THE LIE IN YOUR THROAT

THE LIE IN YOUR THROAT

 

The lie in your throat:

another lapis luzuli nightengale

you’ve added to a Byzantine mechanical tree,

dead meat down your own well.

What’s the point of taking centre stage

if you’ve got this huge, astronomically expansive

iridescently supersensible soap-bubble around you

like a womb that doesn’t intend

to ever let go

as the stars grow further apart

resigned to the distances between us?

My heart is an alloy of darkness and silence.

I’ve always been able to imagine my way out of anything

from a black hole to a leg-hold trap

but now I’m zoned out in hyperspace

before the monstrous enormity

of this protean emptiness

like a universe that’s suddenly realized

the way to last forever

is just run out of beginnings.

So nothing ever gets born

and nothing ever perishes.

But it’s underwhelming yourself

to spend a life

trying to sweep the stars

out of the sky

with your eyelashes

like the constellation of an ex-lover

condemned to the slums of a zodiac

slated for demolition.

And I’m not content to ride the tides

that come and go

like a skeleton in a lifeboat

holding on to some last hope of rescue

someone will eventually throw a lifeline

to a puppet on the rocks.

And there’s an exquisitely fine line

between cynicism and serenity

just as there is between

the metal in the stone of the heart

and the sword that no one can pull from the fire

or give back to the lake in devotion

because it falls upon itself

like the reflection of the moon

snailing its way to enlightenment like an open wound.

In short, I don’t know anymore about

who the fuck I am

than I do who you are

and one mile east is always

one mile west of here

and there’s a light, there’s fire,

and only stars in a black mirror

deeper than night

could suggest your beauty

on both sides of my eyes

when I am summoned by these images of you

like water to a tree on the moon in full blossom.

And it’s getting harder and harder to know

whether it’s the torch I’m holding

or me that’s upside down,

or the darkness that’s lying in wait

like the shadow of an assassin

raised by the light

to put it out

so I take the lid off my mind

like a masonjar of fireflies

I let go like sparks from a chimney

to shake out into whatever constellations they want.

And seeing the north star that I have followed for years

like the truth and constancy of a love sonnet

feeling baffled, lost, a little out of place

not knowing how to go before itself into the darkness

like a lamp in the arms of a journey

and its own blood

the only map of the heart it’s got to go by

in the melee of all this liberated radiance

afraid to follow itself

to the source of the hesitant waters

that silt the banks of the lifeline on its palm

with stars you can plant in

like pyramids in good soil;

I aspire to my higher side

and set my eye like a jewel

at the nave of a dreamcatcher

I’ve hung in your window like a new dimension

you can follow in all directions

and still be true to the night

like the first star of an eye

that ripened in darkness

like a bead of light

that runs like water down an apple

and tastes of your own seeing

like a nightstream flowing down

the mountains of the moon

with only that sea of shadows

you cast like breadcrumbs

and crosswalks on the water

to guide you out of the harbour

like a tide without a lifeboat,

blood without a heart,

or the lie that’s caught in your throat

like a harp of the moon

you keep pulling apart like a wishbone

or a witching stick at a sacred joining of rivers

trying to divine your own waters

as if they always flowed under your feet

like a secret path that’s only a secret

to those that walk it alone.

 

PATRICK WHITE  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I HAVE PASSED BEYOND RAGE

I HAVE PASSED BEYOND RAGE

 

I have passed beyond rage

like light through a shattered lense

to try and understand

with an open, clear mind

the brutality of a species

that upstages its own humanity

by sticking its head up its own ass-end

for insight into why

it’s up to its neck in shit.

The daffodils may be greening

their spiritual third eyes

like periscopes coming up

to scan the scene for survivors

and it’s all well and good I suppose

to try and win the sharks over with band-aids

and charm the demons that encroach like night

with the tinkling of mystic chandeliers,

but we’ve been killing each other

for millions of years

as if the way we walked upright out of the tall grass

down the long road of our new perspective

were just a more efficent way

of exterminating humans by the brainload

as if they were the passing thoughts

of a savage liar

in an abandoned embassy

burning people like paper

committed to the voices in the fire

that rage like prophets in a fortune-cookie

of our forthcoming end.

And you can cherish

the writing on the wall

as if it were God’s last loveletter

just before she died,

and save your tears like windows

that shattered when you cried

like a stranger in exile to hear the news

but the fury of your outrage

is soon spent like a spraycan under a bridge

expressing yourself in blood

like a trigger on a heart

enclosed in parentheses.

For example, over the years

I’ve devoted seven books

to the suffering of others

but no one got fed

and the children are just as dead

as their mothers.

