David Greenslade
PAREIDOLIA
To see nothing
takes a lot of looking
around.
Among the objects of this world
other objects
creatures, obstacles, glass
prophets, prey
meat, fruit, medicine –
Buddha in a donkey’s arse
Medusa in her grapevine
Arabic letters on a running shoe
hunters on Da Vinci’s Wall
and, most pareidolic of them all
myself dispersed into the prism
of Lizard lighthouse
thrown to the Atlantic
from feather fins
and even further out
by dew on the whiskers
of a fox’s snout.
PARADISIACS
I started using paradisiacs
at first as an anecdote
against allegories and antidotes
maybe as long ago as 1952
I first noticed
I could be onto something
when Late Dutch Mannerists
took an interest in a work of mine
Girl with an Ivory Nose Ring
chosen for a week-long installation
at the Sharpie Delicate Wash Festival
1969. Other commissions followed.
Currently? I’m working on
Blended Whinging, four or five
crowded on a manhole cover
in the middle of a cobalt swimming pool.
The irony of this appeals
to many few some who like me Bible
not only those who like me but fellow
paradisiacs who can never get enough.
PLEASE LEAVE THIS AREA
Please leave this area
as though you would wish to find it;
stealthily
as if measured
by the eyes
of an indiscrete, clinical
analyst blaring your sensitivities
from the top of a tour bus
to a city-wide audience
including exploded diagrams,
vegetables, insects, family and friends –
masturbations, secret vandalisms,
pilfering searches, Tourette’s
when driving, alone at home
recorded, broadcast, amplified
around the houses where
neighbours demand
more detail. Please leave this area
as though you would wish to find it.
To see nothing
takes a lot of looking
around.
Among the objects of this world
other objects
creatures, obstacles, glass
prophets, prey
meat, fruit, medicine –
Buddha in a donkey’s arse
Medusa in her grapevine
Arabic letters on a running shoe
hunters on Da Vinci’s Wall
and, most pareidolic of them all
myself dispersed into the prism
of Lizard lighthouse
thrown to the Atlantic
from feather fins
and even further out
by dew on the whiskers
of a fox’s snout.
PARADISIACS
I started using paradisiacs
at first as an anecdote
against allegories and antidotes
maybe as long ago as 1952
I first noticed
I could be onto something
when Late Dutch Mannerists
took an interest in a work of mine
Girl with an Ivory Nose Ring
chosen for a week-long installation
at the Sharpie Delicate Wash Festival
1969. Other commissions followed.
Currently? I’m working on
Blended Whinging, four or five
crowded on a manhole cover
in the middle of a cobalt swimming pool.
The irony of this appeals
to many few some who like me Bible
not only those who like me but fellow
paradisiacs who can never get enough.
PLEASE LEAVE THIS AREA
Please leave this area
as though you would wish to find it;
stealthily
as if measured
by the eyes
of an indiscrete, clinical
analyst blaring your sensitivities
from the top of a tour bus
to a city-wide audience
including exploded diagrams,
vegetables, insects, family and friends –
masturbations, secret vandalisms,
pilfering searches, Tourette’s
when driving, alone at home
recorded, broadcast, amplified
around the houses where
neighbours demand
more detail. Please leave this area
as though you would wish to find it.
© Copyright David Greenslade 2020
David Greenslade has many books in print and has appeared in a number of international literary magazines. Recent titles include, Öbjects from the Footcopier (Red Ceilings) and Hamadryad (Y Wasg Israddol).