Fumarole
The beast of a thousand unconsummated yesterdays
born without names in the gutter
roars in the rags of its own blood
for the poxy apricot of the rising moon. My voice
is a guitar without strings, the dark well
of an eclipse that eats the dragon
that has lingered too long in the depths without stars.
The crazy windows in this burning room
plead for a reason, a purpose, a sign
as they weep themselves into weary honey, sick
of the equity of their seeing, the sloppy script
of another dirty winter that scrawled
its drunken name in the amber penmanship
and metaphysical sunsets of nicotine
encrypted like scars or dry creekbeds
in the guestbooks of their sagging eyes. On the sill,
the ashes of birds, of stars, of dead fly hearts
smaller than the nuggets of gold
panned by the convict bees from the feigned tears
of the cocktease flowers who know how
to renew their virginity by giving it up
like a handful of keys to anyone who knocks. Hot ores
adumbrated into the slag of unapproachable islands
and treacherous harbours in chastity belts.
And though I know better, accepting
what I cannot change in this graveyard
of geriatric storms that have blown themselves out
against the implacable glass that disguises itself as the sky
and waits with its decoy of clouds
for the inadvertent sparrow
to dash the nut of its brain against the impassable windowpane,
I long for a heart of brick, a stone of dried blood
worked loose like a tooth from a crumbling temple
to smash my way out of this brittle museum of things,
this menagerie of balanced coffins
and cordless spinal columns
that account for nothing but the unearthly stillness and vacuity
of a reasonable effort to survive surviving
without a taint of life exceeding
their industrious accountancy. And though I know,
how has it not been drummed into me
by suffering the violet penalties
of love and prismatic separations, the madness
of trying to bridge your own mindstream
to the further shore with the peacock rainbows
of midnight oilslicks that let their serpents down
like the hair of a drowning Medusa, and though I know
and know and know the sad alleys
and unforgivable garbage that reeks like an over-ripe moon
in the cul-de-sacs that enshrine the priestly drunks,
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poem by Patrick White
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