TOOK IT TO EXTREMES
Took it to extremes to see how much
people would care if they were told
it was in their own self-interest to
look after
another. That feeding the poor, easing
the fever of the ill, might be the
privilege
of privileges for those who call
themselves healers.
If money is the root of all evil, don’t
stick your nose in flowers with tainted
pollen
or you’ll go the way of the honey
bees.
None of the petals love you and green
is the most perishable colour of them
all. Comes
the fall and that wad of bills will
shed you
like a turncoat for opening you’re
wallet
like a pine cone in the middle of
winter.
What you want to do is learn to bloom
in fire
like the udumbara flower once every
seven thousand years. Do you see how
inflammable the tears of the dolorous
conifers are?
You can make a little fire for yourself
of dry moss, twigs, and birch bark and
not
let anyone else sit at it but the elect
in the board rooms of an ancient
religion.
I eat you. Now you eat me. That way
we’re always full. Leavened bread
from genetically modified wheat
rises like a loaf of the harvest moon.
We can talk to the mythically inflated
shadows
within the magic circle of our own
prophetic skulls in a Stonehenge of
moondogs
haloed with a hint of brass on the
clouds
or the aura of fool’s gold glowing at
night
on the low hanging branches of an
avalanche
of windfalls when the moon descends
like an ax
on the nape of snakey apples in the
grass.
We can remember the war bonnets we
tarred
and feathered like black swans for
non-compliance
with starmaps that sounded more like
treaties
than a land grab. O the music of the
spheres
is a celestial requiem. The lightyears
are paced
like professional mourners learning how
to dance
like ghosts, and the plumes on the
horses
of the hearse are black as the turkey
vultures that circle
and swarm the corpse of the Great
Square of Pegasus
going down in the west over the Lanark
hills,
slowly dying like an inspired sacrifice
in
the name of humanity in myself and
others
I quickly came to hate for the sake of
the tribute,
not knowing if it was a comic death or
the life of the party that was hardest
to believe.
I celebrated against the odds that
praise
was enough to overcome the triumphs
that we suffered in a holy war where
the cause
was already lost long before we took
our vows
to terminate ourselves before we caught
on
like a firewall that didn’t work to
stop the flames.
The whole hillside is burning its slash
off
like the ashes of the sacred clowns who
polka-dotted their faces they painted
in the spit paste
of an urn that had scattered them
prematurely
like the blossoms of a rootfire
breaking into the open.
PATRICK WHITE
