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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Unsettled

Agitated, restless

Without ease or grace or space

No capture or essence; out of sorts

Unworthy, shallow in your shadow

Slow down, breathe steady

Past artefacts in clear sealed cases

All else is laid to rest; fails the test

All else is for the imagination

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