I HAVE SUCCEEDED IN COMMON

I HAVE SUCCEEDED IN COMMON

 

I have succeeded in common but failed alone.

Experience? The sum of all my mistakes.

What kind of authority is that to quote

as if wisdom were just a matter

of throwing in the sword

or snatching victory like food

from the mouth of defeat?

Just because you’re arrogant about your humility

must I be humble about my arrogance?

What haven’t I given to the poor

that hasn’t been stolen by the rich?

I let go of bitter things

just to sweeten the ripening

but there is no second innocence in decay

and I knew a lot more yesterday than I do today.

Where you stop is where you start

and I suppose my death

has already been achieved

as many times behind me

as it will be tomorrows from now

when the vast nights

of these foreshortened days

live through me again

like a road we’ve all walked down before

as if we were in pain and didn’t know where to go.

Gratefully I was born too stupid to be a cynic

or maybe I’m just stubborn enough to wait

for things to regenerate all on their own

or perhaps I’ve gone a gate too far

but it gets harder and harder to say

where things end and begin

when even the elements of my body

have already been through three lifetimes of a star.

Is this Bethlehem or Armageddon?

I’m a flash flood in a waterclock of blood

and how many eras of shining must have gone into

making these two little beads of water I use for eyes

that keep running down my cheek

as if it wasn’t enough just to see

you had to feel to find what you seek.

I’m as old as any apple tree

that measures its lifespan in seeds.

I’m an old old monkey

who looks back up at the trees he just left

and wonders if he took the right step

or if he’s just losing his prehensile grip.

I try to do my time standing up

but sometimes I feel as if the universe

ground the two lenses of my eyes

like Spinoza in his attic room

and put them together like a telescope

just to get a good look at itself through me

as it scanned the immeasurable uber-stellar spaces within

for signs of intelligent life.

But there’s no return address

for an echo in a blackhole

that’s lost its voice to the night

and no light to write an answer back.

I keep sending myself off

like a starmap in a bottle of water

trying to get a fix on my location

somewhere in this island universe

and bring Ovid on the coast of the Black Sea in Tomis

writing his Tristes among the Sarmatians

home from exile at last.

But the universe is still too Augustan

for that to come to pass

and everytime I light a candle

to see where I am

it’s at a black mass

of dark matter and energy off the scale

of anything I could assess.

But it occurs to me now and again

as the strong rope is unwoven

by Penelope the moon

into the frayed lifelines of this weak string

I’m growing like space away from everything.

And what was at my fingertips yesterday

like sunlight on the frets of the waves

that squandered themselves like music coming ashore

is today the evening din of a few dim stars

sitting like bass clefs and birds

or clinging like overdue apples

long into November

to the five senses of my sway-backed powerlines

lingering like the longer wavelengths of my star-crossed staves.

All the blue light of my mornings

has shifted to the red of night

as I dream like calcium in an iron bed

and beat the stardust out of the constellations

that have lain under the windows of my room for lightyears

like flying carpets on a clothesline

the wind wants back. 

Who said you couldn’t exceed

the speed of light

when every seer knows

space and time are faster than insight

and it isn’t the water

it’s your mind that flows through the abyss

like a lost starstream through a great emptiness

naming everything anew

like things it left at home?

A star doesn’t make a farce of its legend

by believing in its own light.

It stays ahead of its shining

as if it were an endless night beyond

the arising of signs

so no one can say for sure where it is

when they point to it for direction.

There’s nothing terminal about death.

It’s just a course correction.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IF YOU ONLY BELIEVE THE BELIEVEABLE

IF YOU ONLY BELIEVE THE BELIEVABLE

 

If you only believe the believable

and don’t believe in what is unbelievable as well

I don’t know what universe you’re living in

but it’s only got one eye open

1.56 billion lightyears across.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

EVERY PATH

EVERY PATH

 

Every path is as wide with compassion

as the planet that you’re walking on

so there’s really never any danger of falling off.

I didn’t lie

and you didn’t tell the truth:

two sins of omission

trying to fit lenses to clarity

like fashionable eyewear.

It’s what people do

when they don’t want to see too much.

And I’m sure you’ve recreated me in your own image long since

I discovered good-bye was older than eternity

and more absolute than space.

