When Grief Grows Savage And There's Nothing To Hunt
When grief grows savage and there's nothing to hunt
and all your mandalas are turning back into cave paintings
running down a limestone wall like spears
in the tears of weeping shamans, and you want
to tear your heart out and eat it to nourish your emptiness
but you're not sure if it's still the noble enemy it used to be,
or if the power of its sympathetic magic has past
the expiry date, and you think you might be
the last of the big mammals to go extinct in the ice-age,
time to sit down on the ground and have a good laugh
at how the things we take most seriously in life
make sacred clowns of us all in the last analysis
just before enlightenment. Put your lifemask on again,
coax a star or a firefly out of the tinder of that nebula
you're blowing on until you've got a good blaze going
then throw all your grave goods on it as if
you were sending them on ahead of you
while you danced the pain away like the sky burial
of the ghost of another age that's been haunting you
like a glacier that's slowly beginning to wash itself clean of itself
as the numbness in your heart thaws like a baby mammoth
that fell into a crevasse of ice, and your fingertips
are melting like elk horn candelabra at a native exorcism.
And, yes, it stings for a while just as things are starting
to warm up, but that too will pass like a wet snowfall in April,
when your blood will begin to flow again
as if it were teaching the wild columbine and gypsy poppies
to waltz to the picture-music of the wind without banshees
howling and scratching at your eyes like dead branches
as if they were raking their fingernails against the glass
of a cold, crystal skull disappearing like an ice-cube in a night cap.
Sit down on the ground and have a good laugh
on the tab of everything that's ever wounded you
and you just watch how easy it is to wipe
that gruesome grin off the face of the moon
like the sabre-toothed Smilodon that mauled you
and replace it with the smile of a Chesire cat
that just ate the canary in a coal mine of fossilized constellations
because grief can intensify the darkness into diamonds
that can see through the translucency of the tears in your eyes
new stars breaking out all over like waterlilies in the night skies
waiting for you to name them and give them myths of origin
derived like starmaps from the legends of your own shining.
Eventually the jesters of crazy wisdom will come to us all
and wipe the tears from our eyes and paint stars in their stead
we can point out to the cloaked ones
under the covers of their death beds
as if the deeper and darker the night the better to see
trillions of fireflies flung off the wheeling
of the celestial spheres like compassionate insights
into what we suffer for, what we lose whenever
we try to possess forever by trying to pour
the universe out of the universe like a waterclock in Aquarius
when we're already swimming through eternity
like Pisces and there's never a moment that passes in life
that isn't a vernal equinox in a locket we hold close to our hearts
that doesn't bloom in the fires of enlightenment
like star seeds hidden under the eyelids
of last year's dolorous windfall of pine cones
because however the wind screams
through the broken wishbones and harps
of our shattered limbs, our torn dreams,
the eighth time we get up from our seventh time down
we get up and stand our ground like evergreens in the starfields.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Something Said Softly
Something said softly in the night
like a tendril on a windowsill
tasting the moon, a whisper, a word
that walked in the light without
abandoning its shadow,
a phrase with wet wings
dreaming itself out of its chrysalis
not knowing whether it's a leaf or a dragonfly
until the whole tree wakes up beside it,
something sought but rarely said
saturated with the meaningless life of meaning
that could touch space like flesh
and make it feel the thrill of new eyes
running down its arm like tears.
And it's not that I want
to unsay the night or God
to define myself as a human,
and it's of little moment to me,
seed on the wind,
what worlds are born of my words,
what ends, what begins,
what comes of what I cannot say,
but I want to say something
with the savour of time in it
that's worth living for a little more each day
like a small tree rooted like a thought
in a crevasse of eternity,
greening the moon.
Late at night, in the darkness,
while the silence is off preserving something,
and all I can hear is your breath
off in the distance like an ocean,
I want to unpack my vagrant heart
like a patched guitar-case,
a grave-robber in a pyramid,
and attune my afterlife
to the key of this one
in such a way
I can play like a new star in Orion
to all the sad, beautiful fireflies of the moment
that hover over us like living constellations of our own
not bound to any paradigm of light
that can only be touched by a mountain of stone.
I want to paint something
that feels like the flower
that just brushed against your hand,
I want to be inspired by the mystic blue of midnight
like window glass fired in the kiln of a star
that has looked upon the suffering of humans for so long,
their atrocities and deprivations,
their terrors and wrecked joys,
compassion has turned it into an eye so clear
you can sip water from it like tears
that taste of the history of blood and wine
that danced alone like a vine at its own wedding
with a bride of rain that unveiled herself
like falling chandeliers.
Unfailingly, absurdly, obsessively human
in the shadow of thundering magnitudes
that feel like the extinctions of gods
that time has wheeled out
to the enormity of the gravepit
that limes every abyss of the heart
with the stars of a new universe,
I want to add one candle to the shining
in a folly of insight so illuminating
even the earliest galaxies
forever entering the darkness
on the threshold of their first shedding
could see it, something
so profoundly vernal and intimate
even I can believe in it.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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I Have Become My Own Season
I have become my own season
living through these renewable eras of you
that come and go
like the fragrances of passing stars
that sometimes stop by the gate
to talk about the garden blooming late.
Some flowers wait for the moon to open,
to throw their arms around space
as if they could encompass everything
in the brief embrace of their petals,
and their seeing is one eye under multiple eyelids
as they burn like jewels in the night
to keep it all shining and bright.
But I've worn out the elbows
of my insatiable longing
on the windowsills of a different insight.
Saddened by the distance, the time, the circumstances,
delinquent desires still hanging out their shingles
like green apples on a dead branch in winter,
withering like the inconsolable eyes of old men
who have died like sons
and now must die like fathers,
mine is the darker radiance
of the faint halo of light
around a black hole
that summons everything
down into it like the sea
sitting below its own salt
at a stranger's table.
You can't look into
the black mirrors in my house
with your eyes open
because they only reflect
what's on the back of your eyelids
where the only light is your own
and you are the road
and the lantern you go by
and everything you feel and think and imagine
is your own true face without skin
not the gate between outside and in.
How could I ever recognize you
in these dark spaces
if it weren't for the trees
and the stars and the moon
and the night stream that runs through me
like a lifeline on the palm of my hand
down from the mountains
in a rush of diamonds and gold
that pour out like the pent-up emotions
of a sword that's just been pulled from a stone?
And how hugely alone the night is
when you love someone as they are
and you realize without effort
that if you hold them a moment in their transience
you hold them like a star in a locket of water
that tastes like the past.
There are people
like treebound barrels of rain
and then there are people like me
who leak out of their lives
like radioactive water
that couldn't pool the pain
long enough to stop the meltdown
long enough to cool the brain,
long enough to let it kill me.
Now in the darkness
seeded with the dust of black dwarfs
trying to clench a fist of coal into diamonds
my auroras are weeping neon dew
like a cheap enlightenment
all over the watercolours of dawn.
And I'm wondering
what kind of an afterlife is this
that I might have foregone
if I were indifferent
to how my solitude deranges me
like a lost continent
wandering through its own mindscapes
like an extinguished star
that wants to make up
just for one luminous moment
a constellation of its own
that doesn't wait upon anyone's eyes
for the themes of its seeing.
And though the skies have changed
like the slides of childhood dreams
with every blink of an eyelid
whenever night approaches me
and asks to sit by my fire
and let the flames and the smoke
of our past lives
speak for the both of us
I look up to give my eyes
like two drops of water
back to their oceanic immensities
and it's always unattainably you
that is shining
like a woman in the window
of a secret house of the zodiac
far off the beaten path
that leads everywhere like a firefly.
And your stars speak to me
as if my flesh were light again
and my heart
that bumps its way through the dark
already a lamp beyond
the Lazarus of wax
that's buried in his own lucidities
like a candle I left for dead.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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And Should I Recall Whose Eyes
And should I recall whose eyes made the stars most beautiful,
and set the mindstream that flowed though us aflame with fireflies
a moment there and gone and come again like light
in the keyholes of the feral cats that prowled the graveyardshift
wholly to the top of the broom-swept path up Heartbreak Hill,
where the bones of the seven hanged men lay buried
in the duff of our childhood legends, a shadow and a name,
trying love on shyly like new clothes in the shadows of the pines,
where we lay down with the dead on beds of rusty compass needles,
out of sight of the windows of the town, how could I not feel,
here alone now by the Tay, thousands of miles away,
and more years later than it takes to walk a burning bridge,
waiting for the flower moon to appear above the horizon,
the waterclock in the nightbird's song of longing?
