WALKING STRAIGHT THROUGH THE COBWEBS

WALKING STRAIGHT THROUGH THE COBWEBS

Walking straight through the cobwebs of old emotions,

trying to get these straitjackets off me, these

brown starclusters that stick but never seem to shine.

Don’t care if I’m in or out of my mind, enough’s enough

and comes a time to take a bath in your own grave

to wash all these ghosts off like the smoke of old fires

that returned to their urns like shepherd moons a long time ago.

And I still can’t tell if that’s a rose petal or an eyelid of blood

under the fingernail of the crescent moon

when she scratched the eyes out of her prophetic skull.

Tired of asking for clarity and being answered in labyrinths.

The more I see the more alone I feel. I’ve been

disciplined by catastrophe long enough to know

how to build bridges of fire across the mindstream

without extinguishing my reflection like a torch

in my own awareness. Suspension bridges

woven of spinal cords like the suicide nets

around the Peace Tower. Dream catchers, yes,

but who can stop the nightmares from falling to their deaths?

The scars grow old as the tongue leather of leeches.

Time for them to drop off like deathmasks on a pilgrimage

that just couldn’t keep up with the unholy pace of my blood.

Tired of waltzing with bear traps in a plastic marijuana patch.

Weary of arranging flowers so they’re not embarassed by the stars

that are wearing the same thing this year,

as they always do in the fall, when it’s not their wardrobe,

but our eyes that are renewed by their shining.

Not a crusade in advance of hope, not the retreat

of apostate despair, nor yet a sideways move

to get out of the way of anything I labour

under the delusion for convenience

I was meant to experience without being consulted.

It isn’t the stump that has to fear the lightning.

Asleep or awake, it’s all the same vision to a sorcerer

casting spells on the moon like oxymoronic dream grammars

that don’t come with parachutes or safety nets

to catch the flying fish when they swan dive back into the abyss.

What’s a thought? What’s an emotion?

Why do the butterflies sting worse than killer bees?

Why do the scalpels of thought only dance with amputees?

PATRICK WHITE