I remember you asking me once

after we’d finished making love in the red tide

as the breakers dashed their galaxies against the rocks

and we both sprawled there naked dripping with stars

what I thought a human was and I replied

an interpretation with a face.

And you asked why we were here

and I said to listen to the sea beside someone like you.

And later as we were walking back to the fire

you looked back at our footprints glowing in the sand

like tiny island universes following us

like dance-steps painted on the shore

and pulling yourself in tight against my arm

you whispered I think we’re the music they’re dancing to.

And ever since I’ve cherished

an ancient silence deep within me

whenever I’ve looked at the stars and thought of you.

I’ve burned a lot of bridges

since that night of doors

with thresholds that couldn’t be crossed

and windows that turned their backs

on what they couldn’t see through.

I should have thought by now

I might have forgotten you

but you’re always the stranger

who shows up at the gate of the abyss

just as I’m about to enter

and throwing me a blindfolded kiss

says Here. Interpret this.

As if it were some kind of koan

you wanted me to break like a fortune-cookie

or Etruscan linear B

or the water of a womb that’s letting go

like the dark night sea that still surrounds us

as if all these eras of time

that have driven past us like stars

driving past roadkill

on the ghost road of the Milky Way

could be clocked 

by the heartbeat of an embryo

born posthumously in the past without a future.

And sometimes it comes to me

like a glass eye rounded by the waves of its eyelid

washing up at my feet like a well-spoken memory

that lost its edge to the bluntness of time

there’s nothing natural about human nature

because there’s nothing supernatural about the divine.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

BECAUSE I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU

BECAUSE I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU

 

Because I have not forgotten you

I can feel your breath in the air

this first gray day of spring

like the wake of a bird that just flew by.

And I smile inwardly to myself

because I have known joy in my life

and know that in time its water

wears away the stone of the hurt.

Because I can still gaze upon your face

in my mind’s eye and see as I saw then

when I was happier than I have ever been

that your beauty did not belong to anyone

I bend down to pull last year’s leaves away

from the violet crocus

that’s trying to French kiss the sun

and I remember how I used to

blow playful strands of hair

off your cheeks

as you lay with your head on the pillow

like a distant star you’d made a wish upon

And even after all these years

I’m still astonished by the tears

that well up in my eyes

when I look into yours

and see all those things

we didn’t know then would never come true.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I HAVE LABOURED LIKE AN ASTROLOGER

I HAVE LABOURED LIKE AN ASTROLOGER

 

I have laboured like an astrologer

for the doomed cosmology

of delusion after delusion

trying to make the stars fit

like jewels of insight

into the webbing

of spider-minded dreamcatchers

that just don’t get it.

First you seed the wind.

And then you bead the wind with apples.

And that’s when I gave up

trying to make starmaps

of the things I’ve seen.

What might have been

isn’t a guide

to what has come to pass.

I’ve stopped lighting white candles

at the black mass of the universe

thinking that might make a difference.

I’ve stopped looking into the lees

of an old love affair

I had with a telescope

like a star-crossed lightbulb

that had just burnt out

like a bad tooth

in the mispelt marquee of a bad movie.

There are no sad or happy endings.

All the pathetic lies come true

and the prophecies take off their masks

like a troupe of skulls at the end of the play

and bow like the good guesses they always were

It’s fun to go slumming in your youth

with bad actors posing for the truth

but eventually your solitude asks you

what you’re going to do for an encore

and the night takes on a whole new attitude

when you realize that Armageddon is you

with a chip on your shoulder

daring the light to knock it off

like loud music after midnight.

Now I can tell anyone’s fortune at a glance.

The future is history. 

You haven’t got a chance.

The fool you are

has arrived in advance

of the fool you’re about to be.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

GRAVITATIONALLY CONCENTRATED

GRAVITATIONALLY CONCENTRATED

 

Gravitationally concentrated blackhole egos

sucking the light out of children’s faces

to fuel the nightmares of their own

who have turned their wombs into cul-de-sacs

of idiologically mutated facts.

Gobs and wads of men and women

born into networks of power and wealth

harden like gum under a school desk for the ungrateful

being taught to do unto others

whatever the fuck you want.

They have green blood and spider-eyes

and whenever you step on one of them

their soul departs like a swarm of flies

that polluted their flesh with eggs and worms.

