inverted telescope
or a bird through the homeless windowpane
that hides its face like the open sky
behind curtains that sway
like ghosts in the wind
summoned to these seances of myself
whenever I knock on the table
to prove I’m still in the room
with everyone I’ve ever been on the inside.
It’s as hard to tell the living from the dead
as it is to separate a mountain from its valley
or peel the moon’s reflection from the water
when everyone’s gathered
into a single lifeboat of a moment that doesn’t leak
or throw the dead overboard
because it contains the whole of the sea,
except the living tend to be more arrogant.
How many times have I passed a cemetery
and averted my eyes from the gravestones
for fear I’d read my name on one
and remember all those long laconic sunsets,
an intrigue of pink in a fatigued mustard yellow,
I lay there waiting for the solar-charged moonlights
the living had arranged so tenderly
like beatific fireflies among the withered flowers
to begin to glow like embers in ice
someone was breathing on.
How far from who I thought I was I am.
Eventually the glaciers move north
and all these striated gravestones
they leave behind like pottery shards
of Etruscan linear B
are thrown into a pot like an ostrakon
that drives death out into a wilderness of life
where it’s got to make a living of its own
selling ice-age insurance policies
scriven minutely on unmarrowed bone
that voids any contractual obligations to life
if life is not declared and annulled
as a prexisting condition.
I’m a planet with a fever of selves
wiping mirages off my forehead
that run down into the oases of my eyes
like acidic tears of heat
wrung from a raging furnace
like sweat from a rag.
I’m the shale of a cool nightstream
knapped like water
by the stone of the moon
into a Clovis point of a heart
that was buried
in a continental duststorm.
I am a nine-year-old bodybomb
who wears his innocence like a uniform
they passed out in heaven like skin
to every embryo they had their finger on
like a trigger.
Seth may bury Osiris’ body parts
in every quarter of the wind
but Horus the falcon-eyed
gathers them up again
to stop Isis the Queen of Heaven
from rummaging through her stars
like a widowed baglady pushing a deathcart
from one garbage bin to another.
I’m a holy man whose god died alone
when they clearcut the mountain
and all the bears moved into town
because the salmon couldn’t make
the leap of faith it takes to procreate.
I am seventy-one thousand species
and more among the undiscovered and unnamed
waiting like cures for incurables diseases
in the canopies and slashing root-wars
of burning jungles
on the homeless thresholds
and profit margins of extinction.
I am the indecent silence that mulls
the inconceivable atrocity
one human can inflict upon another
like a rosary of skulls
I’ve lost count of
like the ninety-nine names of God
the Stasi, the CIA, the KGB, Mossad and the Dina,
Paul Pot and the Egyptian secret police
kept files on
before they tortured him into confessing
he shed passports like a rose with no identity
they could spy on.
How far from who I thought I was I am
when the burning bush in the valley of Tuwa
puts words into my mouth
like a captured nation on TV
to prove I’m still alive and well
and newly enlightened
by the lightning rod and weathervane
of an angel-winged ideology
hanging its haloes on my horns
like the full moon on its thorns
in a game of show and tell.
Ah, Faustus, why this is hell
nor are we out of it.
Yet even that is not precisely true,
but if you’re going to sup with the devil
you better eat with a long spoon
and remember your god has two eyes:
His has only one that never cries
when all the lies come true
like miracles of their own making
that make me realize
when all is said and lived and done,
even in the mouth of a lizard
you can hear the birds singing,
the dragon howl in the dead tree,
the lion’s roar in the monkey’s skull,
the Big Bang in every molecule,
the Buddha in the body of a great fool,
or the crooked shepherd
fleeced in the innocence of the lamb.
You can be many things you don’t understand
but you can’t understand
anything you haven’t been already
or how do you know all the answers
to the echo of your name
when even the devil’s in denial
and the angels are tearing their hair out
like the open wounds
of milkweed pods in the wind
that broke like the vows and wombs
of happy nuns who sinned to save themselves
just for you who came after
like a son of the sea
who had learned to walk on land
like a mountain
and intimately understand
like a rootless tree
whose voice was behind
the mask of black laughter
that rang throughout the valleys
of the promised land that didn’t keep its word
to the true man and woman turned away from the door
as if they didn’t live here anymore?
And as for all those younger selves
it took like steps of the way
to arrive at this impasse
and all those it will take to walk away,
so a stranger you haven’t met yet
can live on and on and on
seeking you,
I might suggest the first fruit
of the seed that opens its eye
like the present moment
to be and see you
sweeten the apple of delight
in the light of the infinite compassion
that roots you in the world
to feel the small wings of the stars
blowing on your face
like the lighthouse ghosts of the fireflies
that deepen your insight without warning
of who you’ll be in the morning
and who you will not
when you’re washed up on your own dark coasts
like someone you were and forgot.
Heart, body and mind.
Compassion and insight.
The grape on the vine.
The dragon poured out of the crucible of its own fire.
And if you dream your way deeply enough
into the watersheds of the divine
like a river following its own lifeline
to the sea ahead,
you’ll know that the colour of God’s eyes
when she summons you to clarity
like a madman mouthing moonlight in tongues
isn’t the purity of the conceptual waters
that spills out of your lungs like the sea
but the way she turns you into wine like a siren
whenever you show up like last year’s orchard
at the wedding of a bride to be
knowing you’re no one specifically
with an identity or forwarding address,
oudeis aneile peplon,
until you lift the shroud of yourself
from the new pearl of her face like a veil.
And see how every scale and blossom of yourself
you’ve ever shed on this shore of your being
is the last black sail to cross the threshold
like the dawn of the next horizon
as if a dove and a crow were sent out
to look for land like night and day
and couldn’t find a branch or a mountain to perch on.
Or a star to follow
or a wave or a wake
that knew the way back to the ark
or whether it docked in Turkey or Atlantis,
not one Gulfstream
in all these snakepits
and oceans in the eyes
of these hurricane roses
that has not led me astray in the spring
like a Gordian knot of life-themes
that untie themselves from the yoke,
unwind the strong rope
that binds me to my mind
into a million weak threads
all going their own separate ways
like the long rivers of Eden
over the cosmic precipice
of an optical illusion of self
that breaks them into billions of drops of water
that fall like tears for their eyes alone
into the radiant abyss of starfoam below
blowing and popping
these bubbles in Bedlam
that mask many lives
with the same face
like the infinite worlds in hyperspace
where everyone is true
and the lion does lie down with the lamb
that yesterday slew on the pious mountain.
And tomorrow like the today of this here and now
that lasts forever
will come before me
out these shapeshifting deserts of time
like a sphinx of joy and sorrow
and ask me riddles in an hourglass of sand
I can’t answer
about the three ages
that had to crawl and walk and hobble
across the mindscapes and lifespans
of countless, unknown humans
until the wind abducted them like water
and laid them out like stars and rivers on a map
where I was the only misdirection left
that had a clue
among so many true norths
the wind had never blown off course
how far from who I thought I was I am.
PATRICK WHITE
How far from who I thought I was I am.
