IT ISN'T THE STAR THAT IS SHINING.doc

IT ISN’T THE STAR THAT’S SHINING

 

It isn’t the star that’s shining,

it’s your mind;

it isn’t the wind that’s blowing,

the flower blooming,

the sky that is gloomy,

the doorbell that is ringing,

it’s your mind.

Where else but in this unwhere

without a cognitive sign

in the black mirror

that clarifies the shining

is the whole thing happening?

And even the mind itself

is a mere missive of the mindless

that hangs this delirium of a world as you sleep

from the end of your nose

and breaks into crows of laughter

when you wake up.

You see a body.

You look for a mind

you can recognize

in the patterns of breath

on the cold glass

that smudges the view

through the windowpane.

And for a moment your emotions

are an intuitive weathervane

well beyond the wind

out of reach of your sails

as you assess each star’s affinity 

and adorn your reflection with mirrors.

And you open your mouth like a keyhole

and take a peek

into the diary of the other

and warm the old bed with the hot coals

of your firewalking simulacra

dancing again with the demons

as if they’d finally got the joke.

But it’s all still just you

priming the flowers

of your own illusions

to summon the bees on demand.

You’re drunk on the dreamwater

of an inexhaustible mirage

as you kiss your own skull on the lips

to sex the dead

who go witching

for the blood of martyrs

like broken wishbones on a windowsill

that haven’t come true yet.

But don’t feel too bad.

We’re all doing it all the time

even me, even now,

dropping this dime on myself

as if I expected a reward for the truth

that acquits me like a chameleon

in a shapeshifting court

that changes its testimony like a river

without any banks

approaching the sea.

Egypt was built on less

than it takes to convince me

that what I know of a self

I can count on

is just a imaginary guest

trying to do his best

to be as thankful as salt

for the place he’s been exalted to

by the spacious host

of a palatial water-table

entertaining illustrious delusions.

Do the scorched stones of Carthage

remember their weeds?

Have the birds returned

to look for seeds in the spring?

There’s something uncanny about logic

in the midst of all these

dispossessed cornerstones

scattered like dice

that don’t know where to begin

or what to uphold

roll after roll

seven come eleven

sooner than heaven

can go off

like a firebell from hell

against the odds of a wall

that’s already come down.

I don’t cherish my misery enough

to make it the cosmic topic

of my local newspaper

like the birth of a new religion.

So I asked God

if I believed in her

and she said, “NO”.

It was the only proof she had

that I’d been faithful

to a god that wasn’t there.

 

PATRICK WHITE 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DUMB, GREY SKIES.doc

DUMB, GREY SKIES

 

Dumb, grey skies

and the last of the leaves to fall

hugging the trunks of their trees

like rifles at the Alamo

as everyone waits for the snow

like a bell waits for the next funeral.

I used to think I talked to myself

but now I realize

I’m not even part of the conversation.

I’m the empty chair at the round table

of some unconverted calendar

where every night

is the night of the full moon

and time is just another kind of weather.

And I don’t mean this nihilistically,

as if I were out to prove God was a fraud

even as I’m standing in her shadow.

And by the grace of my benevolent genes

I’m too stupid to be a cynic.

It’s just that I don’t let my eyes

get in the way of my seeing anymore

and grieving the loss of things and events

as if they were the emotional life of the air

seems exhaustively redundant

when it occurs to you like yesterday

that the sweetest recollection you have

is the missing witness that proves

you weren’t even there.

There’s no who’s who of the mind

that’s got my name in it

that isn’t a fiction of the wind

evolving its own themes

from the lifelines

on the palms of the falling leaves

flowing downstream on a river

that doesn’t consult them like maps.

There’s nothing and no one to follow

not even a self

when everything’s already here

in this moment

where there is no coming and going

no birth or death

no beginning or end

of what you pour in

or what you pour out

breath into breath.

I have suffered the lightning-stroke

of the sword

in the hands of the angel at the gate

burning like a wild fire

through the roots of the cedars of Eden

whenever I’ve tried to crawl back in

on my hands and knees

and I have silvered my leaves

like a Russian olive 

in the lustre of the radiance

of its underground rivers

that shine by a light of their own

whenever I’ve been driven out again

like a flower in late October

trying to make its own way in the rain.

Two blades of grace

that cut like the moon

through inseparable knots of water

forever on their way

to winning and losing the world like autumn,

as it is the last ghost of hope in the old wine

that dreams unsparingly of the new vine

until what has been

falls down drunk

in a delirium of the future

that can hardly remember its name.

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOUR EYES FOR AWHILE.doc

YOUR EYES FOR AWHILE

 

Your eyes for awhile

were the only eyes

I could see through

to catch a glimpse of god;

were windows into my own soul

that I could look through from the outside

without throwing the moon

through my reflection like a stone

in the hand of an angry boy.

And it was always as true

as the way your heart grew

that you could love strangers

easier than I do even now

after all these years of learning how

to talk to mirrors in their own language.

