I Like The Feel
I like the feel of the new heels on my cowboy boots.
I like the feel of breathing in joy like oxygen,
of moving from one small joy to another
without pomp or pageantry
like the constellation of a black swan
on a midnight mindstream
drifting through the small torches of the stars
that won't go out in any kind of water.
And I don't know why I'm wounded
deeper than tears by joy
whenever I witness any undoubted example
of human excellence
and penumbrally share in the triumph
remembering how truly astonishing
a human being can be
when compassion and insight
are the fruit and roots of the tree.
So much in the world I abhor,
horrors and sorrows and atrocities
that violate the elemental dignity of life
as it expresses itself in a human so deeply
even the silence cuts out its tongue
as an offence against
the unspeakable decency of the darkest abyss
when it stands before evil.
Like a golden fish in a polluted stream
slurried by a nuclear reactor
into a cancerous elixir
I have ingested every toxic meme
of a sick society in a feverish dream
and I cannot help but think and feel and live
whatever's written on the water
to soil the stars
that thought they were out of reach
and make manic depressives
of the waves that spoil the beach.
A child of my times, the Zeitgeist, the Holy Ghost,
and the jinn at every well
like the forbidden fires of holy explosives
wrapped in folds of smoke,
I see through the glass darkly
like everyone else
who paints the eye of their telescope
with the shepherd moons
of despair and hope
and reports their observations as the truth
[...] Read more
poem by Patrick White
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