YOU'RE SO INTENSE

YOU’RE SO INTENSE

 

You’re so intense you said

as if my whole being

were some kind of behavioural offense

but all I could say back was

you’re definitely not.

You hate it when it’s hot.

You don’t know where to look

to find life or water on Mars.

And whenever it gets too deep or dark

you huddle like a candle in the shadows

of a hundred billion stars.

I know fireflies and chimney-sparks

that don’t need a window to burn in

the way you do

like a lamp in a cowl of soot

a canary in a cage in a coalmine.

They give it all up to the night.

They shine.

They bloom.

They burn with insight.

They’re the nightlights in the long dark hall

that seems to go on forever

like that narrow mind

you’ve been walking in your sleep

past the admiring portraits

of the artificially blind

who dream in braille

of eclipses yet to come

that will weigh like stones upon their eyelids.

Intense?

Too intense?

What does that really mean?

I take my delusions too seriously?

I’m a child?

I’m immense

and there’s a dark energy within me

that’s still expanding space at an accelerated rate

that puts the whole universe

like a petal to the metal

in a game of chicken

with a precipitous abyss

that urges creation to take the risk

win lose or draw?

If I don’t come on

like the unified field theory

of a universal law

that can be summed up

in a beautifully simple mathematical formula

it’s not that it’s not in my nature to fit.

It’s just that I fit in like a heretic

and there’s never much room

for someone who blows blackholes

in the space-time continuum

that can’t account for the dark heart of black matter

that outweighs the white feather of light

they put on the scale of dead things

like the wingspan of phoenix fledglings.

How can you measure the intensity

of the half-life

of a radioactive underworld?

Is oxygen less intense than plutonium

or water any more

at peace with itself than fire

because its hydrogen isn’t flammable?

If I’m not waiting for enlightenment

to take an intense delight in the world

just as it is

shining against a cool background

of universal bliss

just as happy over there tomorrow

to be alive in that circumstance

as it is now here in this

what’s it to you

what’s it to me

if I can see the Taj Mahal in a hovel

and all you can see is a shovel?

I’d rather be passionately deluded by the mystery

of being here at all

and drown my sorrows

like torches I put out

in a sea of stars

to see them more clearly in the darkness

than stand like a lighthouse all night long

on the coast of your personal history

among all those shipwrecks waiting for dawn

on the bottom of an artificially lit aquarium

with the instincts of a fish on life-support.

You advance cautiously through life

like a sacred syllable

that’s looking for the right mouth to say it

but I dance on my way to war with the angels

who never kill you deeper into life

with the same sword twice

for having enough wisdom

to ignore their advice

and that’s what you hate me for.

I can walk on fire like a phoenix

who can speak to the demons like friends

in a language far from home

that everyone understands

is the mother-tongue

of what an exile in ashs says to himself

when he’s standing in the dangerous doorway

of stranger things to come.  

I just don’t sit there on the sidelines and suffer.

I’ve learned to overcome my fears creatively

by pulling the sharks into the lifeboat

to save them from the humans

who can smell them

like shark fin soup in the water

from miles away.

When my voice isn’t scattered

like ashs from an urn at sea

it’s a burning bush

a prophet in a furnace

trying to keep his cool

a black spider in the bottom of a poppy

trying to read its fate in the dispassionate lees

of a goblet of fire

it drinks to the bottom of things

like a rare butterfly with scarlet wings.

Worlds within worlds within worlds.

Irridescent bubbles in the multiverse of hyperspace.

Parallel lives simultaneously happening

like the perfectly inter-reflecting jewels

in the cosmic net of Indra.

Mark one jewel and they’re all marked.

And at the slightest gesture of a thought

they’re all estranged from one another everywhere

like the stars that have followed them into exile

without ever knowing if they’re ever coming back.

All our impossible choices actualized

whether we make a decision or don’t.

Are you not amazed?

Are you not astounded

down to the last sorry bell of your soul?

Doesn’t the wonder sometimes get so deep and sweet it hurts?

Who wants to live like the leftovers

of the things they think they know

when they could put their lips together

like membranes and bubbles in the abyss

and kiss whole new worlds into existence

where you could live in one

flatlining like a star in the Arctic

without an event horizon

and I could live on the further shore

of some poetic mindstream somewhere

and burn like a black sun

that could open your loveletters

like alien flowers with sidereal perfumes

that inspire the fireflies

to get carried away 

and turn the lights on

in all the rooms at once

in this house of life without a return address

where everyone tries to stay

very quiet and still in the closet

like old shoes

that came to a dead end

when they lost their feel for the road.

And if I don’t take a stand

on the quicksand foundations of the known world

or prefer the emotional life

of a cornerstone

that’s trying to keep it together

in an avalanche

down the world mountain

it’s not a dress rehearsal

for a sexual advance

that doesn’t stand a chance.

I’m not trying to decide who you are

by taking account of what you’re not

by buffing the stars with black matter

to explain the mass of your gravitas.

I may be a comet

in a dark halo

far outside the solar system

but I’m not trying to make a pass

that will light me up like angel

that shines by a reflected glory.

Some stories are better told at night

than they are by day

and I’m not the red sky in the morning

that comes with a warning

that leaves the sailors with nothing to say.

I’m not channeling echoes of my next life

through a wormhole

in the space-time continuum

of past events that deranged my galactic core

in such a way

I can look forward to yesterday

as if I were remembering tomorrow

from far away.

I can see all sides of things simultaneously

like water in a river

that knows how to bridge the opposites

by flowing past them with a mind of its own

that doesn’t follow the dead maps of the fallen leaves

like rootless trees into the unknown

looking for a new place to call home.

But a biodynamic peace

with the way things never are twice

that leaves lots of room for change

is not the same thing as a truce

with the still-born children of entropy

who never talk in their sleep

about a day to come

that will wake them up

like an earthquake

shaking the bedrocks of chaos

like pebbles out of a shoe

that died by the side of the road

without ever having left home.

I’d rather fly alone through my immensities

than try to swim through your densities

like a fish made of stone.

I may be an alien event horizon

on the wrong side of town

but I know how to read between the lines

when the sun’s going down on the colour blind.

Nature will always reflect

any law that stares into it

long enough

to believe it’s true

but the best you can say about anything

is

not two.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So even if I shine alone

in a sunset that’s lost heart

in what it had to live through

so a few stars in the immeasurable dark

can settle old scores of the heart

with new reasons

to change with the seasons