I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU

I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU

 

I have not forgotten you.

You have a long half-life

and time isn’t alchemist enough

to turn so much gold back into lead.

It’s just that when I think of you

I bloom like an empty box

sliced at its corners

by an exacto-knife of pain

and my mind weeps like a wounded jewel.

A gust of stars like the dust of the road

I can’t rub out of my eyes,

a garden on the moon

that’s never known a gate,

a wishbone of rivers

served up on a silver plate,

I keep seeing you in everything

as if I were certain now

that spring isn’t the past or future of fall.

I remember you like an exile

remembers a country

he left like an open door

when he stepped out into the night

like light from a lamp

that wasn’t a home

he could return to anymore.

You punctuated the equilibrium

of my hasty evolution

and I’ve lost count of the transformations

I’ve been through

guided by your eyes.

Coercively young,

subversively old,

mending the night

like a black sail

with the same thorn of the moon

that tore it 

on the shores of my marooned desires,

I endure myself like the sea

that aches with the music of sunken guitars

pressing the soiled strings of their spinal cords

against the frets of their scars so sadly

that every thought, every feeling

is a last flash of life in a receding tide

that left the bride

behind her veils

in port.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AHHH, MAN

AHHH, MAN

 

Ahhh, man

some mornings I get up

and I’m so weary of being me again

with the same old Gordian knot of dilemmas

waiting for the black sword

of an abrupt awakening

to cleave this hibernating ball

of hydra-headed entanglements

down the third extreme of the middle.

Cooler than a French executioner

with the night still over my head like a hood

and the ax of the moon

descending on the nape

of the swanning hills,

I would rather endure one death

that kills me into life

than suffer a thousand looping transformations

like a Swiss army knife in a snakepit

or the fossil of my last breath

still on display to the curious,

fighting for its life in an incubator.

There are nights when I can hear the fire singing

about its homelessness to the stars alone

and days that hang like heavy bells

over a long, secular holiday

as one truth swallows another in the silence

of the smeared windows

that elaborate my view of things

even as I weigh the moon in my hand like a rock.

One moment I’m jamming with the celestial spheres

and the next I’m being tuned like the spinal cord

of a one-eyed guitar

to the fangs of a live snake

with perfect pitch

and everything is snapping and hissing

like a downed powerline that’s lost its keys.

I still extol love and compassion

like the radicals of a lost war

strewing flowers on their roots,

but these days underground

I suspect that my darkness is faster than light

as I plant the quicksand cornerstone

of my pyramidal heart

like an improvised explosive device

in the road I take every morning

like a blind schizophrenic

groping his way on his knees to Damascus,

trying to bring empathy

to a convention of lonely exceptions.

And if I’ve got any faith left

when I look out on the atrocity of the world

like a dungheap covered in blow

it’s the merest of plausibilities,

graffitti on the gravestone

of someone I don’t want to know.

Walking alone on a dusty road

in the fields beyond Perth

as the gravel crunches underfoot

like seashells and skulls,

to taste the ripe stars

on their wild, summer vines,

and feel the eyes that are watching me

like alarmed snails and furtive leaves on my skin,

I realize I will always be

this stranger at the gate

of someone who lives within

who’s never been troubled by anger and hate,

or the abysmal sorrows of love

or distinguished the true from the false

the sick from the whole,

the petty from the great,

or the indifference of life

to the passion of the martyrs

cashing in on their bones

like loaded dice

at the foot of a crooked cross.

He’s never tinkered

with the engine of his actions

hoping to improve his performance,

No lumps of coal like bad memories

disturb the radiance

of his diamond skull

and when he thinks

he thinks like light on water

and even at the bottom

of a sea of shadows

he’s a magus of stars

in the munificent stillness

of his own improbable depths.

He knows how the jewels of clarity

can suddenly open

like eyes in a grave

that are not used to the light

that washes over them

wave upon wave

like the wings of transporting angels,

but he stays where he is for the night

to keep his word to the morning

like the birds of the earth

who wait for the sun

to turn them

like a dead language

into his native tongue.

As for me, my voice

lays out a starmap of black holes to avoid

like a last ray of light

trying to measure its own height

above these sudden event horizons

on the wrong side of town

when the stars I go slumming with

want to get down.

He talks knowledgably with the stars

about what’s beyond the light

but my spiritual life

is bemused in the shadows

like an eye in the night

that peers through the mystery

of the darkness that bounds it

like the personal history

of the ambiguous human

it would rather keep to itself

than give itself away like the fireflies

of a wayward constellation

that wandered off the reservation

like a nation with myths of its own.

All my prophets greet the day

like star-nosed moles in the light

as if they were just getting off

the graveyard shift

of an underground mine

where they’re chipping away

at the ore of the dead

like a motherlode of marrow

and were too tired

to have anything much to say

about why some mornings

ride in plumed chariots

through wild galas of triumph as he does

successfully back from his dream campaign,

and I’m always running

to catch up to the parade

like a clown in a wheelbarrow

throwing out rubber bullets, 

decked out like a float from the slum

that looks like a public coffin

with some shit on the side

about a better tomorrow.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOU THINK LIFE IS

YOU THINK LIFE IS

 

You think life is something

that is happening to you

from the outside

like upcoming events

posted like leaves on the wind

because you think your skin

is where you end

and the world begins

but to the wind

you’re just another sail

that thinks it knows where it’s going.

What’s the point of trying to mend

all those constellations

you’ve torn on the thorns of the moon

with a mouthful of pins

you keep sticking into yourself

to make someone else hurt

like a Barbie doll playing with voodoo?

