BRUTAL BLUE

BRUTAL BLUE

Brutal blue.

Deadly nightshade.

The heritage streetlamps coming on,

blooming without petals.

In the gloaming, lovely word,

the winter sky acts as if

it’s never even heard of us

and things do not so much appear

as emerge.

Brake-light poppies in the parking lots.

Musical chairs for cop cars and ambulances.

Afflictions of concrete.

The asphalt backs a dark horse.

It sweats light

that someone’s made a liar out of

from Jersey Joe’s Pizza Parlour,

the Giant Tiger department store,

and smeared like lipstick across a mirror

as if to say, yes, there was a kiss

but I didn’t mean it.

Separation where there should be love.

Miscarriages among the roses

bleeding on bedsheets from their eyes.

I’m one small town away from nowhere.

My heart on ice

as if it had just been pulled out of a river

like Rasputin, a northern pike,

an overturned boater.

My words curl in my mouth

like the scrolls of the gnostic leaves

and the bitter cold air

is trying to pierce my nostrils

and insert Venus

burning ferociously in the west

like a nose-ring

I’ll never be able to get out again.

Commotion and gaggle of geese on the ground

but high over head

lost in the glare of the light pollution

the wild ones

are haunting their way through my poems.

PATRICK WHITE