Muse
the dead centre of the universe
heavenly express
in Bad Bentheim, a man
caught the train to heaven
why that particular train
on that particular day
when the summer sun
gilded the town
and temperate greens
were lush and tropical
a day too perfect, even
my atheist eye saw angels
but one man’s tragedy
is another man’s inconvenience
the platform, an irritating causeway
we strode up and down
pulling on cigarettes and speculated
love, betrayal
how dull drudgery can lead down
into the tunnel’s black drain
where windows turn opaque
then turn mirror
reflecting back on yourself
looking out, into the darkness
the morrow, rain was forecast
a return to dreariness
a more appropriate day
to hijack the train to heaven
explaining women & other nonsense
the first line drawn (excerpt from Explaining Women)
when was the first line drawn
when the first caveman
eyed the first cavewoman
and felt the animal inside
welling up through knotted gut
dispersing his modicum
of abstract thought
then taking a charcoal from the fire
he began to draw, to nullify
the madness in his head
exaggerating those parts
that obsessed him most
breasts, rump and thigh
but the shaman’s graphic plan
for all it’s magic artistry
to possess what he didn’t posses
illustrated his hands’ emptiness
his need for a cunning plan
the need to render her helpless
to succumb to his caveman charm
with club in hand and honey for bait
a prehistoric ars amatoria
delivered his desire to his lair
where his fevered hands explored
rounds, clefts and orifices
an anatomical lesson for tyro artists
to draw what is perceived with touch
dressed in nothing but her skin
she’s a parchment for his graphic hand
to wander with a line across her naked downs
spread her out like a trophy mat
deep in the cave of his imagination
where his totem is enlarged and proud
he decorated the walls with her nakedness
objectified and made concrete
the transient experience of her form
mapped out in radials of a compass
a star chart of metaphysical connections
the geometry of her horoscope
he assesses with his accusatory eye
how his earth spins on her axis
she was an equation to be solved
a complex of tangents mapped in time and space
the dumbstruck caveman gawped in awe
as she arced across his sky
heavy and swollen with pendulous breasts
parturient belly and prominent pubis
from which cavebabies crawled
old man's poems
the Enlightenment being some white man's
conspiracy of dark oppression, all people
being equal, while all people are unequal
privilege being genetically inherited
an indication of transgressive thought
there is no escape from the accusatory
finger, sharp as a dagger
I keep my sins to myself, the vigilantes
being on the prowl, ready to shoot
from the hip, should I show signs
of being less than administratively human
bureaucratic oppression, a questionnaire
where the questions are never asked
my answers, genetically inherited
my status allocated, I'm an old dog
barking, never properly trained, I'm a stray
I root with my snout, in the undergrowth
poke around bins, scratch the flea behind
my ear, lick my balls and cock my leg
more dog than man, I have no collar, no leash
I see what I see, smell what I smell
if there is a bitch in heat, I mount her
my attitude puts me beyond redemption
my transgressions noted, filed as evidence
I am categorised social remedial, handicapped
with the inability to process truth, beyond reform
I wear my shame, with puffed out chest
like a soldier wears his medals
if truth is so plastic, I'll manufacture
my own, unknot reality, weave my own fictions
deliver assertions as fact, reshape my brain
explore the world as a dog, respond to stimuli
instinct, all thought redundant, some would say
I'm already animal, yes and I'm too old to care
just don't woke me up, before I'm dog
poems still to be found online
Olivetti, The Amsterdam Quarterly
A Modern Bourbon, The Amsterdam Quarterly
Meat, Expanded Field
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The Muse. A poetry monologue, featuring Rebecca Tun
THE MUSE
(a script for a video. approx 10 min.)
The Muse delivers a series of monologues in verse about her observation and experience of being an artist’s muse.
SET
A large messy room used as an artist’s studio. Towards the back of the room is an easel. In the middle of the room is a small plinth like bed.
1st SCENE – A wide camera angle of the whole room. The artist is behind his easel preparing while waiting for the model. The model enters the scene from behind the camera, wearing a robe. She walks to the far side of the plinth where she drops her robe on the floor and takes a reclining position on the bed. She faces away from the artist and towards the camera, propped up on one elbow.
2nd SCENE – Close up of the model’s head and shoulders. The model looks past the camera, then after a couple of seconds looks knowingly at the camera and speaks to the camera. She delivers a poem confidently in as much a conversational style as possible while keeping to the structure and rhythm of the poem.
what is this dogged need to record me
with the dull efficiency of a bureaucrat
my white skin splayed against black
black on white like ink on paper
the line a length of my arm
the arc of my back, my roundness of rump
my lean torso and substantial thigh
the considered framing of my vulva
each part of me analyzed and categorized
my dismemberment into pieces of a jig saw
a puzzle to be reconstructed, as though
I will end up more than the sum of my parts
a reductionist’s curiosity in cogs and springs
their connections and interactions
how one depends upon and manipulates the other
my potential motor skills in the act of carnal love
his eye refuses to obey polite society
refuses to compromise with social angst
his eye is primal and beyond reason
a natural predator, he eyes me up as prey
Model returns to looking past the camera. Camera stays in position. Artist indicates pose is finished. Model sits up with back to camera.
3rd SCENE – A wide camera angle taking in the whole of the room. Artist explains and instructs the model about the following pose. The model to