What kind of magic

keeps getting caught up

in the weird starmaps and crazy webs

of the spells you try to cast over me

like toxic revelations of what it’s like

to see the world through the eyes

of a spider on acid

who thinks she’s the queen of the honey bees?

But it’s not the flowers

that fuel your delusion

of the occult powers

of a born-again schizophrenic

that keeps trying to carry me

like Rasputin’s cat in a burlap bag

down to the same river

you rescued Moses from.

You want to be the only wand left

in a snakepit of lesser magicians

when the pharoah asks for proof

you’re on a divine mission

to lead your people out of Egypt

by cleaving a sea of red shadows on the moon

to run like holy blood from a demonic wound.

That novella of facts without a theme

you’ve been working on for years

is just another interpretation

of an anonymous dream

that ended up on your desk

like dirty pictures of someone

blowing the whistle on their own life.

Your acutely annotated confessions

are always sins of omission,

waivers of space,

fevers of grace,

breaking news

that your life,

that franchise

of discounted miracles,

is finally in remission.

And I’m beginning to think,

and maybe I should be flattered, 

that I was the only sin you could find

that was worthy for a while

of the severities of your redemption.

Where else would you look for a cure

if not in the heart of the disease,

but why put your own eyes out

to heal the mirror?

Why heave yourself ashore

like a tidal wave

over some unsuspecting island

just to wash your hands of me

when the sea closed

like an eyelid over Atlantis months ago

to dream the afterlife of a different death

that didn’t foul my last breath

with the sterile purity

of listening to you

make your rounds

like the moon in reverse

in the halls of the terminal nightward

where Lucifer never rings for the nurse?

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EVERYTIME I LEFT

EVERY TIME I LEFT

 

Every time I left I came back to a different door.

My blood never wandered.

It just didn’t recognize the heart

it kept returning to

like a tide to a shore

that was never the same.

Now I can’t tell the way I’m leaving

from the way I came

but the only time I ever feel lost

is when I want to be found.

There may be the flakey arrowhead

of a primitive direction

chipped from the basalt rock

by some Michelangelo of flint-knapping

nestled like the shard of an ostrakon

somewhere among my bones,

but if I’ve ever been headed anywhere

it’s always been here and now

where space and time don’t exist

and I’m going off in all directions at once

like everything else in the expanding universe

whose lonely thresholds follow it like light

deeper into the growing darkness 

like the footprints of an unenlightened man

back to the native homelessness

where he began.

Even the script of a bad play

can be a myth of beginnings

when the actors could be anyone

who can feign a face in the mirror

like a traffic sign

trying to read between the lines

of what makes the puppets dance

to the scarred guitars of their tears.

You didn’t understand my joys

and I couldn’t fathom your fears

or how anyone could sit on their throne

like bait in a leghold trap

and not expect to get bitten

by the jaws of the croc of their crown.

It wasn’t me that swallowed the moon.

Your body lifted me up

and my spirit brought you down

like a parachute that candled

everytime you pulled the rip-cord on the sky

to ease your fall from grace

but you were the sacred flame

of a hot air balloon

that thought she was a comet

who came as a sign

to everyone else but herself

that I was about to fall from a high place

like a snowflake on a furnace

and disappear like a waterbird

without a trace or a tear

or a farewell kiss

to empower the clown

to be true to his own hopelessness

whenever you weren’t around

like a lifeboat on the moon

and things ran aground

on the reefs of your scuttled seas.

And the sails that huddled like blossoms

on the dead branch of the wharf

have given the orchard up to the wind

like a lost soul on a long journey

that can’t see the oceans in your eyes from here.

But I could have told you,

I could have climbed up

on the scaffolding your constellation

and shouted from the rooftops of my voice

like the rooster of a supernova 

shaking up the shining

in a distant galaxy 

that even when you’re out of sight

the stars still don’t lie to the night

but you were the one

who was convinced

the truth always deceived me

and I’ll confess it now

like Galileo recanting his own eyes

flat on his stomach before the pope,

my tears as contrite as my lenses,

I wasn’t enough of a telescope

to get a liar to believe me

when I showed you

the shadows of the mountains on the moon

were not those phoney eyelashes

you put on every morning

like an eclipse that painted

with a broad brush

the blood stains

on the relics of a martyr’s remains.

And even the search parties of fireflies

I sent out to look for you

like my own eyes

came back with zen messages

from an echo in an empty bottle

that had been smashed like a lamp on a rock

where they expose the bad babies

like flawed light

to clarify their own place

in a starless vision of night

before the arising of signs.

But I learned to read your eyes

like the lees of the dark wines

that haemorraged like the moon

at the bottom of every skull you emptied

like a fortune-cookie

or the shell of the sea that was you

you held up to your ear

like someone who’d stopped breathing

to overhear what even the voices

in the backrooms of the future

that never came,

though it had promised you so much,

couldn’t make clear.

And you’re not to blame.

And I’m not to blame,

and there’s no need

to limp around on our skeletons

like a crutch we’re trying to throw away

like a miracle at the top of the stairs

we climbed on our knees

to have our hearts cut out

and held up to the roaring sky

like sacrificial examples

of how to greet the moon

like the kissing stone

of a plundered temple.

A thousand and one mirages may gather

like shadows at night

around the wells of a dream

they draw from like the eyes of a desert

to recall the themes of their gods

like the flames of fire

the morning puts out like a star

the light has washed away,

and when they wake as we did

to the curious irrelevancy of this new day

with no one to forgive us for forgetting

who we were and might have been to each other,

who could have imagined

after such an appeasement of lovers

at the extremes of each other’s altars

we covered in cloaks of blood

to keep the angels at bay

we’d both end up gaping at the moon

like the open wounds

of experienced messengers

with nothing to say?

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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