Untitled
Words and Photo by Max Lees
The hunting party sets out
Into the mudsucking swamp
stumbling
through
thick fog
and shooting at answers
to a question they’re still looking for
Carrying black-and-white binoculars,
chanting to a two-
beat stomp
chasing ghosts and waving excitedly
at some object in the distance
conjured by their burning gaze,
blink
and it slips back
out of existence
They’re looking for a bridge,
loosely strung
across the chasm
between the blizzard
and the bonfire,
careful crossing open-eyed
or you’ll drop your sanity down there,
Down where
your own dead body
and the bodies of your shadow’s friends are
twisted into incoherent shapes,
inside out and multiplied in
bizarre attempts at circular symmetry
Look up or look
down,
the high-wire bridge gives a sickening lurch
and in a fit of laughter you find yourself tossed
back into the flames, surrounded by
piles of junk,
gold frames
cheap paint
costumes snagged on
broken strings
magazines with
glossy covers
a gramophone
that doesn’t play
movie film and
high-heeled shoes
vintage photos
endless colours
The flames go on singing and dancing and burning
while the snowstorm blows relentlessly
in deafening silence,
Out in the blizzard there’s a throne for a familiar corpse
frozen, staring blankly as if he might still blurt out
the secret of the cold wind written in the stars,
as if he might just spring up and take us to the br
that doesn’t exist,
as if by keeping his eyes in a pickle jar
we could use them as goggles
and the universe would rearrange itself as a kaleidos
of straight lines calculated from a single centre p
So we run the other way,
jump headfirst into the flames of our own creation
which we insist were always there,
as if there are no stars but in paintings
and no vast expanse of nothingness,
banging our heads together to drown out the silence,
drawing new bridges and magic staircases,
Digging for a holy grail
that sinks deeper the longer we search,
dancing on tiptoes on the edge of an imaginary crevice,
endlessly painting pictures
that we will not finish
until ice burns without melting
and rivers run both ways,
until the tower of I topples
and the empire of eyes turns inwards,
until the bridge collapses
and nausea turns to laughter,
until dead men lay to rest
and flowers bloom from their ashes,
until we lose the key
and its black box,
until we learn to feel our way
through the blinding grey area
between the artist
and its playground