Why real birds always fly upside down...

​                                       Bob fleight in den himmel  (2023) Georg Baselitz

Last Friday, I stood with a friend marvelling at an eighty five year old man’s
​achievement. His walking frame had scored vital lines into layers of paint. His size forty six shoe was stamped onto a huge canvas which portrayed him and his wife, Elke, upside down. Georg Baselitz is prolific, he is a brilliant painter and he is an old man. To borrow from the bard, sort of, who would have thought the old man had so much paint in him? He does. All of the works in A Confession of my Sins at the White Cube, Bermondsey, were created in 2023. Standing before these paintings, what strikes is the vigour, the energy of the strokes, the resonance of colour and composition, the thrill of life.

Born into ‘a destroyed order, a destroyed landscape, a destroyed people, a destroyed
society’, Baselitz has found meaning in making. And, it is a meaningful experience to spend time with these paintings. What does it all mean though? These paintings of upside down deer and birds, of people and stockings. What are they about? I don’t know. I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Meaning is for other things. Or is it? 

'Ideas are not art '- Robert Adams
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                                      Longmont, Colorado (1979) Robert Adams

The tendency for contemporary artists, and indeed galleries with their labelling, to bind themselves to a socio-cultural position seems to suggest otherwise. So many times of late, I've tried to avoid the explanatory spiel positioning work in an ideology or offering a salve to the offence that may or may not be caused  A worrying position if you believe art, in whatever form, is eviscerated when it seeks to be argument. Jed Perl’s, Authority and Freedom, a brief poking at the idea, is well worth a read if you are interested in such things. As is the elegant prose of American photographer, Robert Adams, in his two slim books,  Art Can Help and Beauty in Photography. Where the prose takes him sometimes is a tad too conservative but there are some cracking lines trailing tantalising ideas.

My time looking at paintings, reading and writing, going to the theatre and listening to music, is not a search for a subject and what is thought about it, but for a moment that stirs the soul. For wonder. For delight. For playing in the playground that throbs between me and the artwork. It is, more than anything, to feel alive. Is that an outmoded romanticising? Maybe. But who doesn’t want to feel more alive in an increasingly deadening world. The reductionist, I know a few, comes away from a painting telling you what it’s about. I’ve never seen a painting about anything. What matters is the how not the what; the exquisite and unique way that a work is made, not that some message will be revealed. Be it in the theatre or in the folds of a page, what holds you is the telling not what's told.

I’m nowhere near as prolific as Baselitz yet I carry on making work. Today, I’m celebrating another year of a poem a day. I started on the 28th May 2022 and now have 732 daily poems. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll keep going, but for the last two years I’ve started the day with a cup of coffee and some scribbling. A playing. What they’re about who knows, but I’m sharing a few for a journeying through. I hope you can dance in the playground...
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Who's there? (2021) Rachel Clare
​

X
After reading Rachel Aviv on Lucy Letby

His eyes follow her and an idea
swells in his sighting of her skin
she stands by newborn’s fragile breath
her hands are delicate, hurt does not throb
in tender fingertips but he replaces her
with an x and bundles the certain blanket
of statistics over her exhausted frame
he rushes on a stream of theories
beckoning others to follow him
bundling strange obstacles out of his way
tearing at the snags of uncertainty
& tossing them into forgotten depths

​
she is broken by the angel of death
whose dark feathered wings flap
on the solid gust of conviction
her history is snapped into puzzle pieces
pressed to a rough picture of shrivelled kindness
coincidence is too cruel to be swallowed
so mystery is choked, stance cloaked
as the doors of hell are opened
she sits at a table scrawling thoughts
too fierce to bear, these will be straightened
by the strong arm of the law to paper’s bold typeface
her lonely shaking at the kitchen table unseen
as everyone takes turns shaping a killer


​Monday 27th May '24

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Poundland, Blackpool (2019) Johnny Durham

