YOU'RE NOT MAD ENOUGH

YOU’RE NOT MAD ENOUGH

 

You’re not mad enough to understand my poetry.

Suffering hasn’t twisted you into strange shapes

like a hangman’s apprentice

practising knots with your spine

or driven your innocence out into the desert

like a scape-goat for the sins of others

until you had mastered their evil

and become a great devil

condemned to do good

as if it were the most exquisite torment

of the damned.

You’ve never stood like an exile

at a sleepless window

and listened to the night rain

speaking in a foreign language.

Your electrons have never

been bumped out of their orbitals

like the photonic refugees

of a radioactive element

with half an afterlife

that can see in the dark

and last for millions of years.

What tongue-tied tuning fork

of a pygmy atom

like the emperor of Austria to Mozart

seeing a galaxy

or hearing a symphony

indicts a cosmic conception

beyond the diminutive perception

and bent event horizons

of a black dwarf

for too many stars

too many notes?

You can’t taste the new wine

until it’s been poured

into the same old dirty cup of a mind

you’ve been drinking from

like the bloodless goblet of the moon for years.

Long breath

short breath

don’t they both go on forever

like poems you can’t measure for a straitjacket?

You want to make haikus out of hurricanes.

You want to time the wind

when it blows your house down.

You’ve sat down among your peers

at a designer seance

and studied literature

as if you were communing with ghosts

who had the decency not to show up in the flesh.

And you may have climbed

to the top of the world mountain like a postcard

but you’ve never come down from it

like an avalanche of rocks

you rolled away from your tomb

like the vernal equinox

as if Stonehenge were built by Sisyphus.

And what’s it to me

if your attention span

is a flea on a hot-plate

and you’re in the habit

of drinking spit

from everyone else’s mouth but your own

or jealousy makes you celibate

everytime you catch me

French-kissing the muse at her wellspring?

You’re a goldfish in a shark bowl

a shore-hugger

with a spineless guitar-pick for a fin

afraid of the dangers

of being swept out into the deep night sea

by the rogue karma

of getting caught up

in your own undertow.

You’re more at home

among dead starfish and washed-up things

in the slums of shallow tidal pools

than the palatial spaces

of more gifted myths of origin.

Literati in the corpus delecti

of the great dead

forensically parsed

by the grammar of maggots

it must be scary for you

to try to imagine

anything you can’t prove

like the singularity

at the bottom of a blackhole

or the creative potential of dark matter.

You may be armies of lice

in the Golden Fleece

living like stars with tenure

in faculties of sunlight

but who among you

knows how to sow

the teeth of the dragon?

If I keep faith with my calling

by following it like a salmon

all the way to the sea like a river

and back to the mountains to die

why should I listen

to the fingerlings on a fish farm

about flowing the wrong way

without checking the depth of the water

to see if I’m in too deep?

I can’t get enough of the stars

but you look at them like a blackhole

and think they’re overdoing their shining.

I’ve never regretted trusting or loving someone

in some interglacial warming period

when the trees come back.

And I’ve never killed a thing I ever loved.

I swallow the darkness of separation

knowing it’s the poisoned mushroom

of the emperor-clown’s last act.

I taste the fact on the fork and concede.

I take more than my own death

out into the desert

and I mourn without accusation

the empty cup of the moon

at the dry lips of its dying mirages.

It’s just the way the rose haemmorages

when it gets cold.

It’s just the way a paper boat

is kept afloat by its own themes

all the way down a river

that doesn’t care where it’s going

because its only destination is anywhere.

And what decent fire lies to its flames?

And I’d rather be loved than right

most of the time anyway

so I’ll take the blame upon me

and you can sleep tight as a lifeboat on the Titanic

and I’ll just drift south with the icebergs

hoping that at the first sign of your solitude

you don’t panic

at the way things are going down

and way way too overboard.

You put pen to paper

like a pharoah builds a pyramid

only to wind up

like a mummy in a museum under glass.

But the first thing I write off is me.

I dispossess myself of thoughts and feelings

like a serpent ditches its skin

tired of being the fall-guy for sin

or the ocean gets its waves off its back 

as if they didn’t belong to anyone’s mind

when the wind reads what’s written in sand

like a lifeline on the palm of my hand

that bends round the heel of my thumb

like an ongoing question of when.

You have to become no one

if you want to understand

the mindlessness of being a human

and the only way to express it

is to say it without a mouth

hear it without listening

and see it without eyes.

Anyone can write a decent poem

but how many can walk on the dark side

and let the poetry write them

without squealing for death

to make their last breath

the whole orchard

in the blossom of a haiku

that might read like a fortune-cookie

but breaks just like an egg

that got the word out

like a bird afraid of the sky

there’s no more room at the inn

for the stars to follow the magi like a hearse

wreathed in laurels and flowers

like the dead blessing

round the bend of a live curse.

