I CAN FEEL THE RAGE INSIDE, A GAMMA RAY STAR

I CAN FEEL THE RAGE INSIDE, A GAMMA RAY STAR

I can feel the rage inside, a gamma ray star,

burning through me like a cigarette heater

through the upholstery of an over-used couch

with enough chump change in its pockets

to set up shop as a parking meter. No fire in your voice,

your song isn’t flammable, you didn’t get

the inside out, your leaflet of a poem doesn’t turn red

in the fall. There’s nothing seasonal about the dead.

But run for office, you might get elected

for all the cheesecake issues and anthems

you stand up for like a reflexive erection

that’s never died, in the Elizabethan sense of the word,

for anything you could bring to consummation.

You should be racked by inspiration just once but well

for treason against the muse. You should have the screws

put to you to get you to open your mouth

and let something out like a scream so high-pitched

it’s beyond earshot, though the voice is undeniably yours.

I see a lot of tattoos that are very fashionably done,

but where are the scars, where are the wounds,

where is the full face of the harvest moon

pitted and cratered by the creative impact

of a meteoric life with its radiant in the Pleiades?

Did you paint that persona of a deathmask

in your own blood, or did it just come that way?

Did you carve it out of the heartwood of a bleeding cedar

on the sacrificial altar of an Aztec table saw,

or is it some kind of medicinal bark

you brought back to remind you of your travels?

And I could go on. But it’s a waste of time.

And you’d go away, please, thinking the dragon’s unkind,

when all it’s trying to do is throw the moon

through your window, vandalize you with a little Zen,

fire up your maple trees as if they were burning heretics.

Get you to trust your own instincts, instead of

relying on books about the way things should look

for advice. You ever sword dance barefoot with razorblades?

Anyone ever ripped your heart out and ate it,

saying grace as a compliment to your nobility

as they chewed on it like gum till it lost its flavour?

There’s always an absence in the truth of what we’re living

as if we were missing something crucial. Beauty

is more deeply revealed by a compassionate action

than a contemplative world in a walled garden

where vagrant states of being fountain and flower

in the third eye of the firestorm sweeping over you

like autumn burning its memoirs. Do you know

how much light you can generate like Venus in the Pleiades

just before dawn, by deepening your shadows

to enhance its luminosity? Enraptured by the darkness

within you like the infernal perfume of a flower

that blooms in fire, you’ve got to break more

than a few taboos like chains on a gate

guarded by angels with flaming swords

if you want to get back to the garden

you and the snake were exiled from

for taking Adam along for the ride of his life.

What kind of a temptation could it have been

if it didn’t bring sin into the world like a deciduous tree

among the evergreens? Be honest with your evil

and you’ll never be called upon to lie to the truth.

PATRICK WHITE