​Poundland

Poundland has a problem
& it’s not even ten o’clock
early ransackers are caught
in an anxious queue, feet shifting
to a symphony of impatience
heads swivelling in search of
some release from low lit agony
as the machines malfunction
& only accept the disappearing
currency, cash, half-heartedly
signalled by the hand written sign
sellotaped to the machines forehead
I find a note & make a play
for the front waving my tenner
like some signal of surrender
I listen to the loveless bleep
as I scan my two pads & wrong
sized batteries for a clock
that has lost its face & energy
indexing my way through images
prefacing escape, I press the one
still sporting the dead queen’s face
her response is to tell me
to enter my PIN, technology’s joke
taken, I slide the ten pound note
into the illuminated lips
swallowed, nothing happens
the screen is unmoved & knowing
this is Poundland my prejudice
sets itself to the panic of loss
I look for some rescuing, for
the return of fortune’s favour
the queue’s exasperated eyes
tell me to accept my loss & get
the hell out of there before
they launch an avalanche of biscuits
& batteries at my obstructing head
a woman in the dark blue of uniformity
lumbers from till to my side
It’s cash only she grumbles
I want to tell her I stuck
my finger in the queen’s face
but I mumble It gobbled up
my tenner. I pressed the cash sign
her weary eyes won’t hide
her irritation & disbelief
but she has a half served
stewing customer to return to
her fingers dance over the screen
& a five pound note
is spat out for me to grab
I push through the glass door
breathe in September morning sun
& see that my unlocked bike
stands there still & perhaps
today will hold some promise


​Thursday 21st September '23

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​

​Fly with Aerocene Pacha
After Saraceno's film at the Serpentine Galery

to levitate without any violence to the earth
                                                                                          - Tomás Saraceno


An army of white shirted men lift their heads to godly dreams
reckless roaming beyond their allotted sphere, conquistadores

countdown to a future that burns and rots, power thrums
beneath the nylon rippling with Promethean muscle, lift off

launching trail has licked our land dry, slakeless tongue
blind vision, merciless heart, the future is theirs

the forgotten walk on the white of the salt flats
native crust from which they have lived, prospered, played

billowing hope hangs in the black shapes lifting beyond
their fragile grasp, water is life, salt is life, life is…

it cannot be battery powered, love dwindles in lithium’s extraction
Salinas Grandes, a salty battleground, people of the earth together

standing against the sea of green greed they follow faith
watching her human feet lift, black shoes swaying over pure land
​
there is no fire here, nature’s bounty can carry us beneath
Icarus’s reach, beauty holds in simple things, silent wonder


​Thursday 13th July '23

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The Drunkards (1883) James Ensor
​

​A pint of bitter in Milton Keynes


Behind the plate glass men sit
with their eleven o’clock pints
no eyes or heart for the world beyond
​
stooped shoulders take their mouths
to the next gulp, something to soothe
the static crackle of disappointment

one lifts his looking from lagered lethe
and stares straight into my curious gaze
an unexpected beam shone onto his suffering

his solitude is scratched, doused anger dried
the hurt still breathing from other days
rises to a seething that he sends my way

I hurry on, climbing Midsummer Boulevard
my look driven downwards to avoid breaking
the shell of another’s torment, a bitter spilling


Friday 23rd February '24

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​

​What shall we do?
After reading  Andrew Scull's Desperate Remedies

Madness wears many masks
one crooked grin papered
over dribbling lips gaping
to swallow the black sadness
of a shoulder shrugging world

tender mercies sink beneath
a stripped collarbone, raw cries
electrocuted into bleeding ecstasy
straitjacketed symphony to the
schooled ears of the alienists

lunacy lives in the moon, a white
land where doctors cannot crawl
so they stand tall on degenerate dogma
wagging their tongues to the whip
of new ideas, the clink of coin

the quack’s rattle a soporific song
to keep the distressed dependent
on an angel’s soft delivery of cereal
keep your bowels clean, crunch
on the cornflakes, you will be saved

