Infrequently Asked Questions
Is it true
the most compassionate people in life
are the ones in the greatest danger?
That the most generous
will lose their hands to the ones they fed?
That the bravest will be hunted down by protected cowards
and when the last of the heroes are dead
and the dragons who inspired them
are the advertising themes of amusement parks
those with the smallest balls
will give themselves the biggest awards?
Is it true
those who are creative
chafe the destroyers like anti-matter
and give the intellectuals diaper-rash of the mind?
That just to open your eyes
to watch the stars and fireflies
is enough to make other people feel blind
and insist you black them out
like pearls in an air-raid?
What's a starmap to a mole?
What's a lamp that shines in braille
to someone without fingerprints?
Is it true that beauty summons the worm
as a material eye-witness to its ruin?
That genius is devoured
by cannibalistic Neanderthals
into homoeopathic magic
for the power of its brain
to turn thought into protein
with a high creatine content
that can make your dick strike twelve anachronistically
so you can go on knapping flint
for the next hundred thousand years?
That genius is a freak in isolation
that gets its own back
for being pecked at
like a phoenix among chickens
by opening Pandora's box
like the atom at Los Alamos
like the genie in the lamp
and making a Trojan horse of its gifts
gives them everything they want
because anything as red
as Van Gogh's hair and beard and ear in Arles
must be either a phoenix
or a fox with chicken-pox.
Sometimes you have more to fear
from the keys
than the locks.
[...] Read more
poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