Intoxicated by the toxins of their talking points

their power is jealous of other poisons

getting a grip on things like a small country

and pumping the life out of it like oil

until it’s as cold and quiescent

as a war memorial in a web

draped with the glory of the dismembered dead.

They hold up the wings of butterflies

in their congresses and parliaments of ghouls

like people oriented policies they mean to kill

and claim it’s the will

of the frenzied mobs they call constitutents.

The flies know best what the spider wants

like a major pharmaceutical company

like a global arms manufacturer

like a health insurance company

that practises disease control

by guillotining the sick

and raising its rates like a fever

like a bank with infectious pleonaxia

like a general whose heart

keeps breaking the peace like a wild horse

it’s trying to ride like a beast of burden

whipped into governmental shape.

Or a politician who puts sunglasses

on corpses and rape

and calls for a vote against

upsetting the deathcarts in the flesh markets

of the crammed bazaar in the heart of prosperity.

And it’s a holy war on both sides

of the usual vices

against improvised explosive devices

tearing the arms and legs off children

like insects in the name of God

down on their knees

drinking blood and flesh

or the gingered waters

of the fountain of Salsabil

in an abbatoir of humans

doing God’s work

like the monkish fleas of the Black Plague.

And the molested children beg for mercy

from a praying mantis

and bread from the tapeworms

that have left them nothing to eat.

And order and peace from the spiders

who are tearing the web

under their own gluttonous weight

like crowns and thrones

that have grown too fat

for their heads to carry

and fall with the rest of us

still clinging to perilous life signs

like an extinct species of hope

tangled like kites and parachutes

in their own lifelines

like the million weak threads

of one strong rope. 

And there are voices

that have forgotten the words

for murder rape and theft

and others like the Inuit have for snow

twenty-six words for innocence

laid to rest like a dove

and one for whitewashing the crow

that covers its bloody hand like the glove

of a forensically-minded man

who doesn’t want to contaminate the evidence

of an ongoing investigation

by adding the dna of a human to the mix.

A conspiracy of forked tongues

perjures itself like advisory thorns

at the trial of the rose

and the jury comes back

like a snakepit in the spring

with a verdict of guilty

as an ugly judge shouts out

let the jailbird swing

from a silken noose

for being an accomplice to beauty.

And everyone who sat on the face

of time-honoured convention

feels they’ve done their duty

and talks their way like a happy ending

into an afterlife of wholesale interviews.

The critic assassinates the artist.

The patient kills his doctor.

Mob-mind rules in the head of state.

The worst place to be in a war is a crib.

The experts turn amateurly popular.

Porn queens run

for the offices of their johns.

The paparazzi take celebrity shots

of award-winning serial killers

on red carpets of blood

and trade them like baseball cards to the kids.

The students are armed.

The teachers are armed.

The nuns are strapped

with nine millimeter Barettas

one in the breach

and fourteen in the hold

to ensure thou shalt not kill.

The prison stands

like the last cornerstone of free will.

The priests claim it’s God’s doing not theirs

that they’re child molesters.

Suffer the little children to come unto me.

Technology squares the third eye of viral reality

into a flat screen tv

and the mind is wired to a web

like the nervous system of a bee

that’s part robot

plugged into the grid

that’s shutting the whole hive down

like a brown-out of the sweeter things in life.

Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini.

The worst rise from the grave

like some latter day Lazarus

sanitized by their utter corruption

and the scale of their atrocities

and the interminable documentaries

that go on like pi

and the effect they had on history.

They are shriven by the gigantism

of genocides that can’t be forgiven

and people’s fascination with snakes.

The people forgive power bigger mistakes

than they let the weak get away with.

Mediocrity has killed more people

than genius ever will.

The flute-players are conducted by cobras

like singers by recording companies

and the music is commercially toxic.

The birds nest in dead trees

hoping the lightning of their last song

makes a hit in the hearts

of their targeted demographic.

Sincerity in art

has been plundered

like a pagan temple

for the body parts

and stage props

of carefully auditioned feeling.

The deeper the theme

the higher the ceiling

until even from the bottom

of a well in daylight

you can see the stars

comparing scars

on constellated talk shows

to prove even their upbeat downfalls

are a myth more engaging than yours.

The rap prince is dressed like a drum major

with silver skulls

at both ends of his baton

and his charade of whores goes on and on and on

like prostitution and mad poetry

and three chesty muses on a lavish float

that swims by like a swan

with a bad voice in a beautiful throat.

