Orientation

Upstairs, down stairs

Along corridors, in and out of self partitioned rooms

Some girls have the decorators in

Some boys prefer the game of shadows

I walk in

Ask the teacher if it's ok to take photographs

I'm just another student

Someone else trying to settle on their future

I want you to see more, to read more into this

The next line is blank

For your own thought

Ben did a similar thing with a canvas

A street scene painted entirely in black

The viewer having to move about to catch new light

To see across and over, into and deeper than the surface

I wonder

One day would he lay down a tray of pastels?

Allowing the audience to bring their own rub of colour

And for Emma

Is the process itself self sufficient

To take apart, to put back together, to tear and then to stitch

As if to thump

And then to console 

With a wipe of melted butter

Maybe it is:

To swim underwater for as long as you can

Or as long as you dare

To walk to the extent of your feet's endurance

Or sit in a chair

Is there a search for renewal - but no place for the three act story

Just there and back again, each day a little older

With or without reparation

With or without the fame or glory

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Real to reel

A sense of refined chaos, as if your fathers jam jar, full of screws and nails and picture hooks had been scattered on the floor, over an ordnance survey map of Lincolnshire and beyond

There was a plan, and a classy catalogue

Even so, as an exercise in disorientation

It was fabulously successful

Guys in high-leg turned over leather boots

A sop to the roundheads

Or the cavaliers

Street scenes layered with a palette knife

To lift the slippery sloppy pavement

From the oily doily canvas

Unreeled cassette tape is nailed to the wall

A loop-less but continuous story

With the obligatory I don't give a fuck

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On leaving the exhibition

I strode up the Greestone steps

In the pouring rain

At the top I caught my breath

In the Cathedral Garden

I thought of the depth

And was perplexed

As before

On another ceremonious occasion

Opening drawers

Watching butterflies take to the sky

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Span

Ninety-four years

I will check the encyclopaedias

Close to tears

It's still too long a lifetime

To show the fears

Far too long a lifetime

But to falsify

To become ‘a treasure my dears’

Is ever too long a lifetime

Ninety-four years

A few may still survive

But you (in 1915)

You were taken

A short lived

But truthful long lifetime

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From age is beauty

Twice I misspell your name

Twice your name

From two new people

The shout for fame

Twice the game

To play alongside Picasso

From Poland she came

Now twice

Turns you into two lifetimes

Did you ever marry

Twice the Z

Misses its turn

I hear you learnt from Rodin 

How movement was earned

Two views - neither spurned

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