The Lightning Poem by Patrick White

The lightning a salvo of flashbulbs
across the bow
of an unknown celebrity.
The windows have an honest look
to their eyes
but they're politely estranged
by the way I see things.
The rain talks
like a clock with logorhea
and the cars sizzle by
like eggs that have just been dropped
into the fat heat of a frying pan
like a wide-eyed vision of hell
though even in this
they insist upon looking at everything
sunny-side up.
The storm has spoken
though no one really knows
what was said.
Power I suppose.
Renewal and redemption.
Restoring the dynamic equilibrium
between polar opposites
by discharging pent-up emotions
like excessive baggage
unspent potential
too much voltage to bear
living so extremely at the edge of things
without jumping.
But it's an iota subscript of a lie
in the footnote of a suicide
you have to learn
to flap like a book
before you can fly like an eagle.
Or swan-dive into the abyss
with a kiss on the cross
of the constellation Cygnus.
The cops are arresting
someone across the street.
And drunk women
dragging on soggy cigarettes
in the doorways of the bars
out for a girls' night out on the town
as if they were supporting an issue
laugh like fire-hydrants with strep throat
at the insignificance of what's going down
late on a Thursday night
in a small Ontario town
where the shepherds outnumber the sheep
and everyone's looking for Little Bo Peep
as their perfect idea of a soul-mate.
And now the heat again
as the rain lets up
and the air is as damp and thick
as the arm of an old sofa
in an abandoned rooming house
with flesh-eating disease.
Raw mufflers replace the thunder
as they cruise the streets
looking for uncooked meat
to get into the air-conditioned ovens
of their cars
and go for a joy ride
up the slick highway
into the dripping
frog-popping countryside
for a drink of Fireball Whiskey
in a backseat bar.
They're listening to Lady Gaga
but I'm listening
to the same old wavelength I was
when Bob Dylan went electric.
I listen to the words
like the footfall
of a woman coming up the stairs
though no one has
with love in their heart
for so long
I feel I'm losing in overtime
without even playing the field.
And I'm tired of relying on my solitude
as a default muse.
And there's nothing to drink around here
except uninspired booze.
All the dragons that used to get fired up
like road trip Harleys
lie idle as school furnaces in the summer
forgetting it used to be them
and not their arthritis
that once swallowed the moon
and brought the rain.
A dragon at peace with the world
is an urn
with the soul of a weathervane.
They all need a minuteman
to know which way
the wind is blowing
but to judge
from the fury in my heart
and what's not inflammable
about my next breath
it'll be lightyears yet
before I come to that
like a star eating
a spoonful of its own ashes
to recall the taste of fire.
Yesterdays' lean mean volcanic fountain-mouths
that meant what they said
like new islands in the mindstream
turn into tomorrow's
fat jolly fire-hydrants
trying to drown
the used matchbooks
of their igneous past
in the watersheds of their sorrows
like arsonists in Atlantis.
And the leaves fall
like psalms of napalm
in the dead heartwood of autumn.
Not enough dragon-fire left
to start their own funeral pyres
or burn like heretics
in the kindling
of their orthodox crutches.
Some people just don't know
how to say no to death.
And the ones that do
haven't been born yet.
Two roads diverged in a yellow road
like the forked tongue
of a long and winding serpent
witching the air for prey
but I didn't take either one
but take it as it comes
all the way.
Showing a starmap
to three blind mice with white canes
isn't as good
as helping them realize
you don't need eyes to shine.
True north isn't a lost leader
that only knows where it's going
by getting a fix
on whose following behind.
And there are no bridges of time
where we can meet again
to span the gaps
between eternities
in an afterlife of rainbows.
This is it forever.
Now.
Now.
Now.
Not now and then
but who and when.
Carpe diem
as if there were no tomorrow.
And I know a man
whose heart is as heavy
as a leftover bullet
that didn't take the shot
and a woman
who put her make-up on
like a target
no one ever gave
a second look.
It might be an old story
but it's always a new book
to those who live it
as if it had no end.
Unborn.
Undying.
Even so
it's your afterbirth
that perishs first.
But once you're off the wheel
there's no bend in the road
that can turn you around.
You're void bound for good.
The axis of the earth.
The still point.
The endlessly expansive center
of an over-reactive universe
dying to get to the bottom of things.
Space has no sense of place
like the ghost of a homesick longing
to return to better times.
It's dwelt in its homelessness
like the wind
or a poet in autumn
or people on the move
for billions of years.
Like everything else in the universe
it's a ubiquitous beginning
with perfect timing
that just doesn't know when
to quit.