I'M A SAVAGE MYSTIC WITH CHAMELEONIC PASSIONS

I’M A SAVAGE MYSTIC WITH CHAMELEONIC PASSIONS

I’m a savage mystic with chameleonic passions.

Serpent fire with meteoritic nano-diamonds for eyes.

The black slash of the wounded crescent of the new moon

bleeding to death like a thorn among the willows

who grieve for me like Arab women under their veils.

I’m a house of ill-repute on the outskirts of the zodiac

and under my eaves and eyelashes I can hear

the storm cloud pigeons cooing like shepherd moons.

I’m dark ore with a star in it, a star

giving birth to dark ore where I mine the eclipses

that pour out of me like igneous swords and snakes

I temper in the dead seas of my mystic watersheds

hissing in the cool bliss of a cosmic riverbed

waiting for the next flashflood of insight

just to hear the frogs singing again among the wild irises

who come with blades of their own as sharp as mine.

And this could be the slipppery slope to solipsism,

subjective idealism, rabid Narcissism,

Vishnabandu’s eighth century Mind-only

non-conception of inconceivable enlightenment

being everything all at once the moment being

ceases to exist chasing its own tail around the mulberry bush,

I’m never all that sure myself, but for the moment,

I’m swimming through stars like flying fish,

I’m drying the painted tear on the face of a clown.

I’m trying to put a smile on my deathmask.

I’m listening to Mayan calendars and crystal skulls

in the gloomy backrooms of human sacrifice

weeping like chandeliers of prophetic lightning

shattering my peace of mind like black mirrors of insight

thrown down at my feet like the ten commandments

brought up from the valley of death like imported brides

to marry those brought down from the mountain.

And all I can say, is, aw, come on now, give me a break,

I can remember when you guys used to feed

your Pythian pythons sweetcakes after every oracle.

What have you got them on now, Qualuds?

And even if the world does end

when the sun rises in the west at midnight

and no birds sing in the eucalyptus trees of Israel

where bull-dozed Arab villages used to stand,

and the shepherds of the black camel

build tall buildings in the desert in the Kuwaiti desert

where the black camel is obviously oil,

and the last man in the world is Chinese

and grovels in the dust at his sister’s feet,

and the Nazca lines turn out to be a starmap

to the place where extraterrestrials used to stage

the discus throw for flying saucers

when they put on the Olympics once every four light years;

right now while I have a rare chance to,

I’d rather sword dance with enlightened fireflies

to the hillbilly fiddles of the summer crickets

against your gathering storm on the hillside

on the thresholds of life and insight

than goose-step to your martial requiem

on the event horizon of a black hole.

And who knows, if you go a little deeper

into the dark with all three of your eyes open

you might find a dragon like me

full of serpent fire with the alpha and omega

of crescent moons for fangs and claws,

one of which kills you, and the other cures,

spiritual antidotes to toxic cosmic glands,

this remedy in the heart of the disease,

this herb of the moon on the tongue of a snake,

this Eden I’ve flown into off course today,

not a cinder, but a nightbird in the eye

of the hurricane rose of Armageddon,

where the nations meet on the plains of Jazreel

to dance themselves to death in a moshpit

at a rave of wavelengths out to save the world.

PATRICK WHITE