Art practice

38. Chance encounter with a Goddess

The moon was curious so

she donned a bobble hat and,

gathering her galaxy into a shopping trolley,

trailed along the grit street,

the wheels of her milky way wobbling

a little…

 

Face round and smooth, she

shone out among the crowd,

despite the woolly hat

and the trolley.

37. Mother tongue

When I learned to speak 

I spoke working class.

Don’t misunderstand me.

It’s not an accent, it’s 

a position.

I can adopt it still.

 

When the old ones are chuckling on the bus,

when the builder is pricing the job,

when the craic sours around

cracked mirrors and lairy sinks.

 

Sometimes it claims me

when I least want to own it

but there is no one else

to walk me home.

 

Lately I grow tired,

teetering on this tightrope

between form and expression and

knowing the abyss

could swallow me whole.

35. Icarus was beyond repair

History won’t recall how he was untalented

yet free, whilst his brother was gifted and caged.

 

How it wasn’t death by ambition but

death by adoration. And the irony

of the salt bleached bones, the burned feather stumps.

Unworkable.

 

And who doesn’t want to mimic their older sibling?

 

Too blessed for this world, Iapyx.

Kept all that time,

in the dark.

Like the winds, he would wreak havoc 

just by his presence.

Unacceptable.

 

In the end, all their father’s skill and craft

made only labyrinths of torment.

33. ASOS

Having no one to come out to

the lonely man spent 

his Saturday shopping for all things

rainbow.

Or failing that, pink.

 

Monday announces

rainbow trainers, rainbow socks,

beige trousers (a stumbling block),

rainbow t-shirt, pink hoodie and 

pink backpack.

 

And as he walks to the Park and Ride,

Grindr in hand,

he momentarily aligns

with the lonely businesswoman —

all overtime sober in serious cuts —

their progress smashing genders

like avocados.

32. Progression

There is no entrance charge

to the temple of what was once

revered. It is chill-dark.

 

In the corner, Jacob’s ladder—

retracted now—

leans abandoned, blackened

beneath St. Peter’s toe.

 

Only nostalgia vainly thrives

against sterilizing dust.

I light another candle and walk

 

out in the asphalt citadel.

Here

the lifeless guard every stone horizon,

 

the clean busily manufacture

fresh, and the finest

gather to show purpose.

Under a crystal chandelier

 

you tell me

‘In life we can never turn back’.

Elsewhere

 

a muddied cock crows thrice and

still the leaves grow.

 

What were we thinking?

29. Miss Dalton of Lancaster

how the cut tulip stands

tall

 

fistfully defying all that

contains her

 

beauty opening full as the world

 

innermost

yellow heart and black thoughts  

 

the weight of

colour

 

breaking her back

the edge of her

 

folding

as she bows, wiser

 

to the world

 

 

‘Women, prominent in the field of florists’ pinks, seemed to have little to do with tulips. The Miss Dalton who, at Lancaster Tulip Show on 22 May, 1826, won first and second prizes…was a rarity’.  Anna Pavord, 2000, The Tulip: 205-6