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
