BITTER AND RESTLESS AND ANGRY

BITTER AND RESTLESS AND ANGRY

 

Bitter and restless and angry

I can’t find a way out of the way I got in

I push the moon like a fish hook

all the way through my left eye

to the other side

where only the dark part shows

and the moon wipes off her white facepaint

in a black mirror that isn’t trying to be her.

I don’t feel like a man who’s going anywhere

I feel like some kind of a creature

crawling out of my dark lagoon

in a double feature

from the matinee of my childhood

at the local theater on a Saturday afternoon.

I don’t want to live anything over again.

And there’s not a whole lot to look forward to

except maybe a ghost dance or two

with Sitting Bull in old age

if either of us makes it that far.

The demonic version

of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin

is how many bubbles can you break on the thorn of a rose

and as the answer always is

get a life and cancel the count.

Love pulls back the crescents of the moon

and baits a beartrap with the heart of a fish

but a wolf howling at the moon

with his nose in the air

steps into it by mistake

and ends up chewing his leg off to get away.

And why when you get to the bottom of things

whether it’s the science or art of knowing

you sink through like a stone

is there always in the very nature of things

the despondent god of a dying religion

trying to cheer you up?

But I’m too out of it

to know whether the world’s gone insane or not.

The sinners can’t cope when the saints get caught.

And things are definitely not what they used to be

or even seemed

now that beauty’s a morphing cultural meme

and the torch that the Statue of Liberty used to hold up

is melting like ice-cream in its own fire

and there’s a hundred and eleven dimensions

to the ways you can lose yourself in the multiverse.

Black-hole constellations eye the dice

and don’t know which way to fall.

Heaven’s hooked on drugs

and Hell’s a cartel.

Preacher: leave them kids alone.

The night might be an elixir of stars

that never grow old

but more and more

the darkness that overwhelms everybody

from the inside out

like the godsend of a broken promise

is beginning to taste like black cool-aid.

And the serial killers

study comparative atrocities

in the finishing schools of their seedy educations

and millions are wiped out every year

like a smudge of life on a tv screen

and everyone is so shocked

by the horror

they go out and buy

a bigger, clearer monitor.

And there are so many things

so many tongueless, eyeless screaming things

done in the name of a human

you couldn’t even ask the devil

to forgive you for

the pornography of gore

makes unranked amateurs of the Aztecs

when it gets right down to hearts and skulls

in the race to blood the altars of our highest ideals.

And I’m so sick of listening

to these paragons of oxygen on the news

who cut their hearts out like oyster-kings

everytime they open their mouths

to talk to the sea

and another halfbaked pearl of wisdom drops out

like the jewel of a fool

or the adolescent crescent of the moon from moonschool

where they teach the iron rule

do unto others before they do unto you.

Love is food.

Knowledge is food.

Sex is food.

The universe is food.

God is food.

Ignorance is food. Junkfood.

But everywhere in the world

people are starving.

In all ten directions everywhere at once

the whole universe is its own illusory cure

for all its illusory diseases

and even a single blade of grass

is enough of a herb

to sweat out any fever of stars

that binds us to our delirium

like dark blood to the blindside of the Mysterium

and yet everywhere people are afflicted

people are wounded

people are dying in the name

of a few cruel ideas

trying to give birth to a new world

that thinks it would be better off without them.

Baby-talk in the savage maws of Baal and Moloch

who will not be appeased 

by the sacrifices our children made

to save the depraved from the grave

they dug for themselves.

Bring on the Romans.

Bring on the Carthaginians.

Bring on the Christians

like nabobs of salt

who shouldered the nations

like heavy crosses

it was their station

of suffering in life to bear.

And the wombs they ruined

are more immaculate now

than ever

their prosperity

has taken a few pounds off the equator

and everyone’s doing their best back home

to put a little nest egg away like an alligator

biding its time

until things look up

like another unwary unicorn

down by the river

dipping its horn

in virgin water

that flows like slurry

from a nuclear reactor.

Trying to find out

who I am in the way it is

is like trying to drink fresh water

from your own reflection in a sewer.

The mirror is not pure.

The mirror is not impure.

Nature and nurture

in one sorry face

looking back at itself

and what’s to come

and the way things are

as if evolution had already gone

a species too far.

 

PATRICK WHITE