Patrick White Poems

I never asked you to lie.
I never insisted upon the truth.
I was wholly absorbed in studying
the comparative mythology of your alibis
...

So many mornings I want to be done
with waking up as if it were always winter
and rifling through my pockets to see if
I've got enough cash to buy me and the cat
...

Shock one bird into taking to its wings
and all the others will fly up out of the sacred woods
into an emergent symphony of spontaneously choreographed words
like rivers reeds dancing in unison to the music of a distant sea.
...

Sumac in the snow, towers of coagulated blood
for flames, spooky candelabra, what holy day
do your upholstered spearpoints commemorate
that you've hung on longer than most leaves
...

Most days went by like the helical coils of the sun
slowly crushing the life out of you, a ton of chronic anaconda,
swallowing you heart first, not the occasional
lightning strike of a rattlesnake shaking its tail at you
...

Paint all over me, flakey night skies
and the histrionic hemorrhage of red roses,
blue bruises, violet orchids under my eyes,
Hooker's green brooding in the foliage
...

The neglect he had to impose upon his life
to write, to pursue an earthly excellence
to make up for the childhood he was told
was blighted by the time he was seven as if
...

It’s been tried before, evil come to the door
to school me out of my muscular optimism,
my seven times down eight times up approach
to not throwing the fight, the agon of life, until I’m dead.
...

Trying to interpret the silence like glyphs in a jungle ruin.
Afraid of what they might say if I cut the vines away
like a Medusa's head of spinal cords connected to my brain,
or this octopus of major blood vessels plugged into my heart.
...

Your face was a moon I haunted, and your body
twisted me into agonies of sexual driftwood
that wanted to burn at midnight under the stars
like the last signal fire of an isolated survivor
...