​
​Monday 1st January '24

​

​Forgetting oneself
After Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days

What delight can be found
leaking from the stains of drudgery

a shattered soul pieced together
to shape a sturdy tree

dark eyes and camera
lifting to the leaf filled light

he has found beauty
in the cradling of his own soul

dignity is drafted
in the detail of his attention

he belongs to the brotherhood
of the broken, heart crushed companions

who fall into intimate wonder
with ears, with trees, with the darkness

of two shadows dancing
death’s footsteps in the distance

sealed agony presses his lips
a trembling smile harbours tears

there are no perfect days
but he will play the tape and sing


Monday 18th March '24


​

   Buster Keaton on the phone

 
​Cold Calling


The phone rings, it
rings, the phone
& I do, I do what
anyone would do
I pick it up, the phone
that rings & it stops
ringing, I listen
listen to the voice
automated & errant


this voice which isn’t
a voice, tells me I am
under attack, have been
attacked, not like
someone breaking
into my house
with a hammer
& breaking open
my skull but it’s a hammer
blow all the same


thirteen hundred
pounds has been
siphoned, snatched
seized from
my account, the voice
which isn’t a voice
doesn’t say that
not exactly
being automated
it isn’t interested
in words, the repeating
s for effect, ill
or lulling the listener


I am not lulled
but I am offered
two options, press one
to cancel
the transaction
which I haven’t transacted
​or two
to speak to someone
less automated
than the automated voice
which has reported
in its automated way
this grand larceny


I remember
when the ringing
phone stopped
ringing & the automated
voice first spoke
if that’s what
automated voices do
he, it, it, didn’t
mention a bank
no proper noun
was offered
to accompany
the tale of my
money’s taking


thirteen hundred
pounds richer
it hadn’t been lifted
I hadn’t lost
I had been lied to
this was a scam
I smiled & pressed 2
there was a click
a click that felt
if clicks can feel
that it was coming
from some far off place
the other side of decency
but it was human
the voice when it spoke
which it did


I’m not usually
an interrupter, I listen
listen to what
the other person
has to say & this was
a person but I had listened
too long to something
less human & I didn’t
mention it but
my coffee was getting cold
so I interrupted this man
from very far away
& asked him where
he was from
Your mother’s pussy
he roared before
there was another click
then silence


I put the phone
that had stopped
ringing, & speaking
both as a machine
& as a man
back into it’s cradle
& I picked up
my coffee & thought
I thought that’s no way
to speak to your brother


Friday 3rd November '23


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                                               Bedroom Interior with Water jug and Bowl on Table (1933) Walker Evans

​Making my mum’s bed


We follow a mapped voice to find sheets for our mum’s bed
three of them, smiles enlightening their faces, greet us
inside this emporium of pillows, coverlets & feathered rest

we shift from the pure white cotton to a colour’s hiding
black seems best to stifle the body’s relinquishing
we question luxury’s leaning, whether duck or goose

will slide her towards some last moment of joy
sad knowing takes over & we settle for a synthetic mix
comfort enough for a life curdled in indifference

we stop for underwear, you disappear into malled maze
I wait, blasting music from hire car’s speaker, to beat away 
melancholy's grip, you search for size & holding to bear her bloating

little white daises flood the dress you bought her
in different frame she could be child again, not now
hunch, hurt, ballooning & shuffle are body’s mockery

we sit beneath bruised clouds, momentary spurts of hot sun
warm echo of other days we have sat in this restaurant
her laughter & remembered life is teased from shadowed solitude

time has tied her in confusion’s gag, eyes swivelling to make sense
of what is said, silent breath the only accompaniment to the slow
chewing of small lamb chops lying cold on her plate

bed is her only comfort, I help my mum down to its holding
cover her in the new sheets she does not notice, sense lessening
this soft shrouding in darkness, the fragile white flowers vanish      


​Friday 9th June '23
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