I was born in a prosperous nation

where I ground stars for a living

into chromatically aberrated

goblets of astonishing clarity 

under the begruding goad

of an ambiguous education

that taught me

I had to lick the glass

if I wanted to taste the light

in the last drop of wine

to fall from the eyes of the divine,

but that all turned out to be

no more than wax

flowing down a candle

at a black mass

that went out for good

when I realized

that a collection of spies

isn’t a real neighbourhood.

It’s one planet.

You can’t cut people

out of your pie

like the bad parts of an apple.

You can’t let children die

in unspeakable corners of the earth;

you can’t rub the poor

like the crumbs of a bad dream

out of your eyes when Darfur,

Zimbabwe, Somalia, Palestine,

Aghanistan, Iraq, North Korea,

the Congo, North Vietnam, Iran

are all organs of your own body

shutting down in septicaemic shock.

There are millions of lives

all over the world

even as I say this

being put out

like bubbles of blood in the rain

that will wash them away

like an incriminating stain

on the Roman marbles of politics.

You can’t shed people like petals

to save the flower;

or ignore the root-rot

and favour the grain

as if the gangrene in your toe

would never reach your brain.

The old days may be falling

everywhere on their swords

like the clocks

of a patrician coup gone wrong

and history be nothing more

than a deaf composer

trying to symphonize the screaming

with a dead stick

but the table of contents of any lie

is always longer

than the book

that follows it around like a shadow,

and when we all sit down tonight to eat

from the same board of a planet

above and below the salt

there will be more weapons on the menu

than meat

as we throw our children

over our shoulders

like expendable scraps to the dogs

that lick our feet like military budgets.

But I have grown beyond rage

like a generation of cherry blossoms

that were swept along like the sixties in a sewer

or the sails of a regata of protest placards

written in blood that caked the mirrors

like lipstick on the skull

of an unidentified child whore

who was buried trying to tunnel out

of her own fingerprints

like a worm in the orchards of a bride

with HIV.

And this is nothing, these words, these thoughts

this poem. Nothing.

Just another sleazy mirage

in the impotent deserts

of moral masturbation.

Another website

spinning the light like a spider

as if it were a jewel in a dreamcatcher

with agendas of its own

in a room where everyone

sleeps alone like a gun

or the last compass handed out

like a new direction

at a needle-exchange

for frequent flyers.

If the whole of your life

amounts to no more

than one loaf of bread

in the hands of starving child,

you have done much.

If you’re totally fucked-up and lost

and things are dirty and ugly and mean

if you’re slumped in the corner

tripping without any bones,

if you’re brain is shaking like a fist

at the exactitudes of pain

you call down upon yourself

like retribution

in tears of acid rain;

if you know where God is buried

but you’re sure you can hear him breathing

when you put your ear to his grave

and you’re trying with all your might

to dream him into existence again,

or you traced fame out as a child

in your own breath with your own finger

like a constellation on a window

but all you can see now

is a skidmark on the sky;

you can achieve total enlightenment

in a nanosecond

by simply applying yourself like a cool herb

to a child’s injured eye.

You can draw yourself out of yourself

like an infection,

like a disease of the light

the moment you lay yourself down

like the poultice of the moon

on a child’s wounded waters.

Whatever your fate, tragedy, farce,

running sore, soap operatic life may be,

even if there’s only one drop of pure compassion left,

one clear eye among the oilslicks

that have haemorraged into your polluted sea

like nights when you didn’t get off,

that’s still enough clarity to understand

that compassion is the essential insight

that will get you up off your knees like Atlantis

rising up out of your toxic deluge

like a continent with the voice of a tree

calling out to the dove

that was sent out like a child’s hand

from the cage of a refugee camp in western Sudan

to look for land,

and holding out a branch,

be it dead or green

to the birds and the blossoms,

wash yourself clean of the filth in the fountain

like blood off the wing of a child.

If you wake up in the morning

and ask yourself

whose mind this is

you’re squatting in,

drill down deep into yourself

like a well for water

and when you come to something wet

raise yourself up like a chalice

to the lips of a child

that’s been drinking from a sewer

and I promise you your mind

out to the infinite abyss of darkness

where the stars go blind

will write your name

in a living language

everyone can understand

on the towels of a fabulous palace.

