THIS GHOST OF A VOICE

THIS GHOST OF A VOICE

This ghost of a voice isn’t doomed

by the silence of your false dawn.

I’ve outlived many more graves

than you have stones to cast at me.

You might fancy yourself a nabob

of taste and sophistication

but you’re afraid to step out of yourself

into this wilderness where everything

is anointed toxically in a crown of fangs.

The jealousy of shepherd moons

grazes a small herd of scapegoats

on the astroturf of greener pastures

than I could ever imagine

the rising tides of these lunar dunes

the wavelengths of the vipers negotiate

through the coral reefs like the shadows

of sun dials in the abysmal valleys

of the quiet mountains, ever transcending

the lowest stations of the superficiality

you aspire to like the polish

on an illustrious edition of emptiness.

I may not have been so enculturated

in this wilderness to the luxuries

of time and space you dawdle away

in your walled garden with prophylactic editors

at the lapis lazuli bull gates of Babylon

you dream of riding in triumph through

like Alexander winning some strategic

literary award, or Nero on a reading tour of Greece,

and it’s less of a plausible improbability

than it is a probable impossibility

I’ll ever become so avuncular in my attitude

some Faberge Easter bunny somewhere

isn’t going to look upon me as dangerous.

That said, which of your neighbours

dumped the carcass of the moon

with that gibbous skull of a goatshead

in the tainted wellsprings of the muses

you drink from like spit out of the mouths

of hydra-headed acephalic friends of the Medusa?

And when it gets right down to ghost writing

the memoirs of famously underestimated

trap door spiders in hard bound books

I’d still rather sting like a rattlesnake

that bite like a swarm of blackflies

singing like a starcluster of black dwarfs

down by the lake in May when the light of the mind

is still too intense to risk the mirrors

you hold up to your narcissistic nature, getting a suntan.

The thirteenth house of the dispossessed

might not have many friends in the zodiac

it can rely on, but then there are more

first magnitude stars burning like heretics at the stake

on the wrong side of the ecliptic

gone slumming in my neck of the woods

than there is phosphorus in the entirety

of your collected matchbooks in a library

of sodden fireworks that fizzled out

before they were lit like a sad substitute

for the Leonids at the peak of their radiant downfalls.

Baa, baa, black sheep. If you’ve lived

long enough in darkness as I have

it’s easy to tell a real eclipse from a lullaby

trying to pull the wool over our eyes

to mystify the starmaps with blizzards of tinfoil

attempting to evade the draconian radar

of anti ballistic missile systems like a low flying kite.

Or a snow globe of the moon with no ice caps.

The truly inspired live in a world

where they never take cigarette butts for granted.

Under the gravestones of the lowliest of the low

you can sometimes find dark jewels

more lustrous than diamonds in the black haloes

of comets skinny dipping in a sun that shines at midnight.

Have you ever had sex with a muse

when she was hungry and they were about

to turn the hydro off like a lightbulb in her housewell

or have you always lain down with a sump-pump

in the basement of your Pierian spring?

Vox populi with just a trace

of an aristocratic accent you picked up at prep school.

Preparation for what? Does it matter

or would it really be too, too, uncool to care?

Laissez fare. So turn the weathervanes

once they realize they haven’t got the wings

for lift off, they’re never going to get off

the barn roof, cock of the walk or not,

however they strut like astronauts,

the haven’t got the right stuff for ignition.

It’s not the alarm clock that wakes the dawn up.

Or do you still think the fool you send off

to jester school, sooner or later, will return to his own,

a sacred clown? Do you still plead with the muse

like a lost and found for things you never

had to go very far to seek? Speak quickly

before you make mellifluous liars out of the bees

coming and going in and out of the mouth

of that wax deathmask you wear

like a helmet of insincere honey over your head

as if you were a dead ringer for a real scar

Zen jousting in a cold war with your own stinger?

PATRICK WHITE

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