The flip side of disappointed veneration

is an aesthetic of desecration

that throws bad meat

down the well of Helicon

and markets bottled water

like nine flavours of inspiration

that feels like a fever coming on.

The snapping turtle ravages the swan

like a white peony

and there are feathers of moonlight everywhere

that make the moon feel phoney

when she thinks of becoming a star

and shines down on the way things are.

False gods air their dirty laundry like revelation

and Lucifer adjusts his teleprompter

like a mirror in a microscope

to address the United Nations like an antidote.

Cling to your despair all ye who exit here.

Arbeit macht frei.

Work makes free.

The slaves have mastered liberty

and hope’s a refugee

with a war crime for history.

Dante’s lost in the dark wood again

and hell’s the only way

he’s ever going to find his way out.

You shall commit murder.

You shall practise theft.

You shall covet your neighbour’s wife

and dishonour your mother and father.

You shall forget everything holy

and disgrace the days you gather

to worship what you cannot be.

You shall bear false witness

like a coverup against the innocent.

Thou shalt make graven images

in the likeness

of the obscenities of money

that flaunt their gods

like craven televangelists on cable tv.

Let the poor turn to God for judgment

in a small claims court.

Let the rich when they need forgiveness

turn to me like the tax exemption

of a weathervane church

whose spirit knows its own

by the way the wind is blowing.

Let the poor search.

Let the rich find.

Give what is yours

and it shall be taken from you.

Keep what is not

like a rainbow meant for someone else

and more will be added to the pot

like a rabbit to a penthouse snakekpit

like a politician to the homebrew

of a self-fermenting senate

like the people who are

of

the world

but not

in

it

to eras and eras and eras of shit.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOU TALK TO ME

YOU TALK TO ME

 

You talk to me about sorrow and pain

as if your mouth were a wound

that couldn’t be healed with a kiss

and your heart were a vast abyss

with a worm theory at the core

of an apple like this we’re living on

that circles the sun like a planet.

An ice-storm breaks the branches

of your candleabra

and I can hear the sound of smashing glass.

You pull the night down

like an executioner’s hood

over the skull of the moon

as it raises its ax over the hills

and my head rolls across the living room floor.

But I’m not trying to outhink you.

What you feel is what you feel.

I’m not saying it isn’t real.

The stars aren’t looking down upon you

and the candles aren’t trying to make a point

by knapping their flames into spears.

I’m not trying to teach an army of snakes to march

in good order toward some emotional victory

over the things that make you cry.

And there’s no window on the way

to replace the one you broke

that’s dying to give you 

a different perspective on your fears.

We’re all afraid

of what we don’t know how to love.

And if you’re suggesting suicide

I’m sorry you’re such a stranger to yourself

you don’t know whose doorway you’re standing in

like the emergency exit of a bad guest

who just showed up for appearance sake

like church bells extolling fake farewells in your wake.

But Orpheus isn’t trying to sing

your way out of Hades again

or trying to charm death

with his prophetic head

to let you go.

It was wrong to look back the first time.

And my music isn’t a valium for savage hearts

when the beast rages at its own wound

like an infuriated Maenad

and tears at its flesh

like a voodoo doll insane with pain.

Me?

I’m still working on how to make

a graceful entrance

with my back to the wall.

I’m walking from precipice to precipice

like a feather on a tight rope in the fall

trying to get through it all

as if it mattered that I did.

And I don’t care

what direction I’m headed in.

Any moment I could be downed by a crosswind

and as far as I’m concerned

death can make a bow for me if it wants

and if I lose my balance

I lose my balance.

I’ll take the chance.

And if I’ve been falling for years

like Icarus in tears

as you intimate I have been

then maybe if I fall long enough

I’ll grow wings

and rise above my shortcomings

like geese returning on a spring night

without wax and string

to hold it all together.

You can sit down on the ground

and wrapped in your deathshroud like a bat

have a good cry if you wish

then take eternity home as a shortcut

across your wrists.

But when I meet my ghost on the path

coming the other way

and look it in the eye like my afterlife

we both sit down together

on the sure-footed earth

like a mountain with a good view

of its own reflection

and have a good laugh.

 

PATRICK WHITE