MY FINGER ON THE TRIGGER

My finger on the trigger of the crescent moon

I hold like a gun to my head,

or should I offer my throat to its blade,

unbind the flag of my blood from its pulley,

pull down the poppy

that exalts in the wind and the light

from this sad station of passing shadows

that mourns the death of the night like birds

in a burnt-out forest of blossoms and ashes?

I have the emotional life of a bell

rooted in rock like the columbines

that have mastered a silence I aspire to,

lamenting the metal in my blood

that rusts like the afterlife of iron,

defeated pollen no bee will gather, hive, or honey.

I am passionate dust,

not the powdered auburn

that stains the stamens on the stargazer lilies,

I bleed like a metal,

and I am leafless year round,

my seeing does not follow the sun like a heliotrope;

I am a bowl full of stars, a radio dish

listening for signs of life,

one word to startle the ancient hiss of creation

that keeps returning me to this moment

to cross swords with the clock,

even knowing how time will pierce my heart.

What folly to expect a horn to flower,

what madness to weed the stars

and expect a harvest

to fill the waiting silo of the railroad granary

that funnels nothing but air and echoes

into an abyss that lingers like a famine.

There are no more fortune-cookies in my kisses,

the constellations that once slid across my eyes

like an escalator approaching zenith

all look like punctuation marks without a text,

kells without an inaugural scripture

that isn’t a sigh of miscarried beginnings,

the desiccated afterbirth

of a pen with wings

that wasn’t strong enough

to crack its way out of the cosmic egg and sing, just sing

for the celestial fuck of it.

Caw. Chirp. Caw. Chirp. Caw.

Blank. Loaded. Blank. Loaded. Blank.

The hammer I was using

to build a palace of light and water,

to be able to nail my coffin shut with the truth,

coming down

on the anvil of the heart like the pulse

of a stagestruck bullet.

PATRICK WHITE