A Paint Rag Of The Masterpiece I Used To Be

A Paint Rag Of The Masterpiece I Used To Be

A Poem by Patrick

A paint rag of the masterpiece I used to be. 
Is this humility? Or time to quit? I refuse 
to listen to my muse as if she were a whistle 
on a graveyard shift. A nightbird or nothing
but the white noise of the cosmic hiss 
cooling its afterbirth off? I make a point 
when I write, or paint, or make love 
of never knowing where my mindstream's 
going with me, and everything sings mysteriously 
as if it were oracular. I let the world 
come upon me by surprise, expecting nothing 
beyond the moment or behind me, and it's twice 
as spectacular for being unanticipated 
than if I were in up over my head 
in an ocean of notions of what it was all about. 

I'm on an enlightenment path through the gutter.
I'm swept along with things like log jams 
of cigarette-butts and dud lottery tickets on the rain
and then things pan out expansively in my flowing 
and I'm able to reflect the constellations again like a starmap 
of mirroring consciousness, and I'm utterly astounded 
by the beauty of a peace deep within that makes me think, 
despite the apparent facts, the most prevalent element 
in the universe, is an exquisitely subtle intelligence 
that gives to everything that exists, and, I suspect, 
doesn't, as well, not a God particle, but to each 
its own measure of a wavelength from a firefly of insight 
to an apocalyptic supernova of mind-blowing revelation
so intense, you glimpse it once, and your eyes evaporate.

What a way to spend your life though. A poet on the road 
he took at a fork of his own walking on stars, thorns, 
the eyelids of black roses in eclipse, night seas 
that forbid the false hopes of lifeboats
and the buoyant despair of the shipwrecks 
that lay on the bottom like a black box that had lost 
its voice in the depths calling out to the fish for help.

Maybe you have to drown first to be a good lifeguard
with gills you can trust, or return to the womb like I do 
from time to time to hear the allure of the mermaids 
singing me up onto the rocks of my birth
as if the waters of life had to break like an urn 
before the dragon could be born again like a star
out its own ashes. The light out of the dark like Draco. 
Hic sunt dracones. The eye out of the shattered lamp 
it used to go by like a nightwatchman among the shadows 
it cast like soot on the dark glass of windows into the heart
as it made sure the doors were locked on what 
was stored inside like the unknown potential 
of the collective unconscious in the comatose warehouse of life. 

In order to be all inclusively lyrical, I learned a long time ago 
to pipe on a hollow silo like the wind or a drunk 
on the neck of an empty whiskey bottle beside the canal 
in the spring because it was too late to fish for evolution 
and satyr I may have been, there was no other syrinx 
or turtle-shaped guitar or lyre within immediate reach. 

Sooner or later, your Dionysian past is going to catch up 
to your Apollonian future, and the measure of a human 
won't be the palm of a planar hand laying out the Parthenon 
caryatid by caryatid, but a starmud temple of sacred prostitutes 
leaping naked through the fires of Isis at a rave 
of tattoos in a mosh pit of esoteric constellations 
dancing on the dark side of the moon like a cult of fireflies
initiating your imagination into different altars 
than those you've been knocking over for lightyears now 
like the pillars of false idols that call down the mountaintops
of mimetic avalanches to bury you in for calling their bluff. 

I've lost count of the number of times I've been 
carried home on my shield like the phase of the moon
I was gored by like an island-hopping mercenary
quixotically tilting at prayer wheels fighting to right 
the toppled axis of Neptune with its head stuck in the seabed 
like a tent-peg in a desert of stars on campaign 
in a holy war with myself I knew I was doomed to lose. 

What did Archilocus say? Some Thracian's got my shield.
O, well. That's tough. But comes a time you've had enough. 
You just want to sit like moss on the rolling stone 
of a prophetic skull and listen to what the crowns 
of the elm trees swaying in the wind are whispering
to the deep violet storm clouds mobilizing at the edge of the sky, 
embedded like a third eye in a hurricane of razor blades. 

These days I give hermetic poetry readings open 
to my solitude, after keeping my mouth shut for years, 
nauseously knitting my broken skeleton in a bone-box 
into the black pearls of sacred syllables dawning under my tongue 
like new days of darkness ahead expanding like space 
in the heart of a voyageur that's left the solar system 
like an explorer that's breaking twigs like blips and beeps 
along the way should anyone back on earth be following 
what I've seen and been to have gotten as far as I have in life.

My heart is free. My spirit as uncontained as a flame 
that paints outside the lines of the mirror I used to look through 
like a reflecting telescope on a cold mountaintop 
trying to escape the light pollution of cities in the valleys 
I once rose from like a coffin of a comet over Sodom and Gomorrah
or the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion 
looking straight into the eyes of the sun like the vapour 
of a rainbow that went blind looking back like a pillar of salt
at what time can wreak when the light gets turned around 
like an ingrown solar flare of a mind that's lost at sea 
on a liferaft surrounded by the fins of circling sun dials. 