You can’t live like a maggot

and write like an eagle.

And though it’s not a grace

that’s easily acquired

by verse lamplighting at night in the woods

to attract the muse like a doe

to your moth-bound lucidities

baying at the moon

you hope will mistake you for a wolf

even the darkness has enough taste

not to try to pour the ocean into a teacup

that hasn’t been washed out first

like someone with a filthy mouth.

All your dainty revisions

were the personal decisions

of someone addicted to plastic surgery

like the bride of Frankenstein to Botox

trying to deconstruct her face.

But me?

I had no choice.

How can you revise space?

Or take anything away from zero?

You try to keep order in your life and work

as if you were building Rome again

from the ashes up like Nero.

And I don’t know why it’s so

but insight after insight

flashing through me like sunswords

through the back of a lunar bull

though it’s been painful

has sustained my life somehow

like the brainchild of a compatible chaos.

And I may have been treated madly by poetry

and speak in tongues

like a lunatic in the rain in Babylon

long after it’s bricks were broken

and the last eclipse had spoken

its last word

about free choice

being gerry-mandered out of the absurd

but you’re as well-versed

as the soft lip

of a Georgian sheep dip

that’s just found its voice.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

             

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE ONES I LOVED THE DEEPEST AND THE BEST

THE ONES I LOVED THE DEEPEST AND THE BEST

 

The ones I loved the deepest and the best

turned into strangers and enemies

or worse, friends.

Now I’d trust evil

before I’d trust stupid

because stupid will get you killed faster than evil

almost any night of the week

when I’m out with my demonic acquaintances

like a gangland constellation

that wants to burn the house down

to get even with the astrologers

who talk too much

about the eloquent future

they see in our illiterate past.

And it isn’t as if

I’ve been emptied of human content

and I don’t care

if I feel anything or not

about the unspooling

of my emotional life

as just another way of breathing in and out

or the indifference and separation

that has passed between me and all these people

like a knife looking for something holy to wound.

Sometimes the river

just tears the roots of things

away from the shore

in a torrential downpour

that wakes the desert up

and a judas-goat tempts a bad messiah.

Compounded of too many different parts

to belong solely to any one of them,

a bag of starwater punctured

by nine black holes

that haemorage like an oilslick

that’s trying to pretend

it’s just another eclipse in passing

and endowed at birth

by the black beatitude

of an intensely acquisitive intelligence

that approaches knowledge like a Mongol,

I put a Zen finish on the agony of my solitude

and hold my ground against the approaching abyss.

What does it mean to be a human?

What else but this?

Just this as it is and isn’t?

The river flows by the skull of the swan

and the bones of its wings

that once swam upright

like a harp on the water

and played to the moon in tears

slow songs about the stark beauty

in the sadness of passing things;

the river flows by extemporaneously

true to the nature of water

going along indifferently

with what’s missing by the mouthful

when death rises from the bottom

like a snapping turtle

to the lunar surface of things

and hunger’s the only meaning in life

that satisfies the doubtful.

The opposites engender each other

like predator and prey.

If I didn’t know you were listening

I wouldn’t know what to say.

The words may be male,

stars on a lonely night,

fireflies and lightning bolts

but the voice is the dark female

behind all this commotion of light

raising waves on the ocean of life

like thresholds and sails

that cling to the coasts of their thoughts

for fear of drowning alone in their tears

like a lifeboat

all tied up in the nets and knots

of the last navigator

that swore he’d send a continent back

to look for them

as soon as he made landfall

like a dove from the Bible.

What’s the meaning of an open door

when you approach your own house

as if it were the house

of someone you once knew

who doesn’t live there anymore?

That’s what the stars feel like

denuded of light

like the meaning of words

in an expanding universe

driven by the engine of dark energy

into the strange empty spaces

older than light

of the black muse-mother

that keeps out of sight

of her offspring inspirations

so they can exist on their own

to look for the meaning of her absence

when they get home

like thieves

on the backstairs of everywhere

who don’t know where to go

or what to steal that’s real.

Who stole the moon from the window

of the cosmic view

I used to take

of my human relationships?

I put a finger to my own lips

and listen to the silence

rolling over like hard evidence

there’s no truth in facts or words

that isn’t a complicit witness

to the crime-scene

that chalks the sidewalks of my mind

with the ghosts of old friends

outlining where they fell

when the past caught up with them

like someone they once knew well.

I drink the eyes of yesterday’s lovers

like wine from my own skull

and fall down drunk in the doorway

of a stranger’s afterlife

as if it were the gates of Eden

hidden like the petal of a dream

that clung like an eyelid

to the vision of the black rose

that only revealed its mystery

in the dead end of the light.

