TRYING TO CRAWL

TRYING TO CRAWL

 

Trying to crawl back into myself

like a long birth canal

into a cathedral cave

to see what I really feel

about the symbols and totems

I painted in my own blood

like writing on the wall of the womb

that gave birth to the world that I am.

Picture-music.

Shamanistic grammar.

Hunting magic.

A brief man’s need

to make a lasting impression.

Carnal graffiti and spiritual tatoos.

I was here once

and here’s my hand for proof.

Its fingers are splayed

like the rays of the rising sun

and it isn’t asking for anything.

I was formed out of the mutability

of the negative space

that surrounds dark matter like light

when evolution colluded

to experience one of its experiments

as if it were looking through my eyes

at a stranger’s insight

and the face I wear in the world

were no more my own

than the reflection of the moon

belongs to the water that mirrors it and moves on.

So I went looking for my true self

and found it in everyone else

though no one ever recognized it in me

because they were all looking in the wrong direction.

Put two eyes on zero like dice

and you might be surprised

at what you can see

through the eyesockets of a skull

rolling seven come eleven

again and again

on the blind side of pain

after snake-eyes

in a back-alley up against a cave wall.

Running my luck

is my way of asking God

if she still loves me.

But even when she says she does

her answers are often hurtful and strange

and there’s more gate than garden

in the way she takes chances on me

I wouldn’t if I were her.

But I’m not trying to preserve what I’m not

from passing away

when the moonlight burns

like lime on Mozart’s skin

and I’ve got nothing

to tell the outside anymore

about the in.

I pulled doves

out of the sleeves of a black magician

having mastered every mystic eclipse

of infernal insight known to the human

that mentors the demon within

and sacrificed them to their freedom

like words on the voice of the wind

that said them with care and devotion

like butterflies in a dragon’s mouth

that had turned its roar into a whisper

and its teeth into the petals of a crazy flower

that may not have bloomed right

but gave them a place to land

and drink from the acids in my mouth

I had gentled into nectar.

Why is gratitude always a child

that dies young?

Why is it we prefer to be good

but when we’re in a bad fix

more than many defer to evil?

The pillars of pagan temples

fall like yarrow sticks

and everything’s written

in the Book of Changes

like the secret history

of fire on water

or that tale that always

ends at the beginning of things

like a ghost at the broken window

of an old abandoned myth of origin

that people have grown too clever

to believe in anymore

and walk by without looking

for fear they might see someone

like themselves

who’s been as vastly misunderstood

as life has

by the holy books that line their shelves.

Civilized people lost their tails

talking like fossil seabeds

on a mountain top

as if they were the Burgess Shales

and didn’t know like life

when to stop

or which side was down

and which side was up

as they backtracked on their ancestors.

They climbed spinal ladders of bone

they hoped would come to their rescue

before the fires of life consumed them

like trilobites and enlarged craniums

in the bigger picture of things

that pulls feathers out of the flames

like names from that lottery of words

that turns the thunder of tandem dinosaurs

into the forbidden nightsongs of random birds.

Blissed out without an ego for a thesis

in the abyss of it all

enraptured with the nature of things

as they are

when they listen

like unmovable stars

to the music of my inner vision

when I don’t fall back on a sad decision.

 

PATRICK WHITE