SOMETHING'S EITHER POURED ME OUT

SOMETHING’S EITHER POURED ME OUT

 

Something’s either poured me out

or I’m evaporating

but I’m learning to live without content.

And don’t look for a lifestream flowing

under all the leaves of these topics I’ve been shedding.

I don’t follow a theme like an old road

winding through the woods

in the direction of my knowing anymore.

I don’t hold a mirror up to chaos

and expect to see order.

What does a mirror look like

all on its own when it’s truly empty

and there’s nothing left to reflect upon?

I’ve never had very deep feelings for ideas.

I’ve much preferred the subtleties of wonder

that occur by themselves like stars in the night.

I don’t need to make anything up to be me.

I don’t need a ghost writer

following me around everywhere

compiling research for my biography.

What’s the personal history of nothing?

And how can you distinguish one sea from another

when they’re still embryos with their eyes closed

in the same watershed?

The same shit you said about me

while I was alive

you’ll say about me after I’m dead

though we never really knew one another all that well.

The great night sea of life

isn’t trying to keep its waves in order.

And the mind isn’t the foundation stone

of a shrine to higher learning.

I can talk to the stars in their own language

if I don’t expect them to answer me

in my own voice.

I can read what the wind writes

in a Druidic tree-alphabet

like a loveletter to a birch

when I don’t let my eyes

get in the way of my seeing.

And I know you won’t believe me

but even the rocks have told me

time and time again

like old Etruscan kings of the zodiac

you can pour gold

out the ore of the dark matter like light

if you don’t let your life

get in the way of your being.

But I don’t spend a lot of time

trying to peek through the cracks in my brain for insight

when I don’t need a key to get out

or a gate to get in.

I burn my starmaps.

I hop the fence.

I cut across the field.

I find my own way like water.

But whether I’m coming down the mountain

or breaking into flowers

or just fooling around like the rain

to see what comes up

I drink from own skull

like the full moon

when it breaks its cup

to keep the wine flowing.

I don’t think of my body

as a fortune-cookie

with a little ribbon of fate inside

tucked away like a secret chromosome

that’s the writing on the wall

for an entire species.

My life is not a thesis I’m trying to prove.

I’m not seeking forgiveness for the dark.

I’m not spinning galaxies out of a chimney spark.

I’m not trying to put horseshoes

on the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

I don’t make a terrorist of my antithesis

and then waterboard it for the truth.

I’m not trying to save seeds in the autumn

that I sowed like wild oats in my youth

lying beside the woman

who invented agriculture.

I don’t squander my beginnings

on trying to achieve my ends

by taking my tail in my mouth

and swallowing everything up to

and including my head.

I’m not trying to beat

ploughs for the living

out of the swords of the dead.

I’m not driving a chariot of gold through a slum

like a big wheel pimping his ride.

And I don’t think every hooker I meet

is a frustrated bride

or every false hope has time on its side.

I’m not caught up in my own mindstream

like a leaf that dropped off the tree of knowledge in the fall

to be enraptured by the mystic awareness of its own flowing

like a map to everywhere

that didn’t know where it was going.

I think of freedom as something that happens to you

like eyes for the blind

like an empty lifeboat

bobbing off the shore of Atlantis

just before it went down

not a state of mind

backed up by a government

that puts words in the mouths of the dead

and then indicts them for lying.

You can fit an entire universe into a single head

and still have time and space for more

like the sea of life that everywhere

receives itself like a prodigal’s homecoming.

Or you can wall yourself in behind bone

and lead the siege life of a landowning crustacean

or a bi-valved goose barnacle

fixed like a cold-sore to the lip of a volcano

that’s breaking up the continent of Pangea like your skull.

You can choose to choose

or you can say there’s no choice at all.

Or raising your skull up in both your hands

to the health of the universe

drink yourself down to the lees of your last eclipse

and wiping its unfulfilled prophecy off your lips

like wine and dragon’s blood

that doesn’t need anyone to get drunk on itself

black-out like dark matter when it begins to shine. 

Or you can live like a good waste of enlightenment

and never pass the cup around like the moon

so the lost can taste their homelessness

deep in the heart of the earthbound

and know they’re the two eyes

of the same oxymoron

that discovered it was lost

the moment it was found. 

Not one.

Not two.

Water and wave.

Moon-cup and skull.

Empty or full

whatever you do.

Be brave.

Drink up.

Down to the dregs of oblivion.

As if it were last call

and the lights were about to go on.

 

PATRICK WHITE