I'm Going To Stare
I'm going to stare the sweet, white oblivion
behind the purity of this page down
until it breaks its vow of silence
like the hymen of a nun
and there are little scarlet letters
of red-blooded apostasy
lying like rose petals all over the snow.
I'm going to track birds all over this page
like the linearity of an unknown Etruscan alphabet
everybody's trying to translate into their native language
like the lozenge of a sacred syllable
that disappears on their mother tongue
like the first spring thaw of the year.
I don't care if the hunters in my rear view mirror
scratch their heads at the strange signs they're tracking,
I'm going to expand their vocabulary
with beasts that have never appeared
on anyone's wall before.
I'm going to teach the Neanderthals
to paint like Hieronymus Bosch.
I don't really care if it means anything
because someone somewhere
is going to interpret it as something.
So I'm going to follow the circuitous blossoming
of my own mindstream ignoring
the sexually frustrated logic of those who think
if you link a lot of empty words like cattle cars
up in a row syntactically
somehow that makes you a grapevine
and the smell of diesel is not that far off
from the bouquet of the industrial wine
you think you can serve up to Dionysus
without having him spit you out of his mouth.
Doesn't bother me if a lot of half-wits
want to break their brains
trying to see what the other one means
biting into black walnuts
like the prophetic skulls of Rinzai koans,
this is my poem
and it's going to mean what it sees.
I'm going to ride this wavelength of insight out
until it breaks like the arm of a spiral galaxy
on the shores of sunny California.
I wouldn't abuse the prayer mats of those
who want to touch their knees
and foreheads to the ground
like the landing gear of space modules
making a lunar touchdown
but I'm going to ride this poem out like a flying carpet
as if the direction of prayer were everywhere
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poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
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