And you were not one woman

but all women forever

when I saw you once

bending down like the dusk

to touch the last of the flowers

as if you would never see them again.

As serene as the evening

there was no labour in your beauty

and I swear when I saw you that night

I felt as if I were the whole world watching

time put a finger to its lips

and pour its fountain

into the flow of your body

as if it were the sum of all passage.

And though I was your friend in all things

every evening since

the candle went out

in the lantern of a lost tomorrow

I have walked out into abandoned fields alone

and asked the saddest questions

of the most distant stars

knowing there is not enough light sometimes

even in the eyes of God

to be a companion of our sorrows.

And the questions grow longer

as the darkness deepens

the echo of my longing

in a well as dry as my skull

and closes its gates like scars.

And then those nights come

like a life or a day

or even just this moment

when I stop asking

why human suffering

is always indescribably true

and joyful as an irreproachable buffoon

sword-dancing alone with the moon

who writes me dangerous loveletters

as if she were the Lady of the Lake

receiving me back

like a funeral ship

into this mysterium of you,

I can almost believe that you know

even though the night mocks the crow

that pines for mercy

and turns its lightless face toward you

as if it could still feel

the warmth of the sun at midnight

in your eyes again

like the afterlife of light

playing with fireflies in the abyss

now that the summer constellations have gone down;

that somehow you must know

like a guitar

on the far side of a room

where someone is singing

as if they had their ear

to the womb

of your irrevocable absence

that binds me to you with every breath

I take for two

as if I had learned to live on death

to keep you alive in me

where you still flow through the seasons

on the nightstreams of my blood

like blossoms and leaves and stars

and the moon leaves no scars on the water;

Must know. Or a demon’s a kinder face

to bestow on the darkness

than a black hole without eyes,

though it’s taken many, long, painful years

for the night to share the light with its jewels again

and as many schools as there are fools to fill them

that even just one

of those slightly compassionate smiles

you would send across the room

to cool the furnace of my heart

with the lightness of one snowflake,

one feather

gracing a change in the weather,

knew more about love

as a raindrop knows the sea

than all of us

who have been washed up

on this cold, lonely shore together

thinking we may have been saved

for something more

than this tidal longing

to brave the sea again

and even if doomed to drown

as I have learned

from these shales of pain

that have carbon-dated the eras

of my missing you

like a life that didn’t

flash before my eyes

as I went down for good with everything,

to thank-you, o, yes,

with nothing but love and light in my heart

and your face in the eye of my solitude

as I stand before the sea in gratitude

to thank-you

as you well knew one day I could

for the generosity of the wound

that has run like my life

down these eyes

these windows

this page

these empty mirrors

of autumn rain

that have wept for years without you

just to see you again

for one moment more

than the time I have left

to know that I never will.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

thank-you for the generosity of the wound

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DON'T NEED TO KNOW WHO I AM.doc

DON’T NEED TO KNOW WHO  I AM

 

Don’t need to know who I am

as much as I once did

when autumn was more of a child.

Suspect I’m nothing in a good sense

though that could be just the illusory spin

I put on my growing intimacy with zeroes.

The one-candidate democracy of a tree

loses its votes like leaves

and retires into its roots.

Radix, radish, radical,

the old causes still cling to my boots

like starmud that won’t wash off

and I still comb out the hair

of comets that have yet

to fall from their haloes

and wake from their comas

to find me waiting there

right where they left me

in the wake of their light like a comma.

Don’t want as much as I once did

when I thought I was needy

and the way I take

looks more like sharing with others

for my own sake

than a scumlord evicting welfare mothers.

Love, poetry, clarity, wisdom

compassion, darkness and light

still creep into the apple

like night while I’m sleeping

to sweeten the green star in my chest

that looks over these mangers like seeds,

but more and more now

I’m a magus of the wind

who doesn’t lead or follow

anyone anywhere further than my next breath

though I’m sometimes weirded out

by the boundless shapes and Burgess shales

of my own uncentered circumference.

But chronic excitability

isn’t the same thing

as creative flare

just as indefinability

isn’t proof that nothing’s there

and I try to avoid both

without breaking

like the wishbone of a road

by taking the third extreme of the path I am

and going off in all directions at once

lightyears ahead of my own eyes like a star

that doesn’t know it’s shining.

So it’s always a little early for myths

to start connecting dots in the darkness

that will grow like cataracts and starmaps

over the clarity of the view

that is each one of us

without anything on

long before we were born

musing in our protean potential.

Ultimately what’s the difference

between a face

you can’t say is crazy

and a face you can’t say is sane?

