A short blog this week. A time to reflect. A time to remember all those innocents who died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. All those lost children who will never paint a picture, kick a football, laugh, cry, be hugged, be loved.
So my rejections from the ‘Timespan’ residency, the ‘Standpoint Futures’ residency and my proposal for the ‘Christmas Truce Commission’ with Birmingham City Council seem quite insignificant.
I leave you with the poem which I wrote in Australia formed as I walked past the war memorial in Melbourne as the Last Post sounded and the Australian flag was lowered. This was part was part of the proposal for the Birmingham commission, a resurrection piece inspired by that moment and the work of Douglas Gordon who had a large exhibition in Melbourne at the same time.
so the post of the last sounded
all fall down (down, down deeper and down)
and did that smart hat roll-ed blue starred blanket
cold comfort(farm) in newish of time,
for them there laid black down under
in said plunder of maggots ‘n’ men
so all’s that youth nevered grow’d old
in hell’s own earth now fractured by forgotten
and the longness of forever by surrounded
these gardens of eden’s sweet sent, via
dark fella’s door, licked black ‘n’ blue dead
and endless this flame such never be quenched.
