My poem ‘Salute’ has been selected to feature in a book by Sampad.org.uk in which people from around the world have written about being inspired by museums. My poem came about from a visit to the ‘Flesh and Bone’ exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum – Oxford, featuring Francis Bacon; a great inspiration. This is where I came across a painting I recognised from long, long ago….
Salute
Everything stops.
Suspended.
The beat of my heart, the squeezing of my lungs; synapses ceased.
Silence.
Within the anechoic, charcoal-black room,
Only he,
And I,
Exist.
Not a flicker of recognition, but a fireball.
Sinews ignite; lightening; burning.
I had known him for 20 years;
But I never really KNEW him.
Back then he reached somewhere deep inside me;
Deep inside the shadowy chamber where DNA dances, tangling with passion and soul.
He spoke to me in delicious tongues that he,
And I,
And no-one else I knew,
Spoke.
I took a copy.
I was no longer alone,
Suffocating in the dank-stench of isolation.
We sat in the darkness together;
He showed me the beauty within it.
Life jeered.
People sneered.
Stupid.
‘Being an artist is a waste of time’, Concurred the cloned.
The mythical gavel of ignorance fell.
I folded up my friend and identity and filed them away under -‘Sneering’
He was all I kept of ME.
I limped away.
Wandering in the wilderness, the mask of acceptable normality slid around and buckled on my face.
But here I stand,
20 years later;
Mask-less.
I no longer ignore the screaming of my soul,
And,
unfolding myself,
I put my friend back on the wall.
He sings again.
I am not afraid;
I dance inside.
Resonance.
Everything stopped.
Suspended.
The beat of my heart, the squeezing of my lungs; synapses ceased.
Silence.
I slid into the anechoic, charcoal-black room,
Where only he,
And I,
Exist.
I hadn’t known who he was,
I hadn’t known who had painted him,
But there HE was;
IN
THE
FLESH.
‘Flesh and Bone.’
Study For Portrait III (After the life mask of William Blake’) 1955.
Francis Bacon.
A name for my taper.
Slicing through the stillness, tears of gratitude salute.
My song roars freely.
And now,
Side by side,
On the wall of my studio,
Hang my tattered photocopied friend and my pristine postcard from The Ashmolean;
One and the same.
The Full Circle.
I paint until it hurts.
And,
I smile.
19th MAY 2014