Five 2012 | acrylic and oil on aluminium composite panel | 30.5 x 40.0cm
Seeing Fives
The judges can’t all be in perfect error.

                            All in their autumn; bureaucratic black

                            turning religious browns,

                            they are shades of right

                            in no order particular.




So many days and vases to fill.

                            The bouquet is never readymade, the roses

                            shall never give themselves over as arranged!

                            Snip at the stem in sunlight, a fluke-choice.

                            Receptacles are made to wait.




On the five silos: the town name for lost pilots.

                            There’s an inner friction, too many

                            chandeliers in a safe room, the graindust

                            hanging in oxygen, the fire already upon

                            its fuel and never the fire knows it.




Grabbaum as gathered wood.

                            The eye’s sliding translation

                            with hidden corrective—

                            this yew being both good and wrong to burn—

                            form its own mode, saccadic.




The clarinet is in its box.

                            Laid to rest as its lesser parts,

                            an Egyptian smell of old used reed.

                            Fingers stopped up the tone holes.

                            Carved hands stop up the body holes.