I've privately reprieved all the doves on the death row
of the aviaries of my voice, and released the stars 
like chimney sparks from the bad contracts they'd signed 
early in their musical careers with the managerial blow hards
that pumped the volume up on the celestial spheres 
until you couldn't hear anything but the sound of your eardrums 
breaking like chandeliers of hard rain in an ice storm into the scene 
with big dreams of shining one day like creosote 
in a crematorium of genuinely undiscovered talent stars
that burned the whole house down like a zodiac 
over the slums of London in 1666, or Rome 
while Nero fiddled his way through 180l literary awards 
on tour in Greece lying through their eye teeth like Corinthians.

My childhood a progressive demolition of norms.
No regrets. I was born like a heretic into this madness 
of homicidal fictions dismembering Orphic corpses 
in nondescript bathtubs after hanging them upside down
to bleed them like roses and acoustic guitars, ear to ear, 
their vocal cords cut like downed powerlines 
that used to accompany the starlings on their staves.

I have a lot in common with extraordinarily ordinary people. 
Art for art's sake is akin to masturbation and about 
as productive, so I don't try to prove when I write 
I'm so unique you have to ask someone else for an explanation.
No people. No painting or poetry. No communication.
People come first. Art is for people, or it's just the wind 
moving the sand around in an hourglass to no effect
like moments of life lived on the seabeds of the moon, 
cul de sacs, dead ends with no time to reflect 
on the possibility of pearls rolling like dew off their tongues.

Everyman is No one, the same who lifted the veils of Isis
and revealed himself to the Cyclops. Poetry's 
the long, hard discipline of learning to forget your name 
going beyond the unpublishable lovers of fame
with one hand down the muse's pants like an amanuensis.
You've got to sit at the side of your deathbed at every moment 
in order to be fully alive and free of yourself 
so you can sing for the dream figures on the corner 
of Gore and the universe as if they were listening 
to their own voice in the crowded solitude of their passing.

There's mercy in this, a way of life, a form of worship, 
celebration, devotion, sacred circus clowns, ghost dancers
elated by the crazy wisdom of praying off the reservation 
like poetry readings in the basement catacombs of busy bars. 
Reality wholly conformable to the surrealistic facts 
of an active imagination looking at the way things are 
as they pass from one transformation to the next 
like the waterclock of a mindstream pouring itself out 
into the empty forms of dry housewells waiting 
for water levels to rise on the moon like a temple of sandbags.

I write like a river overflowing its banks like the Milky Way 
or the soft shoulders of the Road of Ghosts to flood the earth 
with the alluvial silt of burnt out stars that renew their light 
by breaking bread with Spica in the hand of Virgo
like the dark abundance of the autumn equinox 
pouring its bright vacancy like a harvest moon 
into the inexhaustible silo of an hourglass 
the wind plays its picture music on 
like the urns of starlings born like a voice box 
caught like a song in the throats of exorcised chimney pots.

True to my circuitous blossoming I refuse 
to give up the ghost of my evanescence 
like the smoke of a draconian fire roaring down below 
to keep this house of life warm by laying down 
on the pyres of my cracked heartwood like a fossil of rain
singing to the beatific stars like a heretic 
in an auto de fe of blue jays and sunflowers
blooming in the creative wake of my self immolations
as a way of exacting as much ecstasy as I can from the pain.

Absurd as it seems, I'm trying to live up 
to the aspirations of rogue fireflies untethered 
like a dream of what could be released 
like grains of wild wheat in the star-fields of a feast
from the treadmills of conditioned consciousness 
like constellations of the usual myths of origin 
rising and falling like life and death from the east to the west 
while everything that thrives on earth is exuberantly turning 
against the flow of things like salmon summoned from the sea 
by the mystery of a counter-intuitive voice upstream the other way
as my embryonic stem cells listen to what it suggests
and pro-creatively hearing what its eyes have to say
about the immanent vision of life that burns within me, radically obey. 

© 2014 Patrick


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Reviews

Some delicious lines here, Patrick - your words encompass so many emotions, yet the piece flows in one direction. Your title alone gives food for thought!

Posted 10 Years Ago


Speaking of, this is a masterpiece....I started reading it earlier but I had to wait till I got home from
work to finish reading, it's quite long but I hung on every word, my favorite is the third stanza, but I really adore the entire body of this piece...outstanding work Patrick.

Posted 10 Years Ago


I always took the wrong fork...and wanted to go back into the womb many times...

lived through the cigarette butts and wasted money on loser lottery tickets...we get by by the skin of our teeth...maybe that is what makes us write so much...limit the damage to our psyches..

I feel in no position to refuse the muse...but often wonder what would happen if I did...

Posted 10 Years Ago


Wow! Your feelings ooze from this write. This is written with much passion. I can feel it. Bravo on another stunning piece.

Posted 10 Years Ago


Wonderful lines in this and the imagery is as well. But if I may point out from one hermetic enthusiast to another...Every time you look into another face, you are looking into a mirror. :) Beautiful!

Posted 10 Years Ago



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Added on September 11, 2014
Last Updated on September 11, 2014

Author

Patrick
Patrick

Perth, Ontario, Canada



About
I have a confession... I write for therapy, its not transcend artistic statements or postulating polemics, I write to communicate and express myself in a form that can promote communication between pa.. more..

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