How could I help it

if I kept falling in love over the years

with women of the first magnitude

always a night shy of shining?

And it didn’t matter

what shape of darkness

I took in their minds

to enhance their outlook by contrast

they weren’t any brighter for it

by the time they left

and I wasn’t any less blind.

And it’s hard to say

who got the best

of whose worst

but I always thought of it

as my last loveletter

to what they were

and would never be again

if they left first.

Life and love

like the food of angels

who don’t eat

because they’re above all that

goes better with an earthly appetite

and a clean place-mat

in an allnight restaurant alone

looking out through the window

like a rogue constellation lost

in the artificial glare of things

like a bottomless cup of coffee

or a blackhole

where the moon used to be

before they fenced it for money

and the cow ran away with the spoon

like the Milky Way with a lean junkie

she suckles like baby Zeus

snorting stars from the mirror

of a stone-cold Titan

that wants to eat him like a cannibal Dad.

I’ve learned to feel sad about things

the way the mad do

when they wear they’re feelings

inside out like skin and clothes

as if nothing were weird or strange

about living without fear of a straitjacket

that’s been bruised and abused by bad tattoos.

The impersonality of life

that shepherds my memories like moons

through these echoless valleys of death

that have disembodied my voice

in the vastness of an unanswerable space

like a bird disappearing into the nightsky

crying like a wounded thing

struck by the cold stone of the moon on the wing

can’t be expressed in a lot of sentimental boo-hoos

that run amok like the ink of a loveletter in the rain

and stain the last known address

on the rainbow envelope

like the name

on the watercolour

of a miscarriage of the moon

framed by a family album

like a face at the window of an empty house.

So I don’t raid the tombs of the dead

as if I had no respect for bones

or couldn’t keep faith

with the sacred whims of chaos

that makes pyramids

out of the dust of our afterlives

as if we were pharoahs

aiming our souls at Orion

like long-shot snipers

through the wrong end of the telescope.

I’m an enlightened cynic.

I take the shot

with the hollow-point

of a higher calibre of hope.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE ONES I LOVED THE DEEPEST AND THE BEST

THE ONES I LOVED THE DEEPEST AND THE BEST

 

The ones I loved the deepest and the best

turned into strangers and enemies

or worse, friends.

Now I’d trust evil

before I’d trust stupid

because stupid will get you killed faster than evil

almost any night of the week

when I’m out with my demonic acquaintances

like a gangland constellation

that wants to burn the house down

to get even with the astrologers

who talk too much

about the eloquent future

they see in our illiterate past.

And it isn’t as if

I’ve been emptied of human content

and I don’t care

if I feel anything or not

about the unspooling

of my emotional life

as just another way of breathing in and out

or the indifference and separation

that has passed between me and all these people

like a knife looking for something holy to wound.

Sometimes the river

just tears the roots of things

away from the shore

in a torrential downpour

that wakes the desert up

and a judas-goat tempts a bad messiah.

Compounded of too many different parts

to belong solely to any one of them,

a bag of starwater punctured

by nine black holes

that haemorage like an oilslick

that’s trying to pretend

it’s just another eclipse in passing

and endowed at birth

by the black beatitude

of an intensely acquisitive intelligence

that approaches knowledge like a Mongol,

I put a Zen finish on the agony of my solitude

and hold my ground against the approaching abyss.

What does it mean to be a human?

What else but this?

Just this as it is and isn’t?

The river flows by the skull of the swan

and the bones of its wings

that once swam upright

like a harp on the water

and played to the moon in tears

slow songs about the stark beauty

in the sadness of passing things;

the river flows by extemporaneously

true to the nature of water

going along indifferently

with what’s missing by the mouthful

when death rises from the bottom

like a snapping turtle

to the lunar surface of things

and hunger’s the only meaning in life

that satisfies the doubtful.

The opposites engender each other

like predator and prey.

If I didn’t know you were listening

I wouldn’t know what to say.

The words may be male,

stars on a lonely night,

fireflies and lightning bolts

but the voice is the dark female

behind all this commotion of light

raising waves on the ocean of life

like thresholds and sails

that cling to the coasts of their thoughts

for fear of drowning alone in their tears

like a lifeboat

all tied up in the nets and knots

of the last navigator

that swore he’d send a continent back

to look for them

as soon as he made landfall

like a dove from the Bible.

What’s the meaning of an open door

when you approach your own house

as if it were the house

of someone you once knew

who doesn’t live there anymore?

That’s what the stars feel like

denuded of light

like the meaning of words

in an expanding universe

driven by the engine of dark energy

into the strange empty spaces

older than light

of the black muse-mother

that keeps out of sight

of her offspring inspirations

so they can exist on their own

to look for the meaning of her absence

when they get home

like thieves

on the backstairs of everywhere

who don’t know where to go

or what to steal that’s real.

