YOU FOUND ME WANTING AND YOU LEFT

YOU FOUND ME WANTING AND YOU LEFT

You found me wanting and you left

and the sea wept in me in the bay of my arms

like the new moon in the old as if

all the sorrows of the world were gathered there

and I didn’t know what to pray for anymore

as my tears turned red as the blood

of a hemorrhaging rose and the sundials

circled like the shadows of sharks in the water.

I lived in an oyster shell with a razor smile

like a disappointment to the moon, trying

in secret to turn my agony into black pearls

of occult wisdom that might retrieve the stars

we once walked under from the black hole

of love I fell into like a grave of light

I had to arise from on the other side, night

after night, my eyes in the rags of the mirages

I clung to as if that were the only skin I had left

in the desert cold of the moon after earthset.

Hurt? Destroyed? Did the rain crack like my tears

in the desiccated creekbeds of my starmud

trying to read their own lifelines in the deltas

of my eyes where they entered the void

and in the hieroglyphics that slashed my lips

like the wrecked cartouches of an heretical pharaoh

who had worshipped you alone as if the sun

had a feminine gender for anyone who travelled by night?

The worst fire in hell is the one that goes out on its own

like a curse that doesn’t make a difference

to the way you feel though you’ve mastered

this discipline of fire you kindled

with the arrows that longed for you

like the shadows of birds for a bow of moonlight

that stung like my fingertips for ever

having strung it with my spinal cord

like a guitar whipping its one good eye

like a soloist flagellating himself with the music

he used to play for you when you were

upstairs asleep, in the key of your dreams,

as if I could feather you in the most

incomparable nightskies you’ve ever

disappeared into like a fragrance of stars

from the rootfires of the wild asters you left in ashes.

Been a long time since the wind whistled

through the locust trees like a harmonica of thorns,

and the light etched albino ferns of ice on the windows.

The wound of your absence deepened my imagination

like a valley of death I had to firewalk through

like a scapegoat I drove out of myself

into a wilderness that was more about temptation

than atonement for anything I hadn’t done.

We may have separated like a wishbone

where the sacred rivers join the conversation

around the council of the three fires, wishing

each other the best we were capable of asking for,

though I was the one who came up short

like a strawman on a pyre to scare the crows

out of the starwheat, and you were as sure

as Spica in Virgo you were making all the right moves,

to fill your hollow silos with the staff of a new life

shy of my dark abundance illuminating

your bright vacancy by water-gilding your tears

with gold at the end of a moondog instead of a rainbow.

I tried to indulge you like the luxury

of a new beginning I couldn’t afford.

It’s hard to assess what might be of value

to someone when you’re always lavishing them

with the inestimable. I thought the stars

were more than enough but you wanted

diamonds for windows and sapphires for eyes

and all I had to offer in lieu of the real thing

were fractured telescopes of the way I saw the world.

PATRICK WHITE  

YESTERDAY'S PHILOSOPHIES ARE THE JUNTAS OF TODAY

YESTERDAY’S PHILOSOPHIES ARE THE JUNTAS OF TODAY

Yesterday’s philosophies are the juntas of today.

Here comes a man who wants to lay down the law

like the Burgess Shales. You can smell him with your eyes.

You can taste the machine-guns in his psychotic heart

waking up with the birds in the dawn

like a turkey vulture waking up with a bad cough

to kill another schoolhouse full of kids

learning C stands for coffins, to prove

parasites can be every bit as murderous

as predators in the killing fields of recess.

There’s an ideological maggot in his brain

and masses of worms in his heart. He wants

a better future for flies and if he can’t get it

by rigging an election, he’ll spread it

like the hydrophobic infection of a rabid dog.

Overwhelmed, shell-shocked into indifference

as if you were sleep-shopping among bombs

in a walking coma, as if you’d lost your fig-leaf

of protective innocence and your outrage

were flatlining, having found a way to hide

and disguise yourself like the living under

the dismembered corpses of the dead. You

ever watch a kid learning to tie its shoes

if it’s got any, and remember not so long ago

that was you, before you entered this abattoir

of razorblades that cut your eyelids off

with new ideas as if you’d just come of age?

Real flesh and blood, eyes, ears, noses,

fingertips and tresses of scorched hair wrinkled

like the filaments of lightbulbs that have burnt out,

brutalized by the occluded second-guesses

of the demonic abstractions that take possession

of the human heart and drain it like a tit for hungry ghosts.

Look at the daylilies in their death shrouds

withered by famine because of the toxic death

of millions of bees in the honey-pots of the wildflowers

who couldn’t adapt to the neonicotinoids

of the counter-evolution of Frankensteinian industrial research

wrecking sex for the birds and the bees.

I’m a reasonably safe Canadian who’s hoarse

from screaming murder like a higher education

with a free medical programme in the iambs

of Greek prosody that limp across the stage

to stand out from the chorus like a critical investigation

into the interrogative nature of tragedy

when it happens to somebody else. I’ve worn

blood-caked armchairs out trying to come to terms

with all the atrocities I’ve been left out of by luck

as if I should have been on that plane

with the rest of the world so I know what

I’m talking about when I say I can feel

the pity that purges the play so much easier

than I can what it’s like to identify a child

in the wreckage by the shoes they were wearing

before they had their legs torn off like dolls

in a vendetta of cordite and political voodoo.

I’ve been a bilious witness in the slaughterhouse

of the mad monkeys with a genius for hate

that makes even the unutterable silence feel ashamed

of being one of them by genetic acclamation

whatever you say about the inoffensiveness

of my immunized humanitarianism trying

to keep the snakepit at bay like a lapwing

that really hasn’t got much of a future left

to distract it from like the fledgling afterbirth of tomorrow.

Everybody bares their fangs like the moon

to defend the foundation stones of plack

the molars of their society were established on

like the alphabet blocks of their rights and constitutions

set up like a great barrier reef of checks and balances

to govern the big fish from eating all the little ones

until recently. The atavistic wolf nature

of the corporate blue whales has gone insane

killing the krill, that’s us, they live upon.

They’re eating the foodchain like the afterbirth

of a miscarriage of their own genetically modified appetites.

Thirty years of lean cows for every pharaonic year

of fat ones. Even the moon’s taken off

too much weight. There’s no wine goblet

in my brother’s saddlebags worth stealing anymore.

A business reputation for fair dealing

is the defamation of the character of a maggot

that knows better than most corporations do

when enough is enough. And worming their way

into the rest like the basic elements of life

is just institutional pleonaxia that will eat itself to death.

PATRICK WHITE