JUST WANT TO STAY INSIDE

JUST WANT TO STAY INSIDE

Just want to stay inside. Don’t want to see anybody.

Don’t want to be anybody. Just want to forget for awhile

that I exist. I’m sick of being besieged behind my eyelids

by a hundred thousand ghosts all gibbering at me

because they were reincarnated as blackflies

that want to be treated with the same poetic protocol as swans.

Flake off and find another furnace to thaw on

and take all these weeping mirrors with you

that can’t look at the stars without smearing them.

I’m sick of splashing through them barefoot.

Go puddle on somebody’s else’s floor. I’ve gone

as deep as I’m going to go with you. Don’t want to mean

anything to anyone anymore. Maybe

there’s someone out there you can tie

your umbilical cord to like a leash on a pet submarine.

Just want to get clean. Take a meteor shower

like the Arabs do when they can’t find any water in the desert

to wash their faces for prayer. Tayyamum.

Who knows? Maybe I can grind my eyes into lenses

like Spinoza in his attic for myopic glaciers

that don’t believe in global warming though the proof

is running down their cheeks in tragic laughter.

Want to be crowded out, effaced, erased like the leftover seraph

of a letter in chalk dust on your blackboard

that dropped out of your alphabet like a Mayan glyph

running in the blood of another futile sacrifice

to avoid the next astronomical catastrophe

they brought down on themselves from the ground up.

Feel bad about this. Mean. And casually ungenerous.

My heart was a wild rose a moment ago, now

it’s a withered green star with the bulbous body

of a black widow spider at the bottom of a teacup

that’s about as Zen as venom, leaking out of itself.

biliously weary of prognosticating the future for people

numb as pharmacies in their outlook on life.

Don’t want to reach out to anyone. Don’t want

anyone reaching out for me when I’m not the one

who’s drowning. Just want to be an empty lifeboat

drifting down my own mindstream as composed

as a leaf torn by the wind from a tree like a censored page

of the Book of Life. Don’t want to be there at dawn

like another excited bird breaking into song

when the sun comes up like the Taliban

and splashes acid in my eyes because I can read

the signs of our demise in three dead languages

and one that’s on its deathbed mouthing the sacred syllables

of its last words fouling the air with lies about the disease

that it’s dying of like everyone else listening to a guru

like a poultice to draw the infection out and break the fever

of the nightmare they’re sweating in. I don’t need a holy man,

selling snakeoil like an antidote to the dragons of serpent fire

running through my veins when I’ve got

home remedies of my own I can administer to myself

like the breast milk of the Medusa that can keep me

from turning to stone with a tincture of the lunar serum

I can drink from my skull cup, bottoms up, in a single gulp.

Spare me your alibis. The interrogation’s over. Forego

the duplicity of your two way mirrors and all your mea culpas

enraptured by the felicity of your own happy sins or not.

All the lanterns of the truth in the hands of the nightwatchmen

are nothing but fireflies covered in soot. Chimney sparks

flying out of a black hole of creosote to tar and feather the stars.

I’m out of here like the heigh ho Silver of yesteryear.

You might hear me howling late at night

like the last of the hunted wolf shamans on the wind

high above the timberline where the air is lucid and thin.

You might be a snakecharmer but I can still shed you like skin.

PATRICK WHITE