And if I were to say what it was like to be touched by her
when she was brave with hunger and my body
all loaves and fishs in the innocence of her hands
and her breasts and lips magic mushrooms without the flies
that swarmed the garbage cans in the back-alleys below,
and though it was not wise to begin a new life
on the last night of the past we were ending together,
like a bell and a cannon that had been melted down
from the same dark ore of a life we were cut out of
like a wound in a loveletter we left unsigned for one another,
because good-bye was harder to write than just to let things go,
what words could I use that weren't already
denuded of their shining like a windfall
of black dwarfs on the windowsills of time,
and the stars that night that clung to the sky
like bubbles in the evanescence of glass
or the grass to our flesh, all washed off now
as if they were grime, the quiet patina of time
gilding the dust like rainbows on the wings of flies?
And the wind asks, and the water sylphs want to know
and the wild willows are holding their breath like a veil
and the Tay is pulling a curtain of water aside in its wake
to hear about another stranger the earth swallowed
like a sacred syllable in the mouth of a snake
that envied the waterbirds their wavelengths and wings,
and though the skeletal birch and prophetic skulls
in the riverbed plead like the end of a dream
for one more lullaby in the ghost story of the moonrise,
I show them the black pearl of my heart
lustrous as hard coal to burn again in the furnace of dawn
on the dark side of the moon in partial eclipse
as I weep like a dragon for the secrets I keep
like myths of origin in the urns of things that are gone
like the irrevocable flightfeathers of the words and waterbirds
under the lost petals of fire that bloom in the eyes of the flower moon.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Well Take The Night
Roy orbison/will jennings/j.d.souther
Baby its hard sometimes to wake and face this life everyday.
Sometimes its bad enough to stop and through the good all away.
Tonight lets put the world aside and let go toghether.
The night is one place we can hide in each others arms.
Dream on forever.
Come on baby,and well take the night.
While the stars are willing and the moon is right.
Dreams are shining in a magic light.
Come with me,oh well take the night.
You and me,oh well take the night.
Baby, well take the night.
Look up and let the night unfold.
Hold on to the feeling.
Reach out and let it touch your soul.
And give in to love,love is believing.
Come on baby,and well take the night.
While the stars are willing and the moon is right.
Dreams are shining in a magic light.
Come with me,oh well take the night.
You and me,oh well take the night.
If everystar should fall.
And tomorrow lose all meaning.
We would still have had it all.
Its locked away inside our hearts.
There for the dreaming.
Come on baby,and well tale the night.
While the stars are willing and the moon is bright.
Dreams are shining in the magic light.
Come with me,oh well take the night.
You and me, oh well take the night.
Come on baby, and well take the night.
While the stars are willing and the moon is bright.
Dream are shining in a magic light.
Come with me, oh well take the night.
You and me,yeah well take the night.
song performed by by Roy Orbison
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I Want To Make A Contribution
I want to make a contribution.
I want to leave something on the stairs of the temple
in the dead of the night and steal away like a shadow,
hoping my small gift of a gift is well-received.
That the stars don't think they're wasting their light
to shine down upon it. Nor the wind resent the seeds it carries.
Fifty years of poetry. Painting the picture-music
the darkness pours into my heart and my heart conveys to my ears.
I can taste thousands of wildflowers like eyes in my blood.
I can taste the homelessness of the rogue stars in my tears,
and pull the wounded swords I cull like thorns of the rose
from the stone of my brain that fell in the farmer's field
like a rock through the window of the abyss
and make it clear as Merlin locked in his tower of glass,
that the stars only look fixed from a distance,
up close and intimate as atoms they're in a frenzy of creation
like a cloud of gnats in the last rapture of the sunset
radioactive with the bliss of being alive to know this.
That we're all longing for home in the lap of an expansive awareness
that threw the starmaps away the moment we were born
into the radiance of things that let go of the light
as if they knew something they just couldn't keep to themselves
without doing great injury to the flowers of life
that space was mind, and time was its emotional life
and as the dark mother said to her last incarnation
as it was stepping through the doorway into a stranger,
we're just going to wing it from here on end.
I want to be a strong storm tree twisted and bent by the wind
like the last letter of a sacred alphabet with no alpha or omega
to mark where things begin and end like death in life.
And wind up like a windfall of sweet fruit without end.
I want to make something of my falling, I want to honour
the table I eat at like iron and carbon and oxygen
by bringing something back for what I have received
without asking, or making a decision when I was not aware
of some unimaginable god that holds me personally responsible for it.
What a sleight to humans everywhere matter enjoins them
in a common labour to resonate so perfectly with the light
that lucidity isn't the exclusive property of the unknown,
and just because it's dark, the new moon of the black swan
shedding the feathers of the white, doesn't mean, it's not enlightened.
Though I come like a bird to a windowsill, though I pass
like a star from the window, though I sing of death
on the green bough, though I sing of life on the dead,
though I have been a dragon, a kitten, and a bee,
though I have floundered in sorrows like a lifeboat
way over my head, and lived through starless nights of fear
pulled down like executioners hoods over my eyes,
waiting to see what the morning brings that's vital,
I have not trafficked with my life like a pimp in a flower bed.
I have endured whatever excruciating transfigurations
I've ever had to go through, naked as a knife of light
unsheathed from the ore of this body that can no more
be cast off on the slag heap, than my spirit can paint in blood
a mural of all the changes we've been through like stars and mud.
I want to deepen the roots of the flowering night.
I want to beseech the poppies with my eyes
for more luminous experiences of cadmium red light
for more mystery among the stars than even they're aware of,
for more moons in the apple, more suns in the bread,
for more crazy wisdom than there is the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
I want to show the pine-cones they're pagodas as well
and point out where the mourning doves nest under their eyelids
and the shamans dwell in the upper branches of their evergreens
waiting to see if down will come cradle, baby and all,
or the next ascent is a red-tailed hawk at liberty
to fall upon whatever it likes, raising the snake of the lowest
up into the mystic delirium of the highest
to feather its scales in boas of oxymoronic light.
I want to intensify the dark until people can find
their way home by it, stars that broke into themselves
like morning glory tangled in an old bicycle wheel.
A pine-cone would do, a locket of sky, a piece of straw,
I could offer anything I wanted to, all those nests and pockets
I made in my pillow for years like a cat with a catcher's mitt
trying to find the perfect spot for its nightmare to sleep.
Or any one of a hundred cornerstones that were never built upon
or were torn down before the first brick laid.
Or I could lay my life down like a grain of wheat
among millions, at the feet of a silo so immaculately empty
it's never needed a single one of us, or all the animals
that bleated and bellowed and bled upon the earth
because we started drinking blood long before
we turned to bread like a better body to sacrifice.
Or my eyes like little thumb-drives of everything they've seen.
A gift of a gift as was given to me without a giver,
the ashes of a dead butterfly on a pyre of autumn leaves,
without ritual, celestial spin, I just want to come by myself
like a human in confusion we make the labour of our lives
as if I were stepping out of the trees like a white-tailed buck
come down to the river to drink from the moonlight
and add my reflection to the water that gave it to me,
with my head bowed toward the earth like a broken branch
heavy with the scarred fruits of life that have sweetened
like the moon over the years, poems I can recite by heart,
like the names of the stars and the flowers and the birds
and the ghosts of all those sad, passionate women who
tried so hard to be happy their tears clung like eyes
to the mystery of the windows they kept looking through
as if they were resilvering the mirrors of old telescopes
with the dew of a morning from a long time ago
witching in the dark for stars to explain their loss.
