SOFT EASY TEMPERATE MORNING
Soft easy temperate morning.
The black walnut trees
are laid back in themselves like idle guitars
as their leaves pick out random notes on the wind
like the ghosts of old songs
they wrote a long time ago.
Bliss is joy with just a touch of sorrow
to deepen the taste of happiness
like two sisters of emotion
sharing the same spirit.
One a river.
The other an ocean.
PATRICK WHITE
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
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
