DISAFFECTED

DISAFFECTED

 

Disaffected with what I am most passionate about.

Sick of observing the collaborative subtleties

between a curse and a blessing

as if they were two fangs of the same snake.

You may feel you’re the same person at night

as you were in the morning

but it all depends on how space bends the light

whether you’re the answer to a dream

or just another good guess at what you might have been.

Couldn’t care less whether you consider me

a winner or a loser.

The only difference I can see

is that the winners do their crying out loud in crowds

and the losers weep alone at home.

There’s nothing you can’t achieve

in front of a microphone

and there are fruits of minor talents

all over the ground

like a windfall of knowledge

on how to spoonfeed their highchair audience

apple sauce

to prove it.

Like a star in the darkness

before the arising of signs

I like to keep two steps ahead of my shining

because the only place I ever felt at home

around a fire of my own in the night

was the profound thoughtlessness

of my unambitious genius

looking into the flames

like the first draft of the best book ever published.

My zodiac hasn’t been re-zoned for residential housing

since I burnt down the neighbourhood

to improve the view of what’s beyond

my event horizon

when I’m not home.

Mama may have.

And Papa may have.

But God bless the child that’s got its own.

My idea of living the life of the mind

is not a cannibal poet

serving up skullbowls of brain

that tastes like someone else’s insight.

Better to walk in the dark than in a false light.

Better to sit still and know than raise your voice

as if you were raised like a boor

who didn’t know enough

to take your mouth off at the door

when you enter into a covenant with silence

by walking on words

like a fisher of men

who takes one look at their souls

and throws them back in.

 

PATRICK WHITE