I want to bring a word that's been so deeply hidden in the open
like the flower of a rootless tree, it's got no colour of its own,
no seed, no leaf, no humming bird or bee, the tuning fork
of the nightbird, but no song, no honey, no nectar,
no likeness anywhere to compare it with, demonic or benign,
no meaning no mouth has ever wrapped itself around
like the atmosphere of a habitable planet, though the wind has tried,
a word so indelibly original it can't be washed out
like the whisper of a watercolour in the ear of a solar flare,
a word so private it gets said over the graves of the sacred syllables
that died in the mouths of men like the names of their gods,
not a prayer, not a mantra, not the shriek of a war-cry,
not a curse, not a blessing, not the answer to anything,
and I want to say the unsayable so unsayably free of veils
no junkie in the snakepit of a burning spoon, no lover
thawing virgin watersheds in the nunnery of Madame Moon
has ever stood so naked in their own eyes
even the emptiness inside felt overdressed for the occasion.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Art Of Life
Desert Rose
Why do you live alone
If you are sad
I'll make you leave this life
Are you white, blue or bloody red
All I can see is drowning in cold grey sand
The winds of time
You knock me to the ground
I'm dying of thirst
I wanna run away
I don't know how to set me free to live
My mind cries out feeling pain
I've been roaming to find myself
How long have I been feeling endless hurt
Falling down, rain flows into my heart
In the pain I'm waiting for you
Can't go back
No place to go back to
Life is lost, Flowers fall
If it's all dreams
Now wake me up
If it's all real
Just kill me
I'm making the wall inside my heart
I don't wanna let my emotions get out
It scares me to look at the world
Don't want to find myself lost in your eyes
I tried to drown my past in grey
I never wanna feel more pain
Ran away from you without saying any words
What I don't wanna lose is love
Through my eyes
Time goes by like tears
My emotion's losing the color of life
Kill my heart
Release all my pain
I'm shouting out loud
Insanity takes hold over me
Turning away from the wall
Nothing I can see
The scream deep inside
reflecting another person in my heart
He calls me from within
"All existence you see before you
must be wiped out :
Dream, Reality, Memories,
and Yourself"
I begin to lose control of myself
My lust is so blind, destroys my mind
Nobody can stop my turning to madness
No matter how you try to hold me in your heart
Why do you wanna raise these walls
I don't know the meaning of hatred
My brain gets blown away hearing words of lies
I only want to hold your love
Stab the dolls filled with hate
Wash yourself with their blood
Drive into the raging current of time
Swing your murderous weapon into the belly
"the earth"
Shout and start creating confusion
Shed your blood for pleasure
And what ? for love ?
What am I supposed to do ?
I believe in the madness called "Now"
Past and future prison my heart
Time is blind
But I wanna trace my love
on the wall of time, over pain in my heart
Art of life
Insane blade stabbing dreams
Try to break all truth now
But I can't heal this broken heart in pain
Cannot start to live, Cannot end my life
Keep on crying
Close my eyes
Time breathes I can hear
All love and sadness
melt in my heart
Dry my tears
Wipe my bloody face
I wanna feel me living my life
outside my walls
You can't draw a picture of yesterday, so
You're painting your heart with your blood
You can't say "No"
Only turning the wheel of time
with a rope around your neck
You build a wall of morality and take a breath
from between the bricks
You make up imaginary enemies and are chased by them
You're trying to commit suicide
You're satisfied with your prologue
Now you're painting your first chapter black
You are putting the scraps of life together
and trying to make an asylum for yourself
You're hitting a bell at the edge of the stage
and
You are trying to kill me
I believe in the madness called "Now"
Time goes flowing, breaking my heart
Wanna live
Can't let my heart kill myself
Still I haven't found what I'm looking for
Art of life
I try to stop myself
But my heart goes to destroy the truth
Tell me why
I want the meaning of my life
Do I try to live, Do I try to love
in my dream
I'm breaking the wall inside my heart
I just wanna let my emotions get out
Nobody can stop
I'm running to freedom
No matter how you try to hold me in your world
Like a doll carried by the flow of time
I sacrificed the present moment for the future
I was in chains of memory half-blinded
Losing my heart, walking in the sea of dreams
Close my eyes
Rose breathes I can hear
All love and sadness melt in my heart
Dry my tears
Wipe my bloody face
I wanna feel me living my life
outside my mind
Dreams can make me mad
I can't leave my dream
I can't stop myself
Don't know what I am
What lies are truth ?
What truths are lies ?
I believe in the madness called "Now"
Time goes flowing, breaking my heart
Wanna to live
Can't let my heart kill myself
Still I haven't found what I'm looking for
Art of life
I try to stop myself
But my heart goes to destroy the truth
Tell me why
I want the meaning of my life
Do I try to live, Do I try to love
Art of life
An Eternal Bleeding heart
You never wanna breathe your last
Wanna live
Can't let my heart kill myself
Still I'm feeling for
A Rose is breathing love
in my life
song performed by by X JAPAN
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Art Of Life
Desert Rose
Why do you live alone
If you are sad
I'll make you leave this life
Are you white, blue or bloody red
All I can see is drowning in cold grey sand
The winds of time
You knock me to the ground
I'm dying of thirst
I wanna run away
I don't know how to set me free to live
My mind cries out feeling pain
I've been roaming to find myself
How long have I been feeling endless hurt
Falling down, rain flows into my heart
In the pain I'm waiting for you
Can't go back
No place to go back to
Life is lost, Flowers fall
If it's all dreams
Now wake me up
If it's all real
Just kill me
I'm making the wall inside my heart
I don't wanna let my emotions get out
It scares me to look at the world
Don't want to find myself lost in your eyes
I tried to drown my past in grey
I never wanna feel more pain
Ran away from you without saying any words
What I don't wanna lose is love
Through my eyes
Time goes by like tears
My emotion's losing the color of life
Kill my heart
Release all my pain
I'm shouting out loud
Insanity takes hold over me
Turning away from the wall
Nothing I can see
The scream deep inside
reflecting another person in my heart
He calls me from within
"All existence you see before you
must be wiped out :
Dream, Reality, Memories,
and Yourself"
I begin to lose control of myself
My lust is so blind, destroys my mind
Nobody can stop my turning to madness
No matter how you try to hold me in your heart
Why do you wanna raise these walls
I don't know the meaning of hatred
My brain gets blown away hearing words of lies
I only want to hold your love
Stab the dolls filled with hate
Wash yourself with their blood
Drive into the raging current of time
Swing your murderous weapon into the belly
"the earth"
Shout and start creating confusion
Shed your blood for pleasure
And what ? for love ?
What am I supposed to do ?
I believe in the madness called "Now"
Past and future prison my heart
Time is blind
But I wanna trace my love
on the wall of time, over pain in my heart
Art of life
Insane blade stabbing dreams
Try to break all truth now
But I can't heal this broken heart in pain
Cannot start to live, Cannot end my life
Keep on crying
Close my eyes
Time breathes I can hear
All love and sadness
melt in my heart
Dry my tears
Wipe my bloody face
I wanna feel me living my life
outside my walls
You can't draw a picture of yesterday, so
You're painting your heart with your blood
You can't say "No"
Only turning the wheel of time
with a rope around your neck
You build a wall of morality and take a breath
from between the bricks
You make up imaginary enemies and are chased by them
You're trying to commit suicide
You're satisfied with your prologue
Now you're painting your first chapter black
You are putting the scraps of life together
and trying to make an asylum for yourself
You're hitting a bell at the edge of the stage
and
You are trying to kill me
I believe in the madness called "Now"
Time goes flowing, breaking my heart
Wanna live
Can't let my heart kill myself
Still I haven't found what I'm looking for
Art of life
I try to stop myself
But my heart goes to destroy the truth
Tell me why
I want the meaning of my life
Do I try to live, Do I try to love
in my dream
I'm breaking the wall inside my heart
I just wanna let my emotions get out
Nobody can stop
I'm running to freedom
No matter how you try to hold me in your world
Like a doll carried by the flow of time
I sacrificed the present moment for the future
I was in chains of memory half-blinded
Losing my heart, walking in the sea of dreams
Close my eyes
Rose breathes I can hear
All love and sadness melt in my heart
Dry my tears
Wipe my bloody face
I wanna feel me living my life
outside my mind
Dreams can make me mad
I can't leave my dream
I can't stop myself
Don't know what I am
What lies are truth ?
What truths are lies ?
I believe in the madness called "Now"
Time goes flowing, breaking my heart
Wanna to live
Can't let my heart kill myself
Still I haven't found what I'm looking for
Art of life
I try to stop myself
But my heart goes to destroy the truth
Tell me why
I want the meaning of my life
Do I try to live, Do I try to love
Art of life
An Eternal Bleeding heart
You never wanna breathe your last
Wanna live
Can't let my heart kill myself
Still I'm feeling for
A Rose is breathing love
in my life
song performed by by X JAPAN
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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You Don't Need To Put A Supernova In The Window
You don't need to put a supernova in a window
like a candle in a telescope
to help me find my way back to you
from the next galaxy over. I'm gone
like a sixties light show after the music was over.
