‘Inanimate'

A Poem.

Inanimate

Am I present by circumstance or by desire? 
I feel ornamental, a vase with no flower;
She's a moth chasing every new light
too quick 
and so often in flight.

Now even the sun contains none of my graces;

with its descent, 
each prayer of mine answered 
The tide of dark rises to drown hungry eyes 
her nearest dear light
Held closest am I.

Strange, she sees me in even this dark;

Together, together
rekindle the spark; 

The pulse lives again
in shared thread beneath skin
suspicion; it fades— 

I was never a Thing.

Water between us,
you weigh me down and
soften the stem—

Although light may threaten, 

dark vows again.

---

This poem was fractured and recovered after years earlier today. It’s been recuperated through a new lens with, for the first time, help of a collaborator. My intention was to imagine a self seemingly out of reach, a version of me no longer feeling deficient in expressing affections. Present. Instead of running and ruminating on ways to Fix It In Post—loving people later—chained to solitude. The figure’s become less abstracted.

I’m grateful for the collaborative input of our Good Doc, David Sanchez on this piece. He reformatted a pretty broken structure and removed my weaker descriptors. Where’s The Doctor? Dave’s currently focusing on Comedy.

I agree. A start?

---

More, below.

Inanimate  Am I present by circumstance or by desire?  I feel ornamental, a vase with no flower; She's a moth chasing every new light too quick  and so often in flight.  Now even the sun contains none of my graces;  with its descent,  each prayer of mine answered  The tide of dark rises to drown hungry eyes  her nearest dear light Held closest am I.  Strange, she sees me in even this dark;  Together, together rekindle the spark;   The pulse lives again in shared thread beneath skin suspicion; it fades—   I was never a Thing.  Water between us, you weigh me down and soften the stem—  Although light may threaten,   dark vows again.

Wow, guys.

Thumbnail img src. Kissing Vessels (2020-21) from a collaborative exhibition by Artist HC — Below is an Excerpt from the Artviewer.org article.

How can a double vase or half a chair transmit a sense of irony within a symmetrical composition? How can the ex-perience of a landscape during a journey be translated into an exhibition display? Does a pedestal still matter despite its hierarchical submission to the object it supports? Does a painting today retain a certain idea of authorship and tem-porality? Can my individuality be interrupted by our collab-oration? These questions deal with issues of perception, the intrinsic possibilities and the very borders of the objects that surround us. Where does the journey begin and where does it end? Non Dentro Ma Intorno A Noi projects us into a for-mal and informal itinerary of sculpture. The atmosphere in the exhibition space is stylised and naive at once, arranged with symmetrical rigour but unravelling with humor. In-situazione. The inner environment design objects seem to have a congenital need to go outside, in the surrounding.

“They felt surrounded by the idea but it didn’t enter them.”

Invitation to travel. A few kilometres on the way from Frankfurt to Milan. A stop in the Alps. Destination: Via Rossini 3.

Unexpected results in between. Specular coincidences, with more than one head and two legs, with half a chair and two double vases. HC: four hands. They drew a map to get lost. They came to a city hidden by mountains. They painted en plein air among those peaks, exhaling their snowy breath. Objets trouvés. They shared an itinerary, coming to a lake that “was covered with a shattered looking glass.” The deadly season charged a triptych of mirroring mountains with symbols. Two artists on the same journey that a painter took a century ago. They prepared replicas to be exhibited, an immersive appropriation of distorted normality. From one object to another, from one surface to its symmetri-cal arrangement, the idea of filiation came up. The seriality typical of vessels gave way to the historical conception of uniqueness. It is time to question the traditional categories within ourselves. Let’s ferry them around.

“We ended up taking part in a bizarre ritual.”

-Sonia D’Alto

Get a room.