"Don't Send"

This is a poem I wrote for my Creative Writing assignment this semester. We were tasked with writing an ekphrastic poem about an art piece of our choosing. I picked Ed Atkins' Warm, Warm, Warm Spring Mouths (2013) to write about, I saw his work at a video exhibition during my weekend trip to Lille in October. I would advise watching the video first in order to grasp the content of my poem.

Don’t Send

Small movements cause ripples across coarse hair.

Dark curtains- hovering, ghostlike, in the air above the shoulders,

With his bareness obscured, but extending past the frame

where the strands know no end

Pause: Hear the dimming, unchanging nature of his voice

when he begins the perpetual chant, the only chant

“Once upon a time, a couple of people were alive, who were friends of mine…”

against stranger scenes

from an alien, digitized realm. He sits, though, amid the textures of

undulating water, blinding glares, the stars. But- is there rest? Or comfort?

Often, his only silohuette is blurred- deprived of senses, spawning

clear structures

of warped color. The celestial setting suspends the

ebony tendrils into eerie tentacles as he eclipses

the only light, an infant star gleaming rays of life

into the computerized vaccum

of simulated ashy explosions and stock photos.

unspoken words of programmed calamity displayed

“And I’m here in this trench.” “The final trench, perhaps”

an invasive zap interrupts

and startles the senses. Here, merely man and the

fluctuation of environment exist. Ensnared and

isolated in an existence confined to an interface,

the memory of life once lived

now lost. Do his earphones loop playback of earth’s tune?

Nonetheless he is a sullen error, eternal disparity.

Consumed, without a purpose, by technology

Piteous “Man” of cybernation,

A product of the mainframe, no longer man but avatar.

His fixation abducted him. Submersion has washed him out

and watered the flourishing locks upon his head.

The slightest droplet

Seeks to brand him, he thinks but only

Sorrentino’s words can he utter

“The weathers, the weathers they lived in!

Christ, the sun on those Saturdays.”