But I didn't close you like a door behind me,
I didn't find you like a threshold
in the spirit's lost and found
and try to return you to the house you belonged to.
I've always been a little ahead of myself
so when I said good-bye, it will be light years yet
before you know anything about it.
It's just that time doesn't linger in the doorway
of enlightenment, and eternity isn't any closer to God
than the next moment is. A hundred billion stars
two thousand lightyears away and you,
checking the wiring on blasting caps in a beaver dam
that's threatening to flood the road you're on
as I go off like a firefly already
two mellenia into the future that's looking forward
to meeting you eye to eye in a brighter place than this
just to see if you recognize me as I am.
Black matter in the lifemask of a blossom
peaking through the keyhole of the universe next door
to see if I've returned to my room like the moon
with a curfew it's in my nature to break forever
whenever we are, if the timing's not right.
If you can't see in the dark what the light owes
to the shadows who have died for it
just to attract your attention from afar again
like a man who's been tarred and feathered
and set aflame like a phoenix in the rootfires of the sumac.
Like an immolation that scatters the ashes of a burning house
all over the garden you've been tending
like a urnful of flowers about to come out.
Like a candle in the darkness enlightenment
snuffed out on the dark side of the moon
to keep you from being lost in the blazing like a star at noon.
I lead you away from me, like all I've ever wanted.
I say good-bye to keep death from saying hello along the way
as if it had met you somewhere before I came on the scene
like a flame thrower with a flare for arson burning
like the passion flower of a dragon on a pyre beside the Ganges.
To raise you up shining out of the grave of your aspirations
like lightning and fireflies in the updraft of my expedient means.
So when you cry over someone you're missing like me,
your tears have the power of a sunflower in the garden after dark,
and the ashes turn green. And scarlet runners bind themselves
like the happy home fires of heretics to the triune axes of your tent poles.
poem by Patrick White
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White Void For The Moment, Quiescent as Paper and Canvas
White void for the moment, quiescent as paper and canvas,
a little white square in the middle of my heart
as a psychologist once said, startled and wide-eyed,
and there's no one there, as if I were the simplest
of impossibilities. Could be. But who would be there
to know what it might make a difference to, or care?
Some purposes fulfill themselves or maybe
the quality of peace goes white in the winter
as it does in the dove, so as not to attract
undue attention to itself in a snow storm of poems.
Or maybe, sooner or later, even reality
comes to realize its suprasensual ground of being
is misconceptualized from a word or a name
that has the creative power of one of the shapeshifting lords
of the dead metaphors that get brought back to life
with no idea of where they've been in the meantime.
All of genesis in the first word, the to logos,
the whole table of contents of the imagination, now and to come,
the alpha and omega like the short and long vowels
of the sacred syllables of picture music,
apple bloom playing the dead branches of its leafless violins,
and the grammar of a living medium of animal images
and the shamans who entered into their visionary agony
painted on the blackboards of our native skull caves
where we worshipped bears dressed in the hides of humans.
The happy beginnings quit and the hard-line endings go on forever.
I'm back here at Long Bay, like the long story
of a lifemask that's been passing itself off as me for light years
sitting alone around a daylily of fire
giving a private lapdance to the wind,
scattering stars and leaves and smoke around
all over the place, as if it were looking for something it lost
in a panic to retrieve it from the passage of the mindstream
like time unravelling the seams of all things
unstitching the constellations like the wavelengths
of the enfeebled threads that kept our wounds together
long enough to heal into the crude ores
of terraformed scar tissue that might smoulder
like a starmap of brown stars over the course of time,
even when it's been mined out like the open pits of the moon,
no light bulbs in the sockets of an empty skull
but never shines the way its eyes used to
when you could look through them
like reflecting telescopes into the sidereal splendours of the soul.
Before it discovered the unbearable solitude
in the nightfall of pain, and the white apparition
that comes like the silence of a nurse in soft shoes
to sow its mouth shut to keep the others
from waking up on the night ward from their dreams
to discover like a wild rose at the end of summer
that everything is terminal, our departures and arrivals,
our exits and entrances alike. That there's a holy war of one
deep in the heart, win, lose, or draw, day and night
that goes on without respite that even for survival
the crazy wisdom of a compassionate warrior will not fight,
our human divinity not something to be won,
but a birthright, a square of light like a faceless stamp
on a loveletter that melts like a snowflake
as soon as it alights like a star on the furnace of the heart
and the ghosts of our tears return like rivers
to the oceanic awareness of the bays
we sit beside listening to the spiritual white noise
of the cosmic events, in bliss and sorrow,
we once lived through like the mirages and muses
of a tomorrow that came too late to celebrate our absence.
poem by Patrick White
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Enlightenment Isn't Lumpy
Enlightenment isn't lumpy
even if sometimes you've got your heart
stuck in your throat
like a bird in a chimney
warming up like a phoenix
to go the way of the sumac leaves
and the ghosts of smoke
on the pyres of the sky burials
of the Canada geese.
Just because November
can't feel its pulse
and the garden snakes are nesting
like a sloppy knot of wavelengths
deep in the cold heartwood
of a rootless tree that can feel
the brutal chill of serpent fire
running up its spine like a lightning rod
doesn't mean enlightenment's a placebo
you have to keep away from the kids.
It's real enough to be unattainable
without disrespecting the integrity
of the picture plane.
It hides out in the open
where no one ever thinks to look.
The simpler it gets
the bigger the book you need to write
in order to conclude ambiguously
you do and you don't not understand it.
Say not two
and all is well.
And mean it deeper than you can say it
so that pain doesn't adulterate the child
that's trying to transcend it
by hanging on to the lifelines
of his fire-proof constellations
like the kites of distant stars burning in the wind.
Enlightenment doesn't care
if you've lost your integrity.
Your absence of self-respect
for someone who isn't there
is a rare opportunity
to uphold the dignity
of stars and rivers and trees.
Enlightenment's just the blossom.
It's not the fruit
of what there is yet to be.
The smell of autumn
in a windfall of apples
cradled like small planets in your arms.
Enlightenment isn't salvation from pain.
It's an invitation to forsake yourself
in the name of nothing you can explain.
The blossom let's go to make room for the fruit.
The perfumes of the spring give way
to the aromas of decay.
But they're both sweet
because there's nothing about either of them
that's everlasting.
It may be an old root.
But it blossoms in the spring.
It may be a dead branch
but the nightbird stops to sing.
And the full moon shines
like a skull full of signs
above its dark abundance.
Enlightenment isn't out of the reach of anyone
because it's got infinitely long arms
and puts the stars at your fingertips
and says play what you want
as long as it's something
we all can dance to
on our way to the grave
like fireflies in the wake of a thunderstorm.
Enlightenment doesn't take life too seriously
even when it makes a tantrum
of its elemental innocence
and goes supernova.
Deep in the nuclear core of its heart
it's creatively playful on a cosmic scale.
The darkest inspiration
of its genius for making
an art of its existence
is life.
Simple and beautiful
as the laughter of children
collecting sea shells on the moon.
Even when you're severely lost
enlightenment doesn't hand you a flashlight
and say go look for your mind
like the holy grail in a sacred wood.
It deepens your solitude.
It blows the candle out
until you emerge like a star
from the profusion of your own darkness
and stand in the doorway
of your own shining
amazed by what you can see
when enlightenment isn't blinding.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Sit Warmly Here With Me Awhile
Sit warmly here with me awhile
and I will smother you in fireflies
until your aura looks like
a dandelion constellation
or a globular cluster of first magnitude stars.
My scars have exhumed the knives of old wounds.
And though I confide in the void
like an echo returning to its own voice
or a breath to the sacred groves of the lungs at sunset
and superseded my quota of regrets
to make an expandable universe liveable
every firefly of insight's
got the engine of a dragon behind it
and it burns like a dark clarity within me.
Wrap your silence and mystery around me
like a chrysalis or cloak
and let me rest in your indivisibility awhile
until I disappear deep in your eyes
like a nightbird into its longing.
Let me sit around the lonely fire of your heart
as if I were the only house of the zodiac
who comes to you like an illicit love affair
with its lights still on
long after all the others have gone out.
My solitude is bruised by an abyss
that keeps digging deeper into me
and sometimes it feels as if
it's looking for water and a well
and then other times it's a midnight burial
of someone I can only catch a glimpse of
once and a while under a full moon
that looks like an undertaker
through the leafless veils of the weeping willows
digging his own grave
but feels just like a spade hitting my skull
like a strange form of paydirt
buried like the black pearl of the new moon
in a hope chest of star mud.
