In 2023 I designed a new public art installation for Canary Wharf, seen in the below photo by Gareth Gardner. For the first month after it was installed there were little printing machines at five different places in the estate that would print one of these six poems, chosen randomly, when a button on the machine was pressed.
Poem 6
Nature is a kaleidoscope of complexities,
It exists like this hand, or this foot,
just there,
it doesn’t have a meaning.
It is soft and hard, carapace and
flesh,
It isn’t right or wrong,
It doesn’t command us to do or not to do.
Nature is a universe of childlike
irrepressibility.
I gently touch the soft spot on the
crown of your head,
Where the golden hairs whorl in
A little galaxy of gentleness.
They call us unnatural,
But we are a milky-way of kisses and
laughs.
Poem 5
Existence is transitory
You told me with a tremendous air of self-assurance,
and I believe
you believed what you said
as you pontificated about how religion
is the source of all evil.
This was the day before you very
ceremoniously explained
we could no longer be friends.
Nothing to do with me coming out you
said,
no not at all,
Which of course must’ve been true to
you because
you always convinced yourself
of your own ideas.
You must forgive me for still being
resentful,
For never having had your certitude,
or the self-righteousness of your moral
& ethical positions.
I’m super sure that Engels would’ve
approved as
You walked away
Just as the spittle began to fly.
Poem 4
Put your head in my lap
and look up
See that little marble inside you?
It rolled in there at some point,
And got lodged.
Soak me up
and you’ll find that it
blossoms
With tiny warm lips and the softest
down,
On a landscape of milky hills
That Wobble
so adorably when I tap them.
When we are allowed to find each other
We bloom.
Poem 3
Angels
are supposed to have no gender
But
I didn’t know,
and
I always wondered if they were like that because
my
mother sang to me in a language that wasn’t hers,
In
a country new to her.
I
felt completely safe listening to words I couldn’t understand.
My
guardian angel had no understanding of
the
finer intricacies of socialising.
That
must’ve been why the boy pushed me off the bus,
and
why my friends stopped calling
or
answering.
The
day I was asked to leave
I
felt so incredibly free,
Walking
home in the middle of the school day
with
my shirt soaked right through from the summer rain.
That
was the day I never needed to go back to,
like
my mother saying Freddie Mercury died
because
he was gay
and
then discovering that in order to live fully
you
can’t live in other people’s opinions.
So
Matthew took me to Montreal
and
debated framing his book as ‘queer literature,’
the
manuscript of which made me
See
a future of making beautiful,
lost
things.
Many
children dream at night that they can fly,
It’s
a vision of agency, and adulthood.
Having
made it past the age of 18
I
studied architecture in the anticipation of
Defying
gravity.
Billions
of birds die every year after smashing into glass buildings,
And
other people’s utopias are always deadly,
Because
the perfect is the enemy of the imperfect.
Poem 2
Your existence
changes the weight
and orbit of my world.
Potters turn clay into pots
Literally,
We come into being by being seen
Together,
Like eccentric moons,
We change the tides when we come out.
Poem 1
I
am proud of you
-Of
us-
For
making it this far.
Many
baby turtles get picked off
By
birds
Before
they make it to the sea,
And
we keep being told that
Rainbows
aren’t real.
If
that’s the case then how is it
That
we are both here,
In
this little place we painted and feathered.
I
left something for you on the table.
A
symbol of my mixed feelings
About
the fragility of what we’ve built
Here.
I
am proud of myself
For
caring about the hydrangeas we planted,
And
our dogs
While
the burning world outside
Slowly
creeps towards the door.
