AS LONG AS YOU CLING TO YOUR EGO DELUSION
As long as you cling to your ego delusion
you’ll never amount to anything.
You’ll never cross the far horizon.
You’ll never rise to zenith
like a first magnitude star.
Because you won’t let go.
You’re hanging on too hard.
You’ve got a bit in the mouth of the wind.
You’ve got a rider in the race
that doesn’t know
she’s got a winged horse underneath her
like Pegasus or Buraq
no one’s ever laid a bet on
because there’s no way of getting the fix in
on Gabriel in the seventh.
The great thing about being a poet
is the less you are one
the better you can write.
It’s the same with everything else.
But it isn’t as if you reverse yourself
like an embryo in the womb of an hourglass
to let it say you.
Let it play you.
Let it paint you as you are
because if you get it right there’s no one there
to grab by the neck like a used guitar
to act upon.
There’s a mirror
but there’s no one looking at it.
It’s darker than a starless night
but it could see
long before anyone had eyes.
It amplifies its wholeness like the moon
in millions of drops of water
in millions of eyes
in tears and rivers oceans and lakes
by breaking into pieces like waves
like a path that’s strewn
with rose-petals
and the shards of shattered mirrors
as if to show someone the way
separation is a return to wholeness
and the many are not less than the one.
Originality is the lie
of an egotistical imagination.
Go ask the sea about creative collaboration.
Go ask the oracle at the end of the line
who you are and where you’re going
and he’ll tell you
you’re the journey the road takes.
Why cast an imperium of shadows
upon your intimate spaces
and huddle like a black hole
in the corner of your room?
Why stuff critical doctors
into the womb of your imagination
to see if your embryos are fit to be born
and then wonder why everything comes out dead?
Originality is an index
of how much you’ve been influenced by everything else
that flows into you like a galaxy
or a sea
that revels in the diversity of its oneness
in a low place
as if it were nothing
and all things were above it
at the table of life like salt.
Even in the smallest dewdrop of a womb
you can taste the world in the water.
Have you ever considered how much art owes to oxygen
and how little credit it gets?
Stop standing in the way of your painting
like Alexander in Diogenes the Cynic’s light.
Be a star.
Be radiant.
Shine.
But remember spontaneous poetic vision
doesn’t consult a calendar
to see what night it is
or what star it might be following.
And if one of your eyes says to the other
as if one saw reality
and the other the way things seem
am I my sister’s keeper?
Say to them both
as I do to you
about the poems
you’ve aked me to look at.
Less sleeper.
More dream.
Poetic insight
isn’t a mixer
you add to the black exlixir
you drink from the mooncup of your skull
to make it go down easier.
You take it straight in a single gulp
like the grail at the end of the quest
and though you won’t know
whether it’s Athenian hemlock
nectar and ambrosia
or the nacreous milk of pearls
that suckles you
like a cobra at the Medusa’s breasts
one that seals your death
the other a herb that heals
you’ll feel the stranger
who’s always changing inside
like a firefly trying to make its way through the universe
without up-to-date starmaps
or a drunk in the doorway
to show it the way home
lift the curse that is you
lift it like a mirage of water
like a veil of Isis
like a cataract on your third eye
no one has ever lifted before.
Oudeis aneile peplon.
And show you your ego-delusion
is just a wave on an infinite ocean of mind.
A ray of light just like all the others
who frustrate themselves
like moonmoths at the windowpane at night
trying to open the eyes of the blind flowers
before it’s time to bloom.
Look at the ants on the planetary globes
of the white peonies
waxing to full moon
witching for honey and sugar.
They don’t pry things open.
They know when it’s time
to turn an antenna from a divining rod
into a magic wand
that sets the peonies free as doves
with a kiss on the eyelids
that wake up
without a return address
at the back door
of the homeless envelopes
that stand like tents
in a desert of stars
that bloom in the fires
of enlightened loveletters
signed by the wind on sand
in a cosmic hourglass.
And I know you want to be famous.
But the moment you begin to believe
in your own legend
you turn it into a farce.
Stay ahead of yourself if you want to shine like a star.
Don’t let people know where you are.
Never burn your face in your own light.
Be a waterbird in space.
Don’t leave a trace
of where you’ve been
or where you’re going.
You think of literary immortality
as a fountain of youth.
But it’s just a dead scar
on a living wound.
The bone-box
of a homey afterlife
that aspires to be a pyramid
among smaller gravestones in the cemetery.
Get over your death envy
and let your bones speak for themselves.
And don’t abuse your inspiration
by only using it to tune the guitar.
You might make it to the platform on time
but you’ll still be late for the train.
You can spend your whole life
mastering shadows
like an occult discipline
that let’s you in on a dark secret
that’s only known to the blind
but you shed no light
on black matter
and you still won’t shine like a star
at a Toronto soiree of literary eclipses
who speak as if they were indelible enough
to have left their mark on the moon.
Better to be a watercolour in the rain
than get sucked into the blackholes of appearances.
Everybody knows who Shakespeare is.
They all know he wrote King Lear.
But what’s really weird
about being famous
is that Shakespeare doesn’t know
who Shakespeare is.
The genius of empathy
doesn’t wear a face on stage
like a passport to its identity
so it can relate to everyone
without leaving anyone out
because the ways things go
a negative space is never empty.
Dark abundance.
Bright vacancy.
Who are you waiting to be?
Who are you waiting to see?
Look now.
PATRICK WHITE
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