Take the coin from under my tongue
like the last sacred syllable
of my unconditional humanity
and throw it down this black hole in my heart
like the moon in a wishing well
and embrace me as if I were not dead awhile.
Out of the ashes the smoke and the flames
like two candles under the stars
let's make up myths of origin
where the gods have no names
until the wildflowers that have outgrown
the gates of the Garden of Eden
look back at where they come from
like a long way away
and give them one
like the elders of an Ojibway tribe
decide on the names of the new born
each according to the totem of a dream.
Pull this thorn from my eye
like the eyelash of the last crescent of the moon
and let me see you face to face
without a thousand and one tears between us.
I shall glorify you like a mosque in lapis lazuli
that can no more contain your image
than the day the night
or one constellation
the whole of the Milky Way.
I shall paint your portrait in picture-music
like the moon reflected on the black water gardens
of the Taj Mahal in mystic hues
of nocturnal waterlilies and cobalt blues
to highlight your eyelids when you sleep
and on your lips rose drops of blood
to wake you like a kiss from your dream
when the waterbirds rise from the lake.
Receive me like a sword into your depths
I throw in tribute from a bridge that crosses over
to the other side of myself
as if you were the far shore of my mindstream
come near to sit with me here awhile
and reminisce like water
on the things that have been and passed
as we listen to the tender laughter of the waves.
I will lift up my shirt
and show you the scars of all the holy wars
I've fought with myself like a faithful heretic
who knew he was doomed to lose
and the spots where the spearheads of insight
penetrated my heart like a voodoo doll
baptized in hot whiskey and cold blood
to take a message to the gods
about human suffering
in a language they could understand
wasn't just the echo of their own voices.
Sit with me here awhile like a face beside a mirror
looking out upon the same starfields
without a trace of our own reflections in the view
and I will teach you
the healing powers of a wounded mouth
like the secret grammar of a grail that seeks itself.
poem by Patrick White
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Out Here Alone
Out here alone so late at night
with all these spectacular stars
burning through the clean glass
of the freezing winter air
I can almost hear them thinking
behind the myths of the cover stories
they've told for years
dark truths about life and light
it would be madness in a man to understand.
Don't try to stuff the impersonal secret
of the universe
into your sentimental heart.
How could you ever fit its likeness
into a locket
and finger it lovingly as your own?
Out here alone so late
even if you have come
like a thief in the night
to steal from the light
when nobody's home
there are no cracks no facets no gaps
no backdoors, unlocked windows
or emergency exits,
no stairwells or entrances
in these jewels of insight
that can feel your eyes falling upon them
like rain running down a mirror
that shuts you out
like someone in the bathroom crying
for reasons that are light-years beyond you.
However deep and sincere your tears are
they're still only dry wells
in that vast ocean of awareness,
black snowflakes
on the roaring furnace of the abyss
and if you reach out with affection
hoping to make things better
by embracing it all
you're still only tendering a kiss
to the gaping jaws of your own lipless skull.
There's a silence older than space
in the bottomless heart of things
that makes intelligence seem
the unlikeliest of exaggerations
a human could ever mean
holding his mind up like a lamp to the stars
as if he could find his own way back by his own light
without the dream that themes his mindstream with creation.
But as foolish and futile as it is to surmise
or try to get a leg up on the wise
I don't think the darkness
is the negative space
around the troubled face that appeared
after all the dots were connected
like rising constellations
in a child's colouring book.
And I don't think there are gods
squatting like frogs
on the lotus of the world
making us up as they go along
like wheels and roads
to the grunts and groans
of an axial mating song
anyone could mistake for a joke.
And I don't think the stars
believe the things we say about them
or even remotely feel the mystic dread
of what it is to be a human
looking up at their shining
out of deeper darknesses within
where no direction can be given to the lost like eyes
that would never find their own way home again
were it not for the stars and fireflies that mislead us
from one illumination to the next
by giving the finger to the braille of the text
that would school a gust of stardust into us
like God gave life to Adam
and Eve gave life to God
long before there were any laws to blind them
like Satanic lightning bolts
uprooting their eyes like rain from the clouds
to put those fires out.
I look up at the stars
with the eyes of an exile
through the diaspora of my breath
and I want to think them all to death
like the people and things I've left behind me
when it was time to go my own way
anywhere into the darkness inside me
to see if I could shine a light upon myself
that didn't blind me to the fact
neither in the beginning
nor in the end
was I there to witness the act
that made a certainty as good as a doubt
to the great indifference
that wasn't trying to find me
like a needle of light in the heart of a haystack.
I look up at the stars
like a scarecrow in winter
trying to put its pants on
one leg after another
like a man
with nothing but time to burn
scattering his ashes among the stars
urn after urn
skull after skull
of the heretics and mystics
that were martyred by his scar-crossed heart
in the name of nothing real.
I don't know what they feel
but I look up at the stars
like a black rose
of blood and starmud
in the last death throes
of self-immolation
and see in my own image
what I've always had
in common with creation.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Compassion Is The Sweetness That Enters
Compassion is the sweetness that enters
the wounded apple of knowledge after
you've taken your first bite out of it.
It's not an antidote to the facts of life and death.
And you should know by now if you've suffered at all,
and it's impossible not to from the moment you open your eyes,
the night is not a reward, nor the lantern of the light
that goes before you on a graveyard shift of the stars.
Compassion is the oldest instinct of the heart
and first muse of the mind that can taste only
the blowing blossoms and bitter green apples of the spring,
gripe brain, before it ripens like a sunset in your blood.
That's why the heart knows more about it than the head.
And I expect, on that basis, no one is more capable
of loving us who must doubt that we're worthy of love
to live up to the truth of it than the dead who can open
the tiny koans of the seeds at the core of things
like the lockets of fortune-cookies that break
like twisted cosmic eggs in a rush to spread their wings
like waterbirds who write the lyrics of their songs on the fly.
Words for the eye. Words for the ear. Words
for the voice of the wind like black walnut trees
and kites in a storm. And if you really know how to listen,
I mean if you can hear the wavelength of a black snake
swimming across your blood like a mantra
of terrifying, beautiful wisdom that keeps its secrets
to itself, or hear the unfathomable oceans in the black rose
whose petals and eyelids are always smashing
like white eyelashes in a squall of sunbeams
against the breakwater of a white dawn that passes
like an albino eclipse in a moonlit leper colony
of extinct black rhinos. If you even remotely
hear what I mean when I speak like this sleepwalking
through a dream grammar like a prophetic skull in a trance,
words that dance like light on the mindstream
rejoicing in the clarity of the voice that expresses
the hidden message encoded in the genes of the fireflies.
You have mouths. Speak for yourselves.
Some like lighthouses along the banks of life.
Some like thieves with searchlights for eyes on a bomber's night
when everyone is underground and the bummers are out
plundering the evacuated houses of the zodiac.
Might be the ravings of a star struck maniac talking to himself
to make sure nobody else is listening. Might be
the surrealistic lament of a Dadaist night bird
singing out loud in its sleep for things it doesn't know
it longs for, or maybe a lunatic is waxing prophetic
in a labyrinth of his own echoes trying to sound his way out
of the mountains without end he's being trying to befriend
like a cloud or an eagle silvered a moment
like the ore of a dream in the corner of the eye
of a moonrise coming on like a hurricane
with a black pearl in its teeth. The eclipse of a sacred lie
compassion concedes to an alibi without a myth of origin.
Compassion is the child of imagination that identifies
with its simulacra of suffering by applying the heart
like a bloodbank to the wounded eidolons of eyeless images
that didn't know how to bleed, or breathe, or cry or see
until compassion tempered their impression of themselves
as paradigms of rationality, by shedding real tears
in an ice age of lenses that kept their illusory distance
from the stars that came out after the rain, wet and shining,
laughter radiating through our tears, because life isn't a dry fire.
It's the hand on the rudder of a lifeboat
that keeps you from drowning from the day you were born
in the undertow of the tides of the new moon
until the night of the full when you haul everyone aboard
who's been swimming through glaciers of tears
like baby mammoths for the last twenty-five thousand years
afraid of extinction if they ever stopped to catch their breath.
Compassion is accepting everyone's death as a portion of your own.
Everyone's life as your third eye, a vital organ of your own body.
Compassion is an undisciplined action of the heart.
