TEN THOUSAND VOICES IN MY HEAD

TEN THOUSAND VOICES IN MY HEAD

 

Ten thousand voices in my head

some living some dead

but I don’t let a single one of them

get in the way

of what’s trying to be said.

Let the whole orchard

break into a song or a symphony

and it’s still not worth listening to

compared to the wonder of a single note

that isn’t attuned to anything

but sits with me

like a guitar in the corner

that picks me up occasionally

and strings me out over the emptiness

like a suspension bridge

engineered by the spiders of music

all the way over to the far side of nowhere.

I’m that extra day in the calendar of a light-year

that shows up once every four years

to try and work things out

but it’s what I do in my spare time

when I’m not called upon to balance anything

that intrigues me.

It may be one planet

but it’s got an infinite number of axes

sticking through it like pins

through a voodoo doll

or sun swords in the back of a lunar bull

depending on what angle you’re looking at it from.

Remove yourself from things

like the universe expanding out of sight

and the curse is lifted

that stood in your light like eyes

that got in the way of your seeing.

Put your mind down once and awhile

like that embryo of a sword

in a womb of dark ore

you’re still trying to pull out of the stone

to be made king of the iron age.

Just for once let things begin with a big bang

that shocks you out of yourself

not a haemorage of rust

that pops like a wet paper bag

and gets sopped up by an old rag.

The play’s the thing

not the poster

and existence isn’t a method actor on tour.

Reality is an acquired taste

that serves the rapture before the wine

the meaning before the sign

and holds the dark mirror up

as an example to all

of how to see

before it’s smeared

like a spray-bombed wall

by every passing reflection.

Ten thousand voices in my head

and everything they say is true

whether I want to hear it or not.

And they all can carry a tune

better than I do

or follow a theme out to the end

like a lifeline on the palm of their hand

that’s always Niles longer than mine

that dies in the desert an oasis shy of Egypt.

I might work with words and facts

but they’re a grammar of birds

with a secret syntax

that takes me out of context

every time I try to join the conversation.

None of them speaks my wild mother tongue

this far from home

without a voice of my own

I can follow back to where I came from

like petrified footsteps in African stone.

But there isn’t a dialect of the silence

I haven’t mastered when I’m alone

letting the universe speak through me

like the wind in the leaves

as if I were a language

of flesh and blood and starmud

more verb than noun

more participle than gerund

no royal antecedent in the background

of the common pronoun

but I can look any part of speech in the eye

like the alpha of an indefinite article

that gets things rolling

like dice at the foot of the cross of the

wondering how many full-stops it’s going to take

not to come up snake-eyes.

Ten thousand voices in my head

some beautiful some wise

some playing dead in the sunrise

some raging like fists against the sky

and the face that turns away

from the broken window

like the full moon

some oracular clowns

and others just bad medicine.

But there’s one that doesn’t pray or bless or curse.

It doesn’t summon me like the dead to a seance

and even when a fire breaks out like a muse

it doesn’t panic like an emergency exit.

It can speak of life

without trying to second-guess it

and when words aren’t enough to say it

it’s suffered in silence long enough

listening to me shoot off my mouth

like a Friday night cowboy

trying to shoot out the stars like streetlamps

to find my own way home in the dark

to know how to play the blues

as if there were no one else around.

 

PATRICK WHITE