HEY, A LITTLE LIGHT

HEY, A LITTLE LIGHT

 

Hey, a little light.

A glow within.

The silver bit of the moon

is in the mouth

of a dark horse

as big as the world.

I’m sick of the sanctity

of these old clothes

that keep hanging on like skin

well into winter

like leaves that don’t know when

to let go.

I need a new lover.

I need a new mythology.

I need someone who knows

that a genius gone too far

is too far gone even for a madman

to get a fix on.

And everything’s the north star

when you look at it from all directions.

And I’ve said in the past

and I’ll say it again

and I’ll probably say it tomorrow

I’m nothing if not the humbling

of God’s Own Zero

expanding space like dark energy

that amplifies existence inconceivably

by blowing bubbles in hyperspace at everyone

like myriad worlds within worlds

where all things are as possible

as they are real

and nothing’s ever diminished.

But it depends on how you feel I guess.

Me?

The mirrors undress in the moonlight.

And the windows wonder

what everybody’s looking at.

I turn over the rock of religion

and discover a child molester.

I turn over the cornerstone of politics

and there’s a worm growing fat on the marrow

of a fossilized anti-war protester.

Yesterday’s galactic

turns into today’s local yokel

as tomorrow’s nano-fly’s eye goes digital.

Viral dreams

mineralize my cells as I sleep

in the treetops of knowledge

like the history of autumn

an apple too far out of reach to fall.

Been bad so long it looks like good to me.

Data hasn’t found a place yet

to tatoo the mystery of its binary code

like a fast-track starmap to the back of the cosmic serpent

laying eggs like eyes in the night.

And which of all these waves

on the sea of awareness is me?

Just because I’m blind sometimes

doesn’t mean I can’t see.

Black on black

darkness within darkness

eclipse after eclipse

the interminably open gates

of an eyeless clarity

of an unwitnessed lucidity

sheathing its shadows in light

like noon at midnight.

In the danse macabre

of  medieval futures to come

dark matter fashions me a new skeleton

and I scourge the sun’s flesh

with comets of self-flagellation

and whips of white phosphorus

that claw at my back

like the nine afterlives

of nine heretical cats

to save me from laughing myself to death in perdition.

These days though

it’s enough to keel-haul myself

on the hull of the moon occasionally

just to get the barnacles off.

Hey, a little light.

An extra star.

A gesture of a firefly

trying to land at the LA International Airport

in a severe crosswind

like a tantrum of braille for the blind

that lets everyone see just how ridiculous they’ve become.

And most especially me

blighting my own lucidity

like an inept clown

with a crow’s laugh

that isn’t all that funny.

 

PATRICK WHITE