Compassion arises like a moonrise of inspiration
in the eyes of the older sister of the muses
who walks too much alone as if she'd devoted her solitude
to the suffering of a wounded stranger she met along the way
when she let her hair down like willows of rain
to cool the scorched earth and slake the roots of pain
until they bloomed like foxfire in the shadow of her passing.
Most poets sit around the lesser fires of their art
trying to divine the smoke of what's burning in their hearts
like autumn leaves they've heaped into books
that smoulder in tears more often than they break into flames.
But if compassion turns her eyes toward you
like a star in the darkness beyond your blazing
the Milky Way runs like a bloodstream through your veins
and you see in terrifying clarity the great mystic details
in the deep watersheds of picture music efoliating
like wildflowers and galaxies, grails, fountains,
lunar herbs, and starfish raised up off the ground
to take their place among the shining, radiant with life,
in the low valleys and high fields of an imagination that heals.
poem by Patrick White
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When You Listen To A Bird
When you listen to a bird
you should hear the whole of the sky
just as when you look at a star
you should be a fountain of eyes.
Because you cannot see,
the darkness is not blind
and your consensus of conventional abnormalities
is not reality, is not the source
of the hidden halo of comets that afflict you,
nor the crazy constellations of the fireflies that bless.
I don't know if I speak for anyone other than myself
but that's enough to reflect the moon in every drop
of this unvoiced delirium
that surpasses enlightenment and lunacy like old shoes
to walk barefoot across the stars
as if they were no more than cool sand in a desert at night
that's never been bound to a road,
though every single grain is the cornerstone of the world.
How unsayably me I must be
that so many thoughts and emotions,
so many vital themes of blood and time,
years that have returned their fields to the wild,
have enshrined my namelessness
in this abandoned palace of shadows
I've pitched together like a chrysalis out of words.
A true muse is a well
that finds its own way to your mouth,
and I accord mine the perfect freedom to be me,
and drink deeply of the night she pours into me,
until neither of us knows who the other is
though we whisper like leaves on the same tree.
What's crucial is not to offer yourself up
like a tourist map to the wind
but to let go. To find out where you're going
not by giving up everything that you know,
but the knowing.
I let my thoughts follow the path
of a snowflake in a blizzard
until they melt like eyes on earth
to show my roots how to flower,
this one a waterlily opening
like a diploma in a swamp,
and that, the devil's paintbrush.
Should it be otherwise?
Can you turn your eyes back like a clock
and unsee the things
that have looked so deeply into you
the skull of an impersonal space
wears the atmospheric intimacy of your face
like the ghost of an unknown planet?
I have felt poppies of blood
hotter than any prophetic furnace
rend my flesh like starving lions
for things I never knew I believed,
for the heart I laid down like a sword on the altar
to the inexplicable gods of the misconceived,
when I realized that not even my homelessness is shelter
and the only country under the flag of my blood
that might have claimed me as its own
has caged me like an undocumentable alien
in a holding cell of bone.
But it's foolish to look for passage
when nothing's in your way,
or seek enlightenment with a candle at midday,
not knowing you're only washing a mirror with shadows
and handing out wicks to the stars.
And what's the sound of one hand clapping?
Be compassionate. Be generous. Be kind.
This is the only way to forgive your mind.
poem by Patrick White
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Up On Heartbreak Hill At Night
Up on Heartbreak Hill at night
with a 2.4 inch,60 mm, refracting telescope,
a cat, and a journal of poems,
deciphering those immensities of sky
as if every star were the sacred syllable
of an inconceivable intelligence that explained
everything in light, and the light were singing.
Earth noises in the broom bushes and Douglas firs.
The air rife with the spirits of those
who had their necks broken here by a prison noose,
and had more of a right to be here than I did
who felt like an intrusive guest in their house
even though the darkness was common ground.
Eventually they learned to ignore me
as just another adolescent longing for eternal responses
to the expiry date on life and love,
and not one of them without a silent understanding
of what a star could mean through the bars
on the windows of their prison cells.
Up here on the hill I was a temple above
the imperial rhetoric of toppled garbage cans
expurgating on the fate of fallen empires
that took themselves way too personally in restrospect
than they did at the time, as if the wound,
even the children had to amend like a religion,
grew deeper and more volatile with age.
Up here, just the executed ghosts of perversity and rage.
The whisper of something beautiful
no one could smear, soil, smudge,
out of touch, though I caressed
the skin of the stars as if it were as smooth
as the lenses and mirrors I used
to watch the fragile radiance of how they danced
so intimately across the apertures
of my field of vision trembling before
their scintillation the way I used to make
some spiders vibrate in the morning
like sewing machines or the clappers on fire alarms
by simply touching their webs
as if all the strings on a Spanish guitar
were trip wires in a terrorist museum.
Light as the only liquid in a desert
for many dangerous miles around,
the stars were cool jewels of water to me.
I could almost taste them like the tartness
of wild blackberries on my lips, lemons,
the deadly nightshades of experimental girlfriends
testing out cartridges of new lipstick
the first time we kissed in the shadows
of the new moon behind the abandoned warehouse.
It's impossible to see a star as it is
until it's become part of your love life
or, at least, until you can learn to flirt with the light
like a firefly at the window
of this thirteenth house of solitude
where the homeless gather like an avalanche
of the misplaced cornerstones of condemned temples
that like the stars, are always updating their past
about things that shine, but don't last.
If the medium is the message, and it is and it isn't,
then seeing must be a kind of love as well.
I saw the stars through the eyes of the stars.
I felt the weight of the billions of years
there wasn't even a one-eyed sea to look back at them
for intimate insights into its own impersonality.
Hard stars in the winter, soft stars in the summer.
Stars can see further into the darkness of the human heart
when it's cold out for everyone and clarity
stops breathing on the mirror like evanescent nebulae
sensitizing the light to the chromatic aberrations
of the disappearing veils and crushed rainbows
synchronously aligned with my poetry at the time.
I could feel the passage of the stars
like migrating Canada geese in the autumn
the shamans read like rosaries in retrograde orbits,
an abacus of wandering planets, and one,
whose name was unknown
rooted in the ground of itself like a strange silence
that had whispered the world into its own ear
like the dark secret of light upon light
as everyone looked up like mirrors
with tears in their eyes as big as lenses
trying to overhear what was clearly not hidden
through the keyhole of a telescope up on Heartbreak Hill
when seeking wasn't a way of avoiding what was revealed.
poem by Patrick White
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The Loneliest, Most Protean Modes Of Madness
The loneliest, most protean modes of madness
rage in my cells like nightmares in isolation
watching the fireflies dance through the bars
as a secret gesture from unknown, sympathetic stars
in a collusion of constellations to keep up with the times
and shuck off their old myths of origin
like the straight jackets of a fixed place,
debate whether the light-bending darkness is chaos or freedom
or the old heirarchies of seraphic emanations of insight
still trickle down like oracular snakes on burning ladders.
Now if I wanted this to mean something
I'd look for a precedent for the shadows that dart like birds
across the tunnel vision of my line of sight
and I'd drink from the same fountain where the leaves
lap their water like books full of experience
and I'd borrow light years from other men's eyes
to verify my seeing may be new, but it's sound.
I don't have any use for knowledge
and that's why it trusts me and let's its hair down
as if there were nothing of any significance to impart
to the diamond-hearted translucency of an engaging madman
whose enlightenment sweats the details
in a fever of crazy wisdom that plays with his mind
like a child on the moon fascinated by the solitude of its intensity.
But you who can hear me in your blood without asking
will recognize me by the accent of light in my voice
and know that I don't walk in the footprints of grammars
that wore down this trail like a carpet that wouldn't fly away
until they got as far as they could vocally could
then turned home for good, as if that were the end of the tail
that began and ended like alpha in the mouth of omega.
But time sweeps eternity away like a waterclock in a deluge,
like chalk on a blackboard, a ferocity of jewels out of the eyes
of bitter ores that couldn't see anything shining in the dark
by their own light like a fish out of the reach of the sun,
that became a lantern unto itself, a revelation
on its own wavelength that illuminated the depths
of a darkness deeper than light years are far
and there's no way to divine a sign in the immaculate darkness
for a teacher or a star. Here where the ladders don't reach
and there are no reflections of a higher clarity
all senses are intensified into one medium of perception
that doesn't individuate the morphology of knowledge forms
your mind holds up like a black mirror to a chaos
of hidden harmonies that depend inexhaustibly upon you
to add your voice to a new species of seeing,
like a mutant gene that's never been heard from before.
