AN ANTI-DREAMCATCHER
An anti-dreamcatcher
who likes to give the cool jewels
that take her place in the window
a taste of the spider.
She’s catches stars
and unwary butterflies in her web
that she can read like music
and gives them each their own myth
and a place in her constellation.
She’s a blues guitar that’s not
on the straight and narrow.
She weaves her own strings
into any rendition of chaos she wants.
The darkness is a friend of hers.
She’s been maltreated by the light.
Her eyes are a secret experiment
deep underground
where she’s looking for anti-matter
like proof of the night she was born.
Everything about her is new
and darkly modern
but if you look more closely
at the circular firing squad of Stonehenge
you’ll see that she’s the revenge
of an extinct species
that’s learned to live on nothing.
She’s a black equinox in handcuffs
that jingle like bracelets
she swears she made
from the old ecliptics and equators
that used to ring her wrists like a tree.
Fossils of rain
embedded in her heartwood
you can still see the scars
climbing up her arm like a calendar
or the rungs of snakes on rope-ladders.
And you just know
she’s looked into the eye of the dragon
and it was the dragon that turned to stone.
She’s got sisters
but this Medusa cut out on her own
to see what the snake-pit of the world looks like
when you peer into it like a mirror
that doesn’t dread your eyes.
Compassion isn’t sharing
forgivable lies with the cold truth.
The immeasureable abyss
doesn’t sit at the feet of blackholes
but she doesn’t get caught up
in those old fishing nets.
She sheds her skin like lingerie
and finds her own way in the way she is
so much like water on the moon
still enthralled by the last eclipse
that showed Alice her true reflection
in the looking glass
just before everything turned to stone.
The snake knows more than the rabbit
and she’s got a tongue on her
that’s the tuning fork of a lightning strike
and despite how she tries to disguise it
her intelligence is an ineradicable habit
she bears like a curse
and flaunts like a blessing.
And she’ll dance for you
when she’s in the right mood
to flow along with the music.
She’ll rise like serpent fire up your spine
and open all your chakras
like blossoms on a dead vine
but you’ve got to find the right flute
and you’ve got to play like wine
that’s been aged a long time in a dark place.
PATRICK WHITE