Who stole the moon from the window

of the cosmic view

I used to take

of my human relationships?

I put a finger to my own lips

and listen to the silence

rolling over like hard evidence

there’s no truth in facts or words

that isn’t a complicit witness

to the crime-scene

that chalks the sidewalks of my mind

with the ghosts of old friends

outlining where they fell

when the past caught up with them

like someone they once knew well.

I drink the eyes of yesterday’s lovers

like wine from my own skull

and fall down drunk in the doorway

of a stranger’s afterlife

as if it were the gates of Eden

hidden like the petal of a dream

that clung like an eyelid

to the vision of the black rose

that only revealed its mystery

in the dead end of the light.

How could I help it

if I kept falling in love over the years

with women of the first magnitude

always a night shy of shining?

And it didn’t matter

what shape of darkness

I took in their minds

to enhance their outlook by contrast

they weren’t any brighter for it

by the time they left

and I wasn’t any less blind.

And it’s hard to say

who got the best

of whose worst

but I always thought of it

as my last loveletter

to what they were

and would never be again

if they left first.

Life and love

like the food of angels

who don’t eat

because they’re above all that

goes better with an earthly appetite

and a clean place-mat

in an allnight restaurant alone

looking out through the window

like a rogue constellation lost

in the artificial glare of things

like a bottomless cup of coffee

or a blackhole

where the moon used to be

before they fenced it for money

and the cow ran away with the spoon

like the Milky Way with a lean junkie

she suckles like baby Zeus

snorting stars from the mirror

of a stone-cold Titan

that wants to eat him like a cannibal Dad.

I’ve learned to feel sad about things

the way the mad do

when they wear they’re feelings

inside out like skin and clothes

as if nothing were weird or strange

about living without fear of a straitjacket

that’s been bruised and abused by bad tattoos.

The impersonality of life

that shepherds my memories like moons

through these echoless valleys of death

that have disembodied my voice

in the vastness of an unanswerable space

like a bird disappearing into the nightsky

crying like a wounded thing

struck by the cold stone of the moon on the wing

can’t be expressed in a lot of sentimental boo-hoos

that run amok like the ink of a loveletter in the rain

and stain the last known address

on the rainbow envelope

like the name

on the watercolour

of a miscarriage of the moon

framed by a family album

like a face at the window of an empty house.

So I don’t raid the tombs of the dead

as if I had no respect for bones

or couldn’t keep faith

with the sacred whims of chaos

that makes pyramids

out of the dust of our afterlives

as if we were pharoahs

aiming our souls at Orion

like long-shot snipers

through the wrong end of the telescope.

I’m an enlightened cynic.

I take the shot

with the hollow-point

of a higher calibre of hope.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I LEFT YOUR IMAGE OF ME SHINING

I LEFT YOUR IMAGE OF ME SHINING

 

I left your image of me shining

just where you wanted it

in that glass menagerie

of broken mirrors

you’ve hung from the ceilings

like chandeliers

like constellations of frozen tears

in the thirteenth house

of the misbegotten

on the wrong side of the tracks

off the beaten paths of the zodiacs

that sometimes like to go slumming down here

when the sun shines at midnight

and the moon’s out of town.

I left the light on

but this star is long gone

past these extremities of shining

into the abyss of an unseeable future

that disappears into its own illumination

like an eye into its own seeing

or a bad likeness of God

into a human being.

I leave you handcuffed to the dead

like the Standard Model of the Universe

that lost it all

like the physics of the Mad Hatter

to the singularity at the bottom of a blackhole.

I would have met you half way like anti-matter.

I would have found a way

to bend that negative space

that so often distorts your face

into a more comely illusion of time

that isn’t stitched together so clumsily

like some patchwork bride of Frankenstein

taking it out on the mirrors

that keep dodging your reflection

by turning their eyes to the wall

everytime you insist

you’re the most beautiful of all.

So be it.

You are.

Good-bye.

You’re trying to impose

a habitable order on the universe

like the cube of the sphere of life

that would allow you to get by

like Tolstoy

who built a shoemaker’s hovel

in the middle of his aristocratic palace

to improve the commonality of his inferiors.

You’re like the Taj Mahal looking for a room to rent.

You’re a shore-hugger trying to teach

a jumper how to fall toward paradise

without a parachute.

And if I ignore your raging advice

as I do now and have done

it’s only because I play Russian roulette

with the lightning

and you come to the table with a cap-gun.

And I’m wholly at home

even immortally alone

in this compatible chaos

that improvises my life

sometimes as a dirty joke

I go along with for a lark

and other times

raises me up above

the web of my furthest horizons

like a spider that’s transcended clinging to anything

and dancing in my radiance

like a star that isn’t afraid of the dark:

listen to me bitch

I’m singing.

 

PATRICK WHITE