#36 The Pleasure Principle

A corona of light
like an un-
glassed light bulb.

Unsighted.

Seeing what
the sitter sees.

Alighting
at this
precise
moment
of space
this precis
of time.

Taken &
being taken.
The sitter
unseeing.

Unseen.

A moment
of insight
as we
who are
un-
seated

are taken

into a
space of time
we cannot
see.

Excited
&

anticipating pain.

#35 The Liberator

I have always thought
of the subject as
Italian. The patriarch of
a transported family, sugar
cane growers in North
Queensland, the first here,
able to speak a little
English, his wife far less
because she never mixed
outside the community. He
is a picture on the wall
or a watcher at the festival
parade, no breath left
to play the tuba in the
marching band, no longer
able to keep in step
with a step he never really
was in step with. Eyes
on an embellished past as a
diminishing present passes by.

*

I see echoes of my father
also. Non-Italian. Freemason.
The attache case with the regalia
hidden inside, the pearled
candelabra reminding me
of jewels & embroidered
aprons. He never talked to me
about it. I never asked. He
never talked because I didn't
ask. I never asked because
he never talked about it. Round
& round. We never came close.

*

Never a liberator. Quite
the reverse. A tight hold
on the family. Rationed
freedom. We escaped by
becoming birds or keys or
pipes or wineglasses. Every-
day objects that could always
be replaced. He never
noticed. The space inside
the outline is as it has always
been, a shadow of himself, how
he'd always seen us. The
eyes in the pearled lorgnette
are mother's eyes. She is
held tightly. A second cane.

#34 Attempting the Impossible

Trains weren't
invented
when they built a
railway between Bradford
& London. Leonardo
was designing airports
before he thought
about flight. The
model arrived
only after
Magritte
had painted her.

#33 Cloning Magritte

The
only hope
I have of

acquiring
some of
that European culture

I
so admire
is to exhume

Magritte
& remove
some epithelial cells

&
grow them
up in an

agarose
broth in
a petri dish

in
much the
same manner that

Magritte
did with
Giorgio de Chirico.

#32 Magritte's Deathday

She has
just discovered
that Magritte
died on the

very same day
she was put in-
to jail. What a
price to pay. If

she'd had
a get out of
jail free card
she could have

been going to
René's 106th
birthday party
later on this year.

#31 Elective Affinities + The Key to Dreams (1927)

Put two or
more things side
by side or one
within another. For
the first it is
the space between
that makes the
magic, the juxtaposition
of things known
to create the unknown. &
yes, Isador Ducasse, I
hear you laughing
in the background. It is
a collision that marks
the start of a new
journey. The in-position
is continuity, an egg
for a bird, or confusion
when something is
given an entirely different
name to that we
usually ascribe to it. Is the
briefcase labelled sky
to be our travelling
companion or the cover
under which we
set out on what
began a journey
& is now a vestibule?

#30 Carte Blanche

"Visible things
can be in-
visible," said Magritte
about this painting. "If
somebody is
riding a horse through the
woods, at first you see
them & then you
don't. But you know
they're there. I
make use of painting
to render thoughts
visible." Then he
galloped off
leaving the rider
hiding the trees &
the trees hiding her.

#29 The Giantess

(after Baudelaire)

In those times when
Nature couldn't
get enough of it,
spitting out
on a daily basis
children who were
literally monsters, I
would have loved
to have lived
near a young giantess
even if it meant
the only way to
dampen my desires
was to insinuate myself
around her ankles,
a frotting cat at the
feet of a queen. That way
I could take part in
whatever perverse games
she played, could see
her body & soul thrive
on the freedom she
found in them, tell
if her heart hid some
dark flame, if that mist
that swam across her eyes
was tears or the
humid warmth of
pleasure. & as a cat
I could be leisurely
in my exploration
of her body. It was
magnificent. I'd
gently climb the slope
of her knees, taste
her thighs, tangle my claws
in the thicket of her
pubic hair. & sometimes
in summer, drained
by the sun, she would
stretch herself out
across the countryside
& I would risk the
crossing of her belly
to sleep below her breasts,
in their shadow, a
peaceful village at
the foot of a mountain.

#28 The Empire of Lights (1967)

For the
nineteen years
between her husband's
& her own
death, Georgette Magritte
kept this painting
on an easel in
what had been
their shared house. How
hard it must have
been for her
knowing that after
their forty-five
years together
she could have
finished it off for him
with barely a break
in the brush strokes.

#27 The Secret Double

In Charleroi where
I grew up
the horses' halters
were hung
with round bells
like those that decorate
a jester's cap. When I
moved to Brussels
the same. A fortuitous
continuity. Later
in a Paris without the
presence of horses
I painted the bells
suspended above a
landscape that ran down
to the sea. I dreamt
of the afternoon windshifts
that would shake them
so I could see
their sound. Now
I have found you &
torn your face away
to show the bells embedded
in your memory. It is
a carillon we share.

#26 The Lost Jockey

The photosynthesis machines
are down. Chlorophyll
is in short supply. Each tree
left only with the exposed
neural pathways of a
single leaf; but cauterized
by cold these are excised
from all external stimuli. Un-
able to smell the snow
or touch each other or
taste the passage of
this horse & frantic rider. The
forest is full of trees who
cannot see they're there.