Pale morning,
unfinished light.
The studio is silent
but somehow
unempty.
You vanished.
scent still stuck in the corners,
lingering,
the debris of memories
I no longer recall.
The brushes lay bare,
your fingerprints
weighing them down.
Words of judgment,
you always thought
they could do more.
Echoes surround them
“Maybe there’s more…
don’t you think…
you can go
further?”
The coffee tastes of nothing.
Cigarettes burn without smoke.
Ashtray chic.
I grasp at reeds,
seldom filling the gap.
They once towered above me,
but now feel small,
discreet,
paintings that had so much
now hiding from what I could be.
Maybe you ruined them on purpose,
so I could use the embers to make more,
fallow fields
of pigment and oil,
engulfed.
Maybe if I burn some more,
you’ll come back.
But I know
that’s not what you were trying to say.
Or is it…
I mistook it for love:
the passion,
the promise,
the belief.
But it’s just who you are.
Where I see an apple,
you see a field
beyond my dreams,
knowing there’s more
where my eyes get blurry.
Now
every step feels empty.
The chalice has been drunk,
the apple consumed,
and nothing will be the same again.
I felt like I could fall,
fail,
and still know
that until I reach
that little copse in the distance,
it’s okay to falter.
That the pains of failure,
here,
now,
are worth it,
because where we’re going,
no one else can see.
But here I am,
clinging
to memories of a compass
that took me somewhere
I still want to go.
And you?
Calliope
I like danger.
I like the feeling of presence it brings.
That knowing,
That a few wrong steps
guarantees misfortune.
Calliope is rarely associated with danger
But to me it’s obvious.
In a world this moderate,
this careful,
this measured,
the most dangerous act left
is believing we can go further.
They say that greatness only comes
from standing
on the shoulders of giants
If the giants are those that came before us,
Calliope is the ladder.
She’s generally considered the eldest of the muses
The de facto Mother Hen of the siblings
For the elder sister amongst you,
You’ll recognise the vision.
For those who arrive after,
You’ll recognise the judgement.
Dreams pursued,
bring a shedding of our current reality
change is seldom offered for free
as above, so below
Calliope is the muse we call on
when we want to see how far we can go.
To understand the boundaries of our vision
To hear what it’s like,
To be told,
Maybe that’s just the start…
For me, she offers a vision,
a vision that is never clear,
But takes what we currently see,
and changes it from a destination
to a milestone.
And once we look a little further,
we begin to see.
That what we once thought was the edge,
is merely a false summit.
The tracks are hard to see,
but peaks in the distance,
are worn.
The paths are obscured from view,
But she’s seen them walked before.
Goals
I’m not a great believer in goals.
Yes,
in the material world,
they offer milestones,
objective, measurable,
the illusion of progress.
But sequential thinking is inhuman.
We are not machines.
We are perception,
subjective,
shifting.
We change.
Goals promise happiness,
but the self that arrives there
is not the self who began.
Chasing a goal
is worshipping a corpse.
The world shifts.
You shift.
By the time you reach it
you are already gone.
Calliope shreds the map.
She only shows us
what it takes,
to walk the path.
Every summit is a stanza,
every edge walked before,
every horizon another verse.
It’s rupture,
Destinations become milestones,
milestones - embers,
It’s a dare to go further.
Forgetting the promise of distant goals.
They shrink into trivia,
scaffolding for survival,
markers for those who cannot see further.
What remains is a way of being,
a vehicle to navigate the path,
a weight we choose to carry,
a risk we’re willing to hold.
The questions change,
Can I make it?
Will I like it?
Irrelevant perturbations,
narrow thoughts.
They become tangible,
real,
The goals become assumed,
and the questions sustainable
What life grows here?
What work can sustain?
And when the ground shifts beneath you
and it will always shift,
There’s no collapse,
only the widening of the path.
The aim is no longer a point.
It has breadth.
It has depth.
Calliope offers a different vision
for how far we can go
Instead of some lofty goal
It’s the terror of recognition,
That if you’re on the right path,
There is no edge,
Poets Corner
Little Epic
I’ll wait until morning
when sea turns green
To beat a path home
over unbeaten land
With grinding joints
of cartilage and bone
Down to the beach
to the rocks
to the sand.
All of us always lost
All of us always lost at sea
Swallowed by a story
the size of a whale
Like plankton get swallowed
by biblical whales
Each of us always beating back home
To give versions of a version
of our own little tales.
- Thomas May
Domesticated
Show launches 10 October
Castle Square, London.
Domesticated (adjective)
(of an animal) Tamed and kept by humans for work, food, or as a pet.
Example: “Domesticated dogs have lived alongside humans for thousands of years.”
(of a plant) Cultivated for food; adapted for human use.
Example: “Domesticated wheat varieties spread rapidly through early agriculture.”
(of a person) Fond of home life and housework; accustomed to family or domestic duties.
Example: “He became more domesticated after the birth of his daughter.”
Pushing the boundaries a little more on this,
It’s a good one,
And when you get it,
It’s something you’ll never forget.
Art got a little soft,
It’s time to have some fun again.
Love you loads
- R x
