COME TO ME IN RAGS OF BLUE FIRE

COME TO ME IN RAGS OF BLUE FIRE

Come to me in rags of blue fire, you, muse, you,

the gardenia face on the other side of the black gate

whose ancient spears are tipped with the taste

of wounded moons and iron roses. Do not be swayed

by the blossoms on the cherry bridge,

or why the shadows of the brick children

on the walls of atomic decisions

haven’t been signed by the artists. Give up

your fixation for amateur comet-watching in the rain

and come to me, touch me, hold me, consume me

in the flames of your igneous dispositions,

pierce me with stars, tear me on the thorns of your light,

as you have loved me in revery, distress, and tears,

as you have loved me in horror and humiliation

and then yourself lain down with me

in the mass graves of the student guitars

that were raped and murdered in the limelights

of the show-bizz army trucks,

antidotes weeping all night from the crescent of your kinder fang

to keep my heart alive like a toad in winter,

bring me now the night fire of your tigers

and the fragrance of wild sapphires blooming on the wind

when you return like an atmosphere to find me

as only you know how to find me

listening to my scars eat through the silence of dry creekbeds

revising the flash floods of their nervous breakdowns

with the short hands and amputated fingers of cactus alphabets.

Shall I call you dark names, and season my calling

with black swans and histrionic willows;

shall I summon you by silvering the Russian olive,

or bleeding the cherry to paint a man without lips,

or will you make me labour for nothing

in the sweatshops of the underpaid cocoons

when my tongue’s already as thick as a shoulder-pad?

Come, just come, come with wings, come with fireflies

and trust I’ve always preferred you to suicide,

come with bells and starfish calendars, come with candles and cedar

and tears in the mirror that don’t belong to anyone

and remember what I’ve died for when you asked,

come with fish and peacocks and orchids,

with squandered lakes bruised by the moon,

with black roses shedding their crows like witches,

come to me like an emerald that needs healing,

come with fingertips, breasts, eyes, a windfall of soggy peaches,

and believe in the poor goat whose piety’s a broken horn,

lift him up like rain above the sphinx in a desert ripe with diamonds,

and let him know, softly remind him, caress and confine him

like a cemetery covered in a keyboard of snow

until he confesses there’s an asylum in the heart of chaos

that sings to itself like an emergency constellation,

more enthralling than all the rest, a black waterstar

you are compelled to turn the lights off everywhere to be.

PATRICK WHITE