Even in a cage, my humanity is what's measureless
about all things if you enter them deep enough to understand
you can't drown in the mirage of your own emptiness
or badger the stars to break their vow of silence
without giving yourself away like a secret
everybody's been keeping to themselves like tears
under their breath, in the wells of their heart,
in the dessicated watersheds of their art
with nowhere to fall but up into the nights within them.
The unattainable aspirations of a madman grasping at fireflies
like the cornerstones of a new palace of stars
that dance like chandeliers in the rain
to the timing of their musical visions in the night.
Among the journeymen who labour for lasting results
I do with great discipline exactly nothing,
masterfully done. And the picture-music is undeniably
perishable. I burn colours in the sun on a pyre of hawkweed
like the works of a dead chameleon evaporating
like a rainbow body that isn't making promises to anyone
you'll ever hear from it again, though mantras
echo through the mountains like the shrieking palettes
of wild birds revoking the ease of the nocturnal silence
with more vivid mixes of the hues in the eyes of crazy wisdom.
I make great leaps of disbelief into the abyss
off the ledge of a lover's precipice into the emptiness
and my heels flower into wings and it feels
as if I'm departing at last like a hermit down a mountain
with a contemporary vision of my own empty immensity.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Polar Nights
Music :ulrich roth
Lyrics:ulrich roth
Down, down ...
Thats bringing me down
The stars in the sky
Seem to fall to the ground.
Time, time ...
Im chasing the time
The stars in the sky
Seem to be turning round.
Is that the wind in your eyes
That is soothing my mind?
Is that the night of your eyes
That is soothing my mind?
Round, round ...
My minds whirling round
The moons in the sky
Seem to burn on the ground.
Gone, gone ...
My mightmares are gone
The moons in the sky
Seemed to eat up the sun.
Is that the wind in your eyes
That is soothing my mind?
Is that the night in your eyes
That is soothing my mind?
Back from polar nights ...
I was down ...
I was out ...
The nights at the poleve been
So cold without you!
I was down ...
I was out ...
The pole-star was bringing me
Back home to you.
Is that the wind in your eyes
That is soothing my mind?
Is that the night in your eyes
That is soothing my mind?
song performed by by Scorpions
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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11 Star
STAR:
'FOLLOW THE SAME STAR'
The truth we see;
How small a part
Of that lovely light
Ever reaches our heart?
If you're looking for the light,
There is a star shining bright,
A dawn to this dark night,
A candle burning bright.
Long ago, a star
Sent forth its light from afar.
And now, no matter how far,
We will follow the same star.
Lost sailors used stars
To calculate their course
Whenever the wind and waves took
Them with their force.
Let truth transform you;
It will make your heart and mind new.
If you're not faithful, your heart's in denial;
Take it from me - it's worth your while.
So forget this world with all its cares,
For troubled dreams turn into nightmares.
You have to leave this world behind
If you want to keep what you find.
The stars haven't always been there,
But the love of our Lord is everywhere.
The devil appears as an angel of light;
He does his best work in the night.
One day you'll leave this world of ours,
Taking your place among the stars.
Shine bright with light, my star;
Show the world who you are.
'SHARE THE SAME STAR'
I'm looking at this star tonight,
But will my wish come true?
I can't help wondering,
If you can see the same star too?
Do you see what I see,
As we stand in its light?
Does darkness overwhelm you,
When you look up there tonight?
I am dreaming in the darkness,
About this star that shines above.
I hope that you'll find me,
Looking for true love.
I've wished upon this special star
For my whole life, it seems.
I close my eyes and make a wish
For all my hopes and dreams.
One day, I got my wish;
I finally met you.
You're that special someone,
Who made my dreams come true.
They say you should never tell
What you wish for, it's true,
But I want the whole world to know
That my wish was for you.
Though there are miles between us,
I know our hearts will meet.
At the point this star begins,
The two will have one beat.
Whenever we are apart,
I find that same bright star.
It makes me feel close to your heart,
No matter where you are.
'WISH ON A STAR'
As I wait here, wondering where you are,
I lie in loneliness and look up at the stars.
Soaring on through space like a shooting star,
Still searching - wondering who you are.
As far as you can see into eternity,
Each one is a wish that with you I'll be.
Stare at the sky, on a silent night;
Count the crystal sea of stars, blazing bright.
Staying by your side wherever you may go,
I have to tell you now - I just want you to know
That even as the stars keep shining in the sky,
My love for you will burn forever and never die.
There's just something beautiful about when angels pray;
A star shines brighter in the night than the light of day.
You can't lift a candle to show lost souls the way
Without feeling the warmth of that radiant ray.
'SHINE BRIGHT WITH LIGHT'
Up in heaven, the angels cry;
Another star falls from the sky.
A falling star - a fading light,
And soon it shall pass from our sight.
When the world starts falling apart,
The hope of heaven is hidden in my heart.
I'll make the world a brighter place,
Like the light of a star in space.
Someday, we'll be just like the angels are;
Like the steady light of a distant star.
Someday soon, we'll shine like them,
Radiant as the rarest, glowing gem.
Sing to the stars - sing to the sea;
Let your song echo for eternity.
Truth our hearts alone can see,
A reflection of reality.
'EACH NIGHT I PRAY'
Walking outside, I lift my eyes
To a symphony in the skies.
You are my star - you shine so bright;
When it is dark, you are my light.
Everyday, I'm so grateful
For your warm and glowing light.
Thank you for being so faithful;
You make my whole world bright.
Just like a star, you're so far away.
I think of you - each night I pray,
But I know there's no way
For you to hear the words I say.
I see you in the sky at night,
But I can't touch the star in sight.
I guess I will always be
A friend you will never see.
'WISH YOU WERE HERE'
One night I was out wandering,
Feeling lost and alone.
I looked up into the heavens,
And there a bright star shone.
I picked one to wish on
From every star above.
I closed my eyes and made a wish
To send you all my love.
So look up in the sky tonight
And find that star;
It will shine bright with light,
However near or far.
And when you see our star,
My wish will come to you;
Stars were made to wish upon;
Sometimes wishes come true.
'I SAW THE LIGHT'
I saw a bright ray today
That led me out of darkness.
A little light so far away
In an endless sea of emptiness.
It burned like a shooting star,
In the distance, so very far.
I think it’s getting clearer;
Now it's coming nearer.
A light just as bright as the sun
And almost as distant;
It wasn’t the only one;
You couldn't have missed it.
When I'm lost in the dark and I can't see,0
I just look for the light.
I have hope when it shines on me,
Everything will be bright.
'YOU ARE MY LIGHT'
I looked up at the stars last night,
Just thinking about you,
And wondering what I could do
To make our dreams come true.
Together, we’ll shine like the sun;
Two candles burn brighter than one.
We'll dance just like the stars in space,
Together forever in an endless embrace.
Wherever you go, I will follow;
And it doesn't matter how far.
Without you, my heart feels hollow;
I just want to be where you are.
You shine just like a star so bright;
I'd be lost without your light.
Hand in hand, we'll stand together;
I promise to be there forever.
'A STAR IS BORN'
Every star is destined by fate
To live and then to die.
It glows with light - it just can't wait,
Shooting across the sky.
For a moment, it is there,
Burning bright up in the air.
It falls gently onto the ground,
Without making a sound.
Like a falling star,
Glowing bright with glory,
I'm just another ending
To someone else's story.
Just a dropp of rain in the desert,
Just a grain of sand in the sea;
What have I done that won’t be forgotten?
Will anyone remember me?
'SHINE LIKE A STAR'
I look up at the sky;
It hurts so much saying goodbye.
Every time I think of you,
It makes me want to cry.
Hope is not hope if you can see;
Is there a star that shines for me?
Like a star, you showed me the way;
You led me with your light each day.
I'll say a prayer for you;
I'll make a wish and I hope it comes true.
Put your faith in what you can't see;
I wish you could be here with me.
Sometimes I wish I could be
A star to shine for all to see.
I know the light is not my own;
I could never do it alone.
'YOU ARE MY STAR'
You are my star,
So bright up above;
I can't forget it;
It's you I love.
My star will shine
So bright and true.
It's a light in the night
Made just for you.
When you are lost,
Wherever you may be,
Look for the light,
For it will set you free.
Don't hide your light,
Wherever you are;
Let it burn bright,
Just like a star.
'A SEA OF STARS'
A life is lost;
What can we say?
