SIMON PARKER
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n.b. for Barney


Here. Tabula rasa. Before this nothing. Before.     This. Nothing. Blank. Nineteen
twenty five. Material saviour. Before. Before         disaster. Masking the delight of
colour. Watch out for the dog ma. The black           pouch of despair. Crash. The
fall of earthly delights. First man. Naked. Or           suited. Flying through the air.
Wings collapsed from the weight of gold. The       old world. A prophet. Adam, or
was it Abraham, throws himself from a 29
th          story window. No one will get
to hear his tale now. He fashions a new                     language, tailor made, as he
flies through the air. Listen.                                               Black. The sacred  colour. Something.
Susurrations that could rupture all that you           know.  Something that will not
be heard again. He smashes against the                    sidewalk. Concrete stills his
tongue. Flesh made matter. There’s no                      escaping the materiality of fact.
Tears. Don’t wipe them away, Eve. Evening             emerges out of the darkness.
Before the darkness. Closer. Stand closer. Find    your place. Place yourself.
Stand beneath the lime tree. Smell the colour.     Colour yourself in. Zim Zum.
Move over. God, don’t you see how it                         is? Where do I get the nerve?
Terror. A human being. Being ravaged by                 space. Lead me on Joshua.
Away. Totally. To totality. All of me.                              Take all of me. Place me before
the four horizons and let me see.                                  A new beginning. Who needs
water when you can sing? Cry me a river.                Trickling through the
luminescence of colour. A trail zipping                      along, flowing up, rising down.

Right to left. Left to – no. Watch out for                   the dog ma! Left to right. Titian
sits on a well-made toilet. Artifact                               This is me. Stripped. Striped.
Bleeding. Beyond being contained                               some sense of others. Communion.
Zim Zum. God, move over, there’s no                          room for you at the table.
Matter physically speaking…


​
For Barnett Newman

Zim Zum, a term from the Kabbalah for the process of god contracting so he could make space for the world, and the name of Barnett Newman’s 1969 Cor Ten steel sculpture






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  • Home
  • Blog
  • POETRY
    • Three Poems from Three Years
    • Eve
    • Via Dolorosa
    • a disappearing
    • Unfolding
    • Street Scene
    • Said and done
    • Ingres and Delacroix share a coffee
    • If you follow the silk road
    • In him we trust
    • n.b. for Barney
    • Who Can Erase The Traces?
  • Theatre
    • Aching Parts
    • Mooring
    • The Right Kind of Violence
    • Vex
    • Take me to where the arrows no longer fall
    • Yellow Fever
    • Own Goal
    • Just Like Flies
    • Snap
    • Home
  • Fictions
    • Gross
    • The 7.22
    • For Those Who Trespass
    • Karaoke
    • We Only Notice When It's Gone
    • This is a story that I am going to make a story out of
    • Les Anglais en Vacances
    • She
    • La Comedie Humaine
  • LIVEWORKS
    • Watching Coriolanus at the National Theatre
    • Watching Phaedra at the National Theatre
    • Notes from a wanderer
  • News
  • Contact