Patrick White Poems

Trying to shine to blind the voodoo dolls
sticking sharp pins of insight dipped in stinging nettles
into my eyes like burning thorns that won't wash out
even when the blue rose of the sky
...

Firefly, what are you looking for
in every corner of the third eye of the world?
Are you looking for the missing children
of another realm who fell into this one
...

As much as I love the stars, I know
the spirit must seek its lost radiance
in the midst of the filth of this world,
even when its third eye is trying
...

Passing into a sweeter solitude as it gets older
the sunset takes one long last look over its shoulder
like the darkening tree line on a wavelength of hills
back at the valley that it's just lived its way through
...

I've always thought a shared vision was best,
the tree, doubly witnessed, sweeter in the fruit,
the star seen rising over the hill by two,
exponentially enhanced in its shining
...

All the good reasons that get in the way of writing,
baby needs new shoes, and you're conscientious and diligent,
will kill you faster than the bad ones
that brought you to the edge of your mindstream in the first place
...

Faceless this time of night, my skin evaporates like dry ice
into a deepening sense of containment
by a dark space with distant cities of light
trying to colonize the Pythagorean fireflies of Cretona,
...

You say you've taken all the tension out of your life,
but to me you've just planed a mountain range
into a parking lot. Your sacred syllable is flatlining
like a synonym for death, and your eyes,
...

Anything goes at three in the morning.
I'm dogpaddling in the salvage of the day
after the sun went down like a shipwreck
with all hands on board. A train whistle
...

A vision of grief in the world, so vast and varied,
so intimately specific, so peculiar to each one of us,
we stratify it in our brains like the fossil shapes
of wavelengths and membranes layered
...