And if you’re like me

and like to get off your throne

and wander incognito

through spaces in yourself

where the mirrors don’t recognize you

because there are no eyes in the darkness

that are your own,

and the seeing shrugs off

the stone-yoke of the bridge

that was erected between the seer and the seen,

and the dark matter of the black rose of being

isn’t templed in thorns

around the eye of a needle

we will all pass through eventually

like light through a gate as wide as the mind

that left it open,

if you’re like me and grow

by giving up much to hold on to more

than you could ever deface

in any scale of loss and gain

then you’ll throw your chances into the pan like dice

knowing there are no odds 

to weigh them against

except the last feather of life

you just breathed out.

And when they ask you where you’ve been

and what you’ve seen

by giving up your eyes

you’ll run down the mountain of the world

like the tears of time into eternity

and there won’t be a sea on the moon

you can’t fill like Atlantis in the empty lifeboat

you made of your mind

when you threw yourself overboard

in a sudden squall of stars

in the last act of the mystery

that negated your personal history

like a torch going out in a painted cave

to enlighten the night

by plunging its stars

like words on a window

into the eyes of a deeper darkness

than the light has ever known.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AM I TOO FAR AWAY.doc

AM I TOO FAR AWAY

 

Am I too far away for you

to hear my voice

calling out to you

like an autumn hill in the fog?

Your absence is archetypically protean

and missing you

I make things up

to amuse my sorrow.

I know I’m only teaching the rain

how to draw circles

and reading bedtime stories

to enraptured constellations

that will retell them

like myths of their own

just to ease the pain

of living themselves as they happen,

but I’d sooner dance with the fireflies

under flashing chandeliers

that astonish the light

that hides in the mirrors

I’ve polished from the radiance of my tears,

than beat the music out of my head with bones

or ask the freeborn of poetry

to stand guard outside the door

in the livery of headstones

while I trivialize matters of state

by imposing myself like a gate

on all who pass this way

like refugees and rivers 

with all they own

like the world

on the shoulders of bridges

who groan like lead

under the dead weight

of being the backbone

of an imperial history

they bear like an aquaduct without water.

So I play with your absence

in the foregone emptiness

as if it were a muse

that dishevels the bed

with the creative miscreance

of a darker genius than night

that delights in the coy taboos

that risk the mystic thresholds

of an illuminating vice.

And sometimes

when you’re the last star burning

on my event horizon

and I’m falling like my last penny

into the wishing-well of a black hole

that doesn’t give anyone a return on their money,

I press my ear to your voice

and listen to the intimate distance

like a star-crossed prophet of sin

crying out alone in the wilderness

to be tempted.

And some hear the sea

in the sex of your shell

and wind up drifting for years

in the rip-tides of their tears 

like a message for help

that raises its sails in a bottle

but I listen to the desert

that howls through your skull

like the deathbed confessions

of lonely gods untempled by the wind

and refuse to embalm my faith in pyramids

though I’ve been known

to slip more than one loveletter

like the Rosetta stone

of a lost dream grammar

like the shadow of a bird

with no return address 

under the heavy eyelids

of the setting moon

as if I had just asked something

of a sphinx on the fly

without expecting an answer.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AM I TOO FAR AWAY.doc

AM I TOO FAR AWAY

 

Am I too far away for you

to hear my voice

calling out to you

like an autumn hill in the fog?

Your absence is archetypically protean

and missing you

I make things up

to amuse my sorrow.

I know I’m only teaching the rain

how to draw circles

and reading bedtime stories

to enraptured constellations

that will retell them

like myths of their own

just to ease the pain

of living themselves as they happen,

but I’d sooner dance with the fireflies

under flashing chandeliers

that astonish the light

that hides in the mirrors

I’ve polished from the radiance of my tears,

than beat the music out of my head with bones

or ask the freeborn of poetry

to stand guard outside the door

in the livery of headstones

while I trivialize matters of state

by imposing myself like a gate

on all who pass this way

like refugees and rivers 

with all they own

like the world

on the shoulders of bridges

who groan like lead

under the dead weight

of being the backbone

of an imperial history

they bear like an aquaduct without water.

So I play with your absence

in the foregone emptiness

as if it were a muse

that dishevels the bed

with the creative miscreance

of a darker genius than night

that delights in the coy taboos

that risk the mystic thresholds

of an illuminating vice.

And sometimes

when you’re the last star burning

on my event horizon

and I’m falling like my last penny

into the wishing-well of a black hole

that doesn’t give anyone a return on their money,

I press my ear to your voice

and listen to the intimate distance

like a star-crossed prophet of sin

crying out alone in the wilderness

to be tempted.

And some hear the sea

in the sex of your shell

and wind up drifting for years

in the rip-tides of their tears 

like a message for help

that raises its sails in a bottle

but I listen to the desert

that howls through your skull

like the deathbed confessions

of lonely gods untempled by the wind

and refuse to embalm my faith in pyramids

though I’ve been known

to slip more than one loveletter

like the Rosetta stone

of a lost dream grammar

like the shadow of a bird

with no return address 

under the heavy eyelids

of the setting moon

as if I had just asked something

of a sphinx on the fly

without expecting an answer.

 

PATRICK WHITE