A bright light burns,
Then it fades away.
And at the sight,
They stop and stare
On this dark night,
But they don't care.
It came and went;
I'm not sure what it meant.
A star fell from the sky,
And I want to know why.
Just for you,
This star fell;
You have one wish,
So use it well.
poem by Daniel Cobb
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Bacharach / David Medley
(live)
Any day now
Any day now, I will hear you say,
Goodbye my love youll be on your way
And my wild, beautiful bird,
You will have flown, yeah!
Any day now, Ill be all alone
And you wont be around
Any day now, when your restless eyes meet someone new
To my sad surprise
And the blue shadows will fall all over town,
Any day now, you wont be around
Any love will let me down
I shouldnt want to keep you if you dont want to stay
And until youre gone forever
Ill be holding on for dear life, holding on
Holding you this way
And Im begging you to stay
Any day now, when the clock strikes go, youll go away
Then my tears will fall
And the blue shadows will fall all over town, yeah!
Any day now, you wont be around,
And love will let me down
Baby its you
Its not the way you smile
That touches my heart
Its not the way you kiss
That tears me apart
(*) many, many, many nights go by
I sit alone
At home I cry
Over you
What can I do
Cant help myself
cause baby its you
You should hear what theyre saying about you
They say youve never
Never, never been true
Oh! no! no!
It doesnt matter what they say
Im gonna love you any old way
What can I do
When its true
Dont want nobody
cause baby its you
Repeat (*)
Knowing when to leave
Go while the going is good
Knowing when to leave may be
The smartest thing anyone can learn, go!
Im afraid my heart isnt very smart
Fly while your still have your wings
Knowing when to leave wont let you reach
The point of no return, fly!
Foolish as it seems
I still have my dreams
So I keep hoping, day after day
As I wait for the man
And each night after night as I wish
For the love he can be
Though Im sure that no one can tell what are
Whishes and hopefully, somehow I fell
There is happiness waiting for me
When someone walks in your life
You just better be sure hes right
cause if hes found out, heartches and tears you must pay
Keep both of your eyes on the door
Never let it get out of sight
Just be prepared when the time has come
You arent away
Sail when the wind starts to blow
Bul like a fool I dont know when to leave
Make it easy on yourself
If you really love her
And there is nothing I can do
Dont try to spair my feelings
Just tell me that we are through
And make it easy on yourself
Make it easy on yourself...
cause breaking up is so very hard to do
If the way I hold you
Cant compare to her caress
No words of consolation will make me miss you less
My darling... if this is goodbye
I just know I want to cry...
So run to her before you start crying too
And make it easy on yourself...
Make it easy on yourself...
cause breaking up is so very hard to do
And make it easy on yourself
Make it easy on yourself, easy on yourself
Cause breaking up is so very hard to do
(theres) always something
There to remind me
If you should miss
The sweet and tender love we used to share
That we used to share
Just go back to the places where we used to go
And Ill be there
Oh, how can I forget you
When there is always something there to remind me
Always something there to remind me
I was born to love you
I will never be free
Youll always be a part of me
When there is always something there to remind me
Ill never fall in love again
Dont tell me what its all about
cause Ive been there and Im glad Im out
Out of those chains, those chains that blind you
That is why Im here to remind you
Here to remind you
Here to remind you
Here to remind you
What do you get when you fall in love?
You only get lies and pain and sorrow
So for at least until tomorrow
Ill never fall in love again
Oh, Ill never fall in love again
Walk on by
If you see me walking down the street
And I start to cry each time we meet
Walk on by, walk on by
Make believe you dont see the tears
Just let me breathe in private
cause each time I see you I break down and cry
Walk on by
I just cant get over losing you
So if I should seem broken and blue
Walk on by, walk on by
Foolish pride thats all that I have left
So let me have the tears and the sadness you gave me
When you said good-bye
Walk on by, by
Do you know the way to san jose
Do you know the way to san jose?
Ive been away so long
I may go wrong and lose my way
Do you know the way to san jose?
Im going back to find some place of mind san jose
L.a. is a great big freeway
Put a $100 down and buy a car
In a week, maybe two theyll make you a star
Weeks turn into years, that quick they pass
And all the stars there never were
Are parking cars and punping gas
Ive got lots of friends in san jose
Cant wait to get back to san jose
Do you know the way to san jose?
song performed by by Carpenters
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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And You Shall Forever Be
And you shall forever be
all that could not be said of me
though I spoke for myself as long as I could
to answer your absence in paint and words
like this night creek talking in tongues to itself.
I see the maple leaves rotting in manuscript
like the dead civilization of a mummified language
that never made it into print.
And though I know every name
of the wildflowers that did, and of the stars,
their perennial myths of origin,
and of the fireflies, their efflorescent haikus,
tonight I walk among bones and pelvises of ice,
the desecration of forms, limbs lobbed off
like the right arms of offended trees and the eyes
of small skulls plucked out like stillborn moons
that never made it through the winter.
Alone with this emptiness which yet remains
the biggest clue I've ever found
to the whereabouts of myself,
I am not estranged by my usual compassion
for outcast things with no voice of their own.
There is no pillow of snow over the mouth
of what can't be said without me.
The dead don't hold their fingers
up to their lips to bid me keep silent.
They're all dancing wildly to lyrics of their own
in a winter carnival of deathmasks
that have shed their bodies
like the hags of the withered waterlilies
trying to wash the brown out of their gowns
like sunspots from the memory of the stars.
As if there were an eloquence
in the radiance of their rags
that overwhelmed the silence
with the sacred syllables of a mother-tongue
that has no word for time or death.
No word for life that distinguishes them from me.
Not just moonlight on the barkless limbs of mannequins
that have shed their skin seductively.
Not the dead of a northern Pompey
frozen in ash and ice and snow
catastrophically posed for generations to come
but the hymns of the homeless
who've finally found common ground
with the tent cities of the stars high overhead
and the gypsy moths in the Dutch elms.
The long vowels of the living joining hands
with the skeletal consonants of the dead
to make one whole word we can say in our sleep
like a secret we keep between ourselves.
And for the moment I feel almost complete here
like the first draft of a book
that the dead have yet to rewrite.
And though I've said it thousands of times before
in as many ways as I was inspired to,
like a fire that reared up at the mere shadow of the whip
to outrun the starlight for the sheer spirit
of challenging the will of this body
dug like a spur in its own ribs,
it was clear from the very beginning,
as clear as poppies and marigolds
in the summer of their oral traditions,
no more can be said in the dead of winter
than can be said by the living
to coax the wild crocuses out in spring.
You might be a lone night bird
that inhabits the woods like a magus
with too many stars to follow
to follow any one of them
and gratify your life by stargazing
and calling the faithful to prayer
like a muezzin in the morning
with the voice of an underground river.
And for all your lucidity you might never find
the long shadows of your ancestors
erecting the waterlilies of their tents
along the riverbanks of those rivers and lifelines
you keep returning to every year like waterbirds.
Or you could find no sign of anyone
for light years who could recognize you
for who you are even as you change time-zones
like a child with ageing eyes
who was raised by the alone with the Alone
in an incomprehensible solitude that included everyone.
Here where distinctions break down
and the dead and the living both draw
from the same source as they've always done
each is known to the other
by attributes that neither of them have.
The warm heart of a black rose
looking back over its shoulder
at a bend in the night creek,
the moon rising up over the valley,
a pearl in partial eclipse,
taking one long, last look
at the broken cages of ghostly tree limbs
and shattered ladders of lifeboat wing bones
that drowned on the way to their own rescue.
Is one side of a window truer than another?
Inner and outer, I and the other
truly separated by this mere hole in my eye?
Do the stars streaming through my mind
feel a subtle change in the nature of the sky
when they do, a different feel to the darkness,
something strange about the flowers
they open like loveletters, sensing someone
has been tampering with their mail
as if the message were still the medium
but with a different return address?
Is my absence any less baffling than my presence?
These with the hearts of departed things
any less whole or real or displaced
or death any less of a prelude to time
than any other point in its passage is?
Even in death, even when the sun
shines at midnight it's always dawn.
The waterbirds go. The waterbirds come back.
Like an ongoing dialogue in an hourglass
where content is the same as timing
and the most enduring of things
are the things that most readily pass
between the bright vacancy
and dark abundance of life
like the moon that keeps growing
without coming or going like a journey
standing in the doorway
of its own unending threshold.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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