The Grey People
After Diane Arbus
Such greyscale smiles All wheel-chaired ones
worn by aristocrats in bag-head costumes
who’ve passed by privilege gathered for Samhain
Blank as a clock face Thumb over her lens
under midnight fluorescents Sword-swallowing albino
Her cripples, her stars Christ tattooed, arms wide
This giant stoops low Twins side by side
Light bulb scorching curls eyes unblinking
parents small as dolls Hands: resting damselflies
Nudists in armchairs Girl with a cigar
lounge beside blinds in Washington Square Park
Flash: atomic sunlight Ash about to fall
Hermaphrodite and A dwarf, butt naked
lapdog in a carnival save for trilby and tache
house, lips behind glass escaping her circus
Adore the drag artist Flaws blown up large
dancing with suited guy through her aperture
Face lost in her breast this closed-door sideshow
for me: the sole voyeur
Seascape
The sea has no reply—& I’m devastated. The sea is easily equated with God. It ushers the waves towards me. I want to know why the sea is reticent. Even the sea won’t accept my roses. Each year at Perranporth it’s the same. I lay out the roses & the waves don’t seem to care. I can’t say which way the tide is turning. My fingers are dinted by thorns. No, even the sea won’t accept my roses. It keeps giving them back, each wave returning the gift—like she often did. Was that generosity gone too far or a kind of self-hate? A dozen roses on the sand. A grief unresolved since God has refused to bear witness. Are you not yet ashamed? I am stood Canute-like. I am a dolt. How can I expect to shame the sea with my tears? The sea is making me wonder if the sky & stars are really the inside of my brain. In which case she’s out there, I think. Why do we say the sea is blue when it’s really grey? It recedes now—one immense field of consciousness. I ask the sea again to give her back, please. The plea of mortals in their millions. It’s familiar to the sea. I believe the sea will make an exception. The only way to know for sure is to wade out & find a rip current, evade lifeguards between flags. The surfers are souls having a near death experience. They’ve risked jellyfish & sharks, joyous in wetsuits, halfway towards the empyrean. A friend says my only hope is immanence. I am privy to the knowledge of what’s happened. Ashes in the mica. While she’s in everything—from beach huts to kayaks to Alsatians on leads—while the sea is a sadist & says: now it’s time to leave.
Concerning the Spiritual
After Wassily Kandinsky
are you in this image
making it sing
while eyes are blind
lush colour harmonies
clashing
sunlit through blinds
a music box plays
reds and yellows
gifting vision
hemmed in by a frame
how your genius
finds itself blind
like a lone beggar
with open palms
seeing where lines go
whether they join stars
while my love
you were never blind
an artist living off
her instincts
your quantum mind
giving the impression
of seeing while blind
seeing through one eye
your world like this canvas
your message
going haywire
in patches and shards
hardly blind
just mute to the outside
Kim you were loveable
due to your limits
your work unfinished
you’d say open your eyes
just write
throw open your blinds
Vir Heroicus Sublimis
After Barnett Newman
Forget meaning for the Greeks & Christ the man or Christ who is God
or cathedrals conceived as such; witness one field of consciousness
where zips are light beams of mortals. Perhaps heaven is like this & colour
goes on till colour has nothing to fall upon. Ask yourself about ‘red’ & qualia.
Some would see ‘blue’ here. When we perceive a magic trick takes place:
the image gets flipped & thrown & appears on the back of the brain.
No conjurer in the occipital lobe or ghost in the machine, no homunculus.
So much beyond the visible surrounds the frame & yet so little
like seeing only a single strip when gazing across the Mississippi River.
Dark Clouds Storm Blue
Another cloud is the archive of photos. I upload them with voice files & they’re fragile. They live not in heaven; they’re in the desert & can burn anytime. If they were in a hard drive, I’d send them into orbit around Saturn— out of reach of when the sun expands. They say grief is like a cloud & though it stays the same size we somehow grow around it. I strain hard to find a face—then, glowering eyes & mouths. They move like boxcars. Dark clouds on my ceiling hover so close & the storm is blue, this shade of blue always sounds like a cello or jazz in the early hours. In my sleep I saw her corpse turn into snow, & I worry over where the self goes. When the merging comes. On sailing ships these clouds cast shadows & drag like bedclothes over my back. Meanwhile, the sun is a great absence: an eye gazing through the cloudiness of its cataract. I am a fool to look for patterns where no patterns reside. I am sucker they say for confirmation bias. I can no longer laugh at these legless sheep. Behind the clouds is the mirror of the Pacific in the evening, miles from the nearest atoll. I am shrouded by the sky. I foresee lightning; it comes like scissors down silk & rips as hands rip a dress. I see lipstick on the mirror— a kiss—her deliberate phantom. Someone should be answerable for this.
Bio: Patrick Wright has a poetry collection, Full Sight Of Her, published by Eyewear Publishing (2020). He has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at the Open University. He is also currently finishing a PhD in Creative Writing, on the ekphrasis of modern and contemporary art, supervised by Jane Yeh and Siobhan Campbell.
https://tinyurl.com/2v26mwuj for Patrick’s book “Full Sight of Her”
Fevers of the Mind 