After Joanna Margaret Paul’s Imagined in the Context of a Room, exhibited at City Gallery Wellington, 2023
Heaven is a Blue Room
And so
It’s my celestial dial tone
and I’m on hold
Because it’s not that it is
It is that it ends
With all these sunbeams
Everywhere
Everytime
Curtains
Always behind curtains
Closed
The night sky stays consistent
Indifferent toward the satellite
beside me
The waves inside subside
Painting into a new era
Or so they say
Resting at your feet
I am a faithful dog
Or so they say
At mine
A whirlpool
Blitz white
Caught
The kind of chaos only motion can capture
Until
Rendered
Still
Silent
Patient
If only
Slowly
The shutters
The shadow keepers and I
We can wait a lifetime
To say
Sparsely cut and finely tuned our sparing words
Let it all spill
Have you forgotten
That satisfies me
The rapture of colour in softcore tones
The stern faces of mountains warmed by the sun
Demarcated by fences
I see
A world as a flash
As it dances
It burns
Whirls
Whips
Embraces
Enamores
Clambers up
Warms us
And shatters again
Fences
Finding the line
Find your feet
Shy
As the sun splits in two
Blushing silver
A new era
A new reason to argue
Over angles
I’m over it
The haptics of a world rushing by without pause Rest
Always behind curtains
Closed
Still
Spilling opal purple
A soft evening emerald green
Taken from the study of a field glow
As the sky tumbles over outside
Ruining the carpet
Light cascading and crashing down the hallway
Raining
Again
Condemned as I am
By tasks
Tiny tripwires designed to detonate
Pushing back against obsolescence
These fairytale informants
They are torturous
Too busy doomsday daydreaming
To dignify it
To turn it all around somehow
As marred and stranded as I am at the shores of obedience Remorseless
Maybe it’s a fence
Maybe it’s a gateway
May the pain be information
A love spell
Full of luck and charm
I see
I lean
I rest
Wane and relent
Repent while washed up on the shore of being able
to reliably rinse out my words to weigh them against
something forthright
and final
A love spell
Even though sometimes mines a dry spell
A total love drought
A hurt so historic it goes beyond words
Though so much still shines through
These days call out to me of brightness
Of the sea
Heaven is a Blue Room
After all
For play
A pale landscape
Of substance over mere subsistence
I see
It doesn’t just fall from the sky
This Brilliance
And so
It’s my celestial dial tone
and I’m on hold
Because it’s not that it is
It is that it ends
With all these sunbeams
Everywhere
Everytime
The artwork that inspired this piece is currently still under copyright, you can view it online here. The featured artwork in its place was commissioned by bad apple from Mickie Loof for the 2023 Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day.
