testimony

testimony (from the trial)

exhibit 5

this need for proof    the narrative that thrift of truth

in telling that self    the one stained with hope

the one in your mind’s mind who survives   arrives

in the day to day of your facing each waking

whose escape is lived in parallel universes

where happiness prevails in the seemingly seamless

editing trick of the brain’s witness protection program

so you can always pick yourself out in the mirror’s line-up

 

remember that mother the one who was taken into hiding

spiders drawing the curtains   staring into the TV set   that shed herself

stepped out of her own story and may be gone for some time

other people called in to pick up the pieces   keep her clean

back in the cocoon the warmth the negation of the womb

with all its promises its never-ending futures all to end so unsuddenly so soon

such innocence again    the ghost slowly suffocated by the machine

 

crime scene

 

crime scene (from the trial)

exhibit 1

four walls floor and a window a door the bed

Cartesian planes    on the outside    on the inside

at what age do colours furniture personality arrive

paint or wallpaper the shape and content of a wardrobe

pictures posters a knick-knackery of being   hobbies

collecting coins and stamps scrapbooks wanking escape

never the door nor the window just the ceiling

on your back a record player the music you’re in the music

going round and round reeling not a you not yet not the feeling that …

and the view in the mirror    the terrible terrible mirror 

is the reflection part of you even when you’re not looking?

offstage

 

9 offstage (from exhibition) 

sketch in pencil on very thin paper

a man walks into a room

sits on a chair at a table

the room itself is suggested

by the presence of the chair and the table

not by the man    he drums his fingers

on the hard wooden surface of the table

he fidgets with a pencil   makes tentative scratches on the air

he feels the unbending wooden chair beneath his buttocks

his feet solid on the undrawn floor of this room   and he doubts

he sees a door he looks out a window in the undelineated walls of this room

 

a giant eraser descends from the unseen ceiling … and the prayer

body

4 body  (from exhibition)

Sculpture - unfired clay

in the architecture of himself

this church the vaulted bone holding up his sky

the light streaming in staining the air crossing space

a diagonal narrative of colour of shape and source

the nativity the naivety the congregants in the nave

on his knees stouping supping the stirred water

running over this skull the cleansing of the confessional

a change of skin in the sacristy an alterity served upon the altar

flesh and blood on the hands held out here’s the steeple open the door

hands in the mud here’s the power the white and the grey to build a tower   to body a god            

self-portrait

1 self-portrait  (from exhibition) 

watercolour on torn-out unlined notebook paper 

white washed out on white paper

a loss of integrity a dried-out watermark face

liable to tear lost to all but memory-fake 

folded unfolded kept in a pocket of air

locked breath held under water   disintegrate   disappear  

landscape

 

2 landscape (from exhibition)

oil on canvas 

a ploughed field   an old man’s hands

rutted and veined   tendons and tendrils

the turned earth turning   the wind pulling at the rain

browns against greys thick in the air a figure canted over

stick-like bent bending into against a sky under the weight of the horizon  

striated cloud a promised sun lost   the touch strokes of rinsed etiolated ochre 

nicotine-stained fingers a claw holding on   the nails digging in

for want of a needle and thread

 

4 for want of a needle and thread  (from qualia)

in his pockets

a map

a train ticket

a packet of seeds

some keys

money

a handwritten note

his hands    the fists clenched

gripping the holes

through which life had bled out  

drenched the soil