TRYING TO MAKE PEACE WITH MY DEMONS

TRYING TO MAKE PEACE WITH MY DEMONS

Trying to make peace with my demons

without having them see me as weak.

I’m like the moon. I’ve always

turned one cheek toward the earth,

but only one. I keep the dark one in reserve.

I’m sowing seed stars like dragon’s teeth

in eclipse. This is the black mirror.

This is the light upon light that burns

without making itself visible.

This is the cruel starmap

I had tattooed on my eyes in Braille

so I’d never forget I never had anywhere to go

but into exile. All the most beautiful death masks

have no faces behind them. There are

no nightwatchmen here smiling down

on the bright side of things. And sometimes

it feels my emotions are black creosote

on the inside of a cold, tin cookie-cutter

waiting for the next chimney fire.

Have you noticed the stars? They

don’t twinkle as much as they do on earth.

They’re not ruffled by turbulent atmospheres.

They pierce you like hot needles

through your eyes and your earlobes.

They look straight through you like a voodoo doll.

This is what happens when you take clarity

to such an extreme you burn off all the dross

in blue acetylene. You burnish gold

in a clear-eyed fire. And all the windowpanes

that ever came between you and Arcturus

melt away like glaciers body surfing

their own tears, and you’re left standing there

so naked you’re a watersnake that’s just

shed its skin like its last cigarette paper

twenty miles from anything that’s still open.

One way of getting back at the landlord

is to paint all the rooms in the house black

at your own expense. But that’s not

what this is, and the full moon at harvest time

is not necessarily riding a golden chariot

through a slum. The nightbirds aren’t intimidated

by scarecrows. The fires dance for war

as well as peace. The cauldron boils like dry ice.

The god’s released. The ghosts rejoice.

The priests show up too late. Someone’s left

the gate open. The homeless sit in state.

You get the picture. If this isn’t Damascus

you’re still bound to go blind on the coal road

to diamond. You’re going to get knocked off

that beautiful white horse with swan’s wings

and spurs trying to outshine Castor and Pollux

in Gemini. You’re going to land face down

in the starmud however you want to look at it.

You’re going to make a grand exit

to coincide with your entrance like a God particle

that can’t make up its mind whether

its an existential shadow of its former self

or just another wavelength following its own path

like a hidden secret that wanted to be known.

In this place only the great heretics

are isolated enough to go it alone.

Their solitude is perfected by harsh dragon sages.

The martyrs cry like arrows in a crowd.

The crows know more about black magic

than the doves do about sacrifice.

The dragons pledged to healing and protecting

wear their scales like scalpels of plate armour

that takes the tumour out of the wound

like a new moon out of a bad moonrise.

The eagles don’t sport their war bonnets

like feather dusters. And neither species

opens its talons like a wildflower in the starfields

emblematic of the triune crescents of the moon

without remembering two together make a third.

And that’s the one that kills you back into life.

That’s the poison thorn that teaches you

how to live without a thermometer

and taste the water for yourself

to know whether it’s hot or cold.

That’s the one that comes to you

like a lunar grail to drink the black elixir

in the heart of the fever, and holds it up to you

like the high priestess of dead muses

and you can’t see any stars in her eyes

to prophecy whether it’s life or death she offers

but you intuit it’s going to be excruciatingly transformative

and you swallow it all down in a single draft

so as not to soil your calling with hesitation.

Let the moment come. Armageddon or Eden alike.

Some sip from the fountains like garter snakes

hoping to be mistaken for one of the birds.

Others swim in the watersheds of inspiration

and there’s more crazy wisdom on the dark side

of their words, than there are third eyes unafraid

of staring out of the shadows of their own insight

as if their visions were only meant to be seen in the light.

But not all the flowers close up at night

as if their revelations depended on the sun.

Look down. You can see waterlilies blooming in the muck.

Look up. You can see eyes like stars shining out of the dark.

PATRICK WHITE