THERE'S NO POINT

THERE’S NO POINT

 

There’s no point

throwing your diamonds

into the stove on a cold night

like memories you don’t want anymore

hoping they’ll catch fire and burn away the past

malingering in all that adamantine luminosity like coal.

Blue flower.

Black dog.

Ariel and Caliban.

One lies more in the arriving

than the other in the leaving

but good-bye and hello

are lies I’ve never told

to make myself feel better about anything.

You can call all those sweet thoughts

around the campfires of life marshmallows

but I know they’re just more shit on a stick

walking around like a man

trying not to burn his mouth on them.

The wounds I suffer

that no one ever means

are worse than the ones they do.

Here comes hell

through a smokescreen of ideals

and heaven on the heels of Armageddon

and people competing and cheating to eat

the four horses of the Apocalypse

that have been lying

in the bombed-out streets

of our cities for years

because they’re hungry

and those antique waterbombers

too heavy to fly

who think they can put hell out

like a forestfire with rainbows and tears.

And this is the flower that no one picked.

And this is the one that they did.

This voice is as poor as a syllable

and this one a stickler for syntax

and this one ran all the way home

with his pockets full of the lies

a little toe will always tell

when it runs out of alibis.

I’m trying to put an end

to all these leftover beginnings

that haunt me like premature ghosts

by exorcising myself away through

the blowing curtains

by the open window

like water vapour tired of crying

over cracks in my mirrors

cracks in my tears

cracks in my mystic waterbed.

Dead-to-me doesn’t mean

I’m going to live the rest of my life

standing here like a gravestone

erected in your name

spewing wisdom over your bones.

Life is a deeper wound than death

from the very first breath.

All you need to do

is look at any tree

if you want to see

how just to be is painful. 

The Agon.

The Struggle.

The victory and defeat alike.

For what?

You went looking for wings

to match your sandals

and ended up trading your legs in

for a golden crutch.

You lit a thousand candles

in a burned-out church

believing some god would eventually

turn all your random fireflies

into fixed constellations

but you blew out like a lightbulb

in a cheap marquee

you still can quote like scripture.

You were beautiful in your sphericity

but you followed

the tiny starmaps

on a pair of loaded dice

over the edge of the known world.

Now you compare

impact craters with the moon

worrying if anyone

can see your scars from earth.

You tried to square your own circle

into a ratio of luck with better odds.

You placed a bet on a race with the gods

who bumped you off

when they’d had enough

of your sudden upsets

and dead heat finishes

like a bookie in eternal arrears.

Now your eyes run nose to nose

way past the finish line

of your camera-proof tears

and all your schemes are also-rans

walking over to congratulate

the four horsemen of the apocalypse

who beat you out of the gate.

And it might be the same old song

on the green bough

and the dead branch alike

in the same old spotlight of the sun

but the clarities of love

still sing better

than the purities of hate

and when all is said and done

and it’s time to change atmospheres

and dream on like the weather

out over an unknown sea

of what might come like sails

and strange constellations

to the windowsills of our event-horizons

like the birds of a new continent

returning south

with more words in their mouth

than they left with in the spring,

and even if they are two wings

of the same extinct bird

that logs its wingspan

like a flightplan in the book of shales

I’d still rather lay my head down at night

on a pillow stuffed with feathers

than a pillow stuffed with scales.

I’d rather lay my body down like an old shoe

that’s gathered all the roads it’s ever walked up

into a single knot of smoke

on the altar of my dreams

like a man who has lived long enough

not to waste his life looking

for grails of reason

in these ailing seasons of the absurd.

Reason was always the cheap thrill

of a snakeoil elixir that gave me the chills.

A man with no stones to throw at life

no acids to splash in its face

no crosses no advice

on how to get your thorns to bloom

no horns on the moon

no hill of skulls

no atheist landfills

no nails.

Not a master.

Not a slave.

Not the chaplin

of the skull and crossbones on my sails.

A relic of nothing holy.

No cornerstone of the wind.

No rudder of water.

No night of ore

that eclipsed the gold of the day within.

No hidden treasure.

No X that marks the spot

like a jealous angel

guarding the plague door

to all I’ve got.

A man who understands

he transcends death most perfectly

when his heart is wholly mastered

in every part like blood and breath

by the lost art

of waterguilding his own skin

like an aura thinner

more precious

more lustrous than the gold

that limns the clouds

like the moon when it’s rising

over the silent mindscape

parting the veils that no one parts

to reveal what was never concealed

of the demonic and mystic details

of a life that successively fails

to hold its ground

by keeping its head down.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

even if they are two wings

of the same extinct bird

that died for no reason

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

even if they are two wings

of the same extinct bird.

that died for no reason

 

mastered the absurd.

 

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