Being an artist means not averting one’s eyes – Akira Kurosawa
My chipped granite eye does not look anymore,
cannot anymore, not after words.
Cold and hard and figurine you leapt at us,
led down and into a garden hell and
told tales tall
and long and thin
just like you.
We sit and shade our sunburn beneath weigela trees,
and on you we spoke
crying and callous and delirious with
the heat
from all your shredded lies.
Cold and compact the flannel on your face, dancing droplets down you,
across your cheeks like slapped tears
you tasted our bite
and choked a little bit
on coloured oils and flavoured stars.
Then a beginning, now a screaming,
now a cursing crippling memory,
when a torrent of love, why;
a pitter patter of abusing feet.
Now an ending.
Unable to see
able to look. Unable to be
able to shake free
me; burnt, hammered
cast iron
cooled too quickly
it snapped.
That was our artwork; it was cheap
it was unaffordable
and it broke our spirit.
Book of Pye 