And you may think you’re a genius,

brighter than chrome,

or a microscope of a scholar

deeply immersed in the ancient muck

of the Via Cloaca of Rome,

delighted to uncover hard evidence

that their shit was much like our own;

or beautiful beyond comparison

with the brevity of the dawn,

or talented as a rock star

that can’t be paled by the sun

or upstaged by the moon

that fronts him like a band on tour,

but if compassion doesn’t flow through you

like the sweetness of a nightstream through a tree,

you will be known

by the fruits of your calling

like a windfall of skulls

shaken out of their cradles

when the wind

blows you away

like the topsoil

of a deforested brain

in the rootless dust

of an unclean defection

of a heart, of a life

that’s never tasted rain.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOU'RE AN ORCHARD

YOU’RE AN ORCHARD

 

You’re an orchard.

You’re the flower that sweetens the dark

without being seen.

You’re the first shadow of a cloud on the moon.

I’ve seen your face. A photo.

It’s beautiful.

But I’ve never touched it

and the things you write to me

almost make me afraid

of being the man

I always hoped I could be

even if it were just to remain true

to the farce of the illusion.

So many times

I’ve been poured out of my life

like blood from a wound

shocked to find itself suddenly out in the open

without a way to get back to its heart

and the worst was to realize

the deepest wounds

had thrust the poison tips of their spears

through me from the inside.

There was nothing else to do but die

and hope I could learn to master myself

like a new medium without a message for help

from a lifeboat that never rescued anyone.

I learned to bluff my way through experience

like a gambler who sits down at a table

without any money

or witness over his shoulder.

I balanced my constellations

like a house of cards

and slowly over the eras

of life in the igneous snakepits of hell

where the night smells like coal

I squeezed myself out of the darkness

like demonically enlightened diamonds

that flowed like water out of a stone

as I felt the weight

of one of the robes of life

fall lightly across my shoulders like a sky

like grass on a hill

like the moon on an unnamed lake.

A sword in the sewer

that took me back

like a mortally wounded dimension

or a dragon among the firefly angels

that came to me like words,

I was equally at home in all the mirrors

that I wore like scales and skin.

But sometimes it’s harder to wake up

from a dream you’re not having

than it is the one you are

and the blades of the crescent moons

in the ferocious eyes

of even the most estranged dragons

eventually turn into scars.

It may be the greatest of follies

to endure the agony of longing

for what you know you can never attain,

and not at all crucial

that you’ve never been crucial to anyone,

and love’s no more than a bone

that’s been unmarrowed,

and a heart unhinged by desire

isn’t the makings of a bird,

but the phoenix, the salamander,

the dragon, the demon all know

how to grow in the fires of illusion

like a burning ladder of thresholds

up to the stars 

or the themes of homeless lamps

you can’t put out.

That’s why you’re

the black kissing stone

before it fell from heaven,

the peerless window

before it’s been looked through

and made heavy over the years

by the glass tears that crawl

like eras of sorrow

across the wastes of the brutal clarity

of the pain and confusion

in so many eyes.

Time is the true temperature of the world

but I have always lived critically

in the slums of a fever that is about to break

into a whole new world view

laid like a cool night sky across my forehead.

When I conceive of you, when

I summon you from far away

like a tree on a hill where I’m buried

to be close to me awhile in all this solitude

I don’t know what gathers out of space

but I always see a discarded veil

of startled stars 

before I see your face

in the black mirror of one my scales

like an apparition in the fires

of the mystic auroras

a dragon breathes like colours

nobody’s ever seen before

when he’s dreaming on his own.

And it never fails

that when I go out digging for fossils

on the alien planets

I used to call home

I’m always shocked to find

my own constellation

huddled in a darkness of bone

trying to divine an explanation

for the strange radiance

that shines out even underground

like uranium without a half-life

that’s affixed its dark star like a gene

to the shapeshifting chromosome

that dreams of all the things that might have been

even as it makes you

the new colour of my eyes.

There’s a light that illuminates.

And there’s a light that clarifies.

And then there are all those billions of stars

that shine inwards

like destinies that somehow

got turned around

like black Kaabas in the night

to face in all directions

without a needle in the compass of insight

to say where they’re going.

But I’m not looking for dawn in the west

or shells in the mountains,

or starmaps in the Burgess Shales

and these days the grails

I hid like Easter eggs

all over the garden

can find their way back to me

as far as I’m concerned.

I’m bored with the old devotions

that sent my native intelligence

to finishing school

to deepen my grasp

of their primordial ignorance

beyond reproach.

I’ve returned like water

to the crazy wisdom of my senses

by leaking out of my own hair

like a comet out of a coma

or the long breath of a waking dragon

in the cold, night air

whose seeing

is older than signs.

I’ve come down from my constellation

like a painter climbs down

a scaffolding of dots and lines

where he’s just finished

a masterpiece for the blind

like a permanent eclipse of the moon.

 

PATRICK WHITE