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