MY ENDS ARE NOT OLDER

MY ENDS ARE NOT OLDER

 

My ends are not older than my beginnings

just as autumn is not older than spring

or spring younger than autumn.

The leaves were already falling in the seed

and the fruit bruised on the ground like wine

long before I raised my sail like a blossom

out of the bud of my boat

only to end up shipwrecked

like oxygen on the moon,

my rudder the past tense of kindling

and these storm-driven fleets of poems I set fire to

like pyromaniacal ships drifting into the Spanish Armada

caught in the larynx of the English Channel,

urns full of the ashes of ambiguous angels.

And there are nights when I drown like a tree

in my own leaves like a sea of shadows

that are all that are left of the birds

that bound me like a mast to their singing

and hope is a skeleton in a lifeboat

that didn’t go down with Atlantis

like a surgical barge of death masks

when the big day came and went

like everything else that lasts forever

moment by moment.

Where’s the joy, the fire, the light, the inspiration

that could evaporate stone

or liberate glass eyes

like tears in the mirror

to run down a mountain like rivers?

I watch the fireflies in the valleys of life

flick on and off in the dark

like dead bics

trying to see where they are

and remember when they fired up new constellations

after torching the condemned houses

in the slums of a rundown zodiac

like gleeful arsonists

that delighted the eyes of the night

like random luck in the lotteries of unwinnable fate.

And who made pulp fiction

of the exquisite myths of the women

who taught me

that gravity was just the downside of light

and if space and time are one continuum

they won’t ever be any further away

even when they return to the stars

than they are now?

And when did freedom grow ugly?

When did chaos gang-rape the graces

and fathers begin to throw acid

in the eyes of their daughters

to bleach their shame in a sin

that fouls hell itself with an atrocity

that stains even the lowest heirarchies

of the demonically insane

drinking from their own skulls

like blood from a bell on a rope

that never stops ringing

like a phone that insists on an answer?

I try to read the roots

between the lines of the flowers

that have put too much make-up on

for the last of the philandering bees

to try and better understand

the grand reciprocity

between seemingly disparate things.

I see fossils in the stars

and stars in the garbage

and untune my seeing

like a stringless guitar

to let whatever wants to play upon it, play

the discrete harmonies that can only be heard from afar

like a child crying alone in a room late at night

when no one’s home.

It’s hard to look at the haemmorage of the rose

and see the birth of an ocean

or walk upon a planet scarred by atrocities

and look up at the deathpits on the moon

through the eyesockets of a skull

it can’t identify as its own.

I’ve never been able to walk on water

but I can swim through stars

to get to the other side of things

where the shores are lonely and cold

and the waves are frozen in time

like chipped glass

and heaven and hell

are the same hand of light

like well-thumbed cards fanned out

like the eyes of a peacock

playing solitaire on the horizon.

Here nothing wears

the skin of a mirror

to hide its face in yours.

Here black lightning is frozen in time

like a crack in an empty cup

or a fissure on a skull

that set the wine, the being,

the bird in the chimney free

to see deeper than their own eyes

into that light upon light

that eclipses the radiance of the dawn

by psyching the world

like a spent match at midnight

or a star that’s just gone out

to see in the dark on their own.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I CARE JUST ENOUGH

I CARE JUST ENOUGH

 

I care just enough to say

I couldn’t care less what you think of me,

or how many insights you try to stick like pins

into that little charred voodoo doll

you’ve made as an effigy of me

but is engendered from a likeness of you,

I’m sorry your life is not what you wanted it to be.

I deeply regret there are times

when I can’t understand you

though I’ve tried harder than an attic window

to see what your childhood must have been

buried under that pyramid

you carry around like a chip on your shoulder,

daring the world to knock it off.

I can only imagine the chronic rage

at the indignity and injustice

of the cards cutting like bad genes

at the beginning of a life

that survived the dawn like an accident.

And it’s not impossible to forgive

the occasional volcano

rising up over Herculaneum

like a demonic sculptor

wanting to recast

the perfect marbles of normalcy

into the writhing shapes of agony

that have fleshed clay

with the thousands of tiny, indigneous deaths

you suffer every day.

But you keep butting heads with the world

as if you were on a collision course with a continent

you want to shake down to its foundations

like an expiring god

tasting the same stars

you were born under

when he dies

like the bitter ghost of his own medicine.

You want to bulldoze the round earth flat

and plough the moon with your horns

and sow seeds under the cloak of an eclipse

that will fill the siloes of the heart with thorns

that strike like assassins from the shadows,

but my heart still breaks like bread

when I see how everyone is suffering

the same inequality of pain.

If the poor man laughs

at why the rich man weeps

his joy is still squalor;

and if the rich man keeps

what the poor man lacks,

his joy is an indebted dollar

withdrawn by a vampire at a bloodbank.

The donkey at the end of the line

is in the lead

when the line turns around,

but the unlocateable point

of the turning world is,

the braying of losers and winners aside,

they’re all still donkeys in a line

nose to butt under their unbearable burdens.

Happiness is an aristocrat

posing as a man of the people

who pursue it like a fox before a constitution,

but sorrow is a true democrat

and sooner or later comes to everyone

like the vote.

Why scandalize yourself

by running as a candidate for either

like the slug-line of a bitter joke?

Why narrow your eyes

like mean, little windows

that gossip about the stars

behind their backs

as if they were always talking about you?

You can hate some of the people

all of the time

and all of the people

some of the time

but you can’t hate

all of the people all of the time

without turning your hatred on you

like a scorpion stinging itself to death

in a ring of fire

that bites like a halo.

And there will be no way

to rose the gore on your sword

like a pope indulging Jerusalem

when you fall on it

like the rage of a murderous crusade

to liberate the victims from the victims,

the true believers from the infidels

in the killing fields 

of your own murderous self-afflictions.

More has been suffered by many

than what you have suffered,

agonies that would appall the deepest underworlds

of the darkest imagination.

But your ears are not tuned

to their high frequency screams for help

like bats flayed in a spider web

as the sun comes up like Chernobyl

or the wounded eye of a cannibal Cyclops

crying out in the darkness for the blood

of those who ran out on you

like Jesus at dinner

as soon as you unhinged

the stone at the door of your cave.

You let the sheep out

like a bad shepherd

who couldn’t distinguish

the defections of Judas

from the ruse of the blues

in the lament of your unbounded wound

justifying the ethnic cleansing

of the dove’s dirty needles

like a junkie hooked

on a rush of eagles

screaming down like the designer aerlirons

of a dive-bombing amphetamine

above an unending line of refugees like me

who just pack up their thresholds

like hearts and flowers

and flying carpets

and leave.

You couldn’t bring yourself to believe

in the blessings

that lay themselves down

like clean dressings

like the cool herbs

and prolonged kisses 

of the silver swords of the moon

on the oilslicks

that pour from your lips

like a snake eclipsing birds

or the caustic words

from the volcanic fissures

of an open wound

that scalds its own waters

with tears of acid rain

and fouls itself

like the mouth of a monostome

that talks its shit into leaving

the way it came.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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