Patrick White Poems

Out of so much experience
so little to signify it
in a language
extraterrestrial life could understand
...

Sit warmly here with me awhile
and I will smother you in fireflies
until your aura looks like
a dandelion constellation
...

On into the next dimension
like a measure of thought
sitting full lotus
on a flying carpet of feeling
...

The swan flies over the lace corals of the trees.
Albireo in Cygnus homing west.
The boa of the moon unfeathered
by the brittle eclipse of broken shale
...

I did the kind of good a storm does.
I may have broken some tree limbs
and downed some powerlines along the way
but I cleared the air of its festering
...

These huge vast thoughts of you
prove nothing
except they're too hard to carry.
They're the same old Sisyphean stones
...

If you're braver than I am
it's only because you're more desparate you said
and I broke down laughing in tears
as you were tripping on mushrooms
...

I wish everyone in the world were as mad as you are.
I wish everyone in the world talked the same nonsense you do
and meant as much.
Stop crying.
...

Some people go looking for happiness.
Some prefer power or beauty wealth and fame.
Some crave intensity.
Some seek peace.
...

What I want is a starfish
that can pry open the mouth of a word
not for the pearl but the tongue that said it.
What I want is an irrelevancy of slurred minerals,
...