YOU ASKED ME HOW TO SURVIVE AS A POET

YOU ASKED ME HOW TO SURVIVE AS A POET

 

You asked me how to survive as a poet

among mad women

who want to tear you apart

to secure a place in your heart

by eating it.

I laughed and said

Turn gay.

But it wasn’t the right thing to say

and you were disappointed in me

and walked away

as if you were giving the world a dirty look

because you were hurt

and you expected the world to know it

because you hold the world

to higher standards

than the world can keep.

But if you were to ask me

now that I’ve upgraded myself

to a more sensitive gene for compassion

and the serious-minded meme

for a more acute sense of black humour

I would tell you to stop

listening to prophetic rumours

of your early demise

at the hands of savage women.

The flying ant sprouts wings

and lives for a frenzied hour in the sunset.

And an elephant can live for a hundred lumbering years.

But you as a poet won’t live any longer

than the lifespan of your inspiration

and women are the gate the source

the fountainmouth and watershed of it

and the way you see them

is who you are as a man.

I see you’ve estranged all your stars

so carefully

you’re lost in the chaos

of your own myth of origin

waiting for something to shine.

And though I know you think

you drift through the vastness alone

well beyond the reach of gravity

where nothing can get you down

like it or not 

women are your home planet

and you’re their shepherd moon.

A woman bends space around you

like a black mirror of dark matter

that distorts your face

into something clear.

A smear she wipes off on her sleeve. 

And you roll with the bet

like a skull playing Russian roulette

on your wedding night

knowing you’re doomed to lose.

And so what

if you don’t survive?

You’ve never been more alive.

So what if you’re consumed

as your flesh is rent asunder

like a lone tree on a high hill

by lightning bolts

that kiss like fireflies?

Only the insane

would go looking for life

with a weathervane

and even if your dick twitches

like a metal detector over Roman coins

and you’re amazed to discover

your face on them 

when you dig them up

even the dead know

you should approach

the dark muse of a dangerous woman

like a divining rod approaches a watershed.

Gently.

And with great fear in your heart

you haven’t been truly

empowered by your art

to overcome the coward

who would lie to her face

like a mirage lies to water

about why there are cracks in the mirror.

Among the many medusas maenads

mermaids muses and madonnas

that have come and gone

like phases of the moon

that turned you to stone

when you jumped into the snakepit

thinking you were immune

to their elixirs and toxins

because you had a serum for a shield

that could deflect their sex appeal

like a stealth fighter deluding their radar

you were the test-dummy in the ejection seat

that was targetted like a star

by a heat-seeking missile

that knew the moment you spoke

you were just another kite

burning in the powerlines

of a pre-emptive strike

on their nuclear facilities.

They shot you down for practice.

Women are the Iranians of the moon.

And men are their flying carpets.

What could a new lamp mean

to an old geni

if it won’t grant three wishes?

If you want to be a good dolphin

and learn to walk on water

like the Buddha did

five hundred years before Jesus

in the Lankavatara Sutra

and I heard you did

just the other day

you’ve got to turn your feet into waves

and learn to swim through stone

like barely detectable particles of black matter

deep underground

where science is listening for you

as if the first word of creation

were written in invisible ink

long before God ever said let there be light

and alienated three quarters of the night.

But you’re the orphan

of a motherless generation

that was left on the stairs

of the decade that took you in

and raised you as if you were one of their own.

But it’s not good

that you’ve never been at home

in your own homelessness.

You’ve been missing a lot

that you only get one shot at.

You’re a bright embryo in the wrong womb.

You’ve wasted your solitude.

The sixties were the second-coming

of a Cambrian explosion

of experimental life forms

that evolved psycho-chemically into us

by tinkering with our genes

as if they were the logos and memes

of a fossilized crustracean

in the Burgess Shale

of a spineless generation

that took the world by the tail. 

It’s later than we think

and some have gone extinct

and money’s become the tenth of nine muses

and love for the most part

when you take it to heart

is a mirage in the mouth of a drought.

But be that as it may

even before you’ve tasted

the mystic wine of a woman

or French-kissed the moon

you’re already groaning like a hangover

full of regrets

and imperious absolutes

never to do it again.

What kind of party is this

that feels the pain before the bliss?

That sheds before it blossoms

as if it dreaded the full moon

walking like Atlantis

into a roomful of doomed sailors

lying on her seabed

like the most lucid of lighthouses

happy to be lost in the depths?

You could vastly improve your lovelife

by learning to approach a woman

as if she were you

only inside out.

And you may be famous

for the things you doubt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

but you talk too much about genius

to know anything about it.

And you suppose

because I’m old and published

that I’m wise and caring

but as the Arabs are fond of saying

you can load a lot of books

on the back of a jackass

but it’s still the braying of a jackass.

Or as one of my past lives said

as she was leaving

for her good and mine

You’re a brilliant idiot

and over the course of time

I’ve become dumb enough to see her point.

But one of life’s greatest gifts to me

and the one that arouses

the most jealousy

is that I was born too stupid

to be a cynic

and so unlovable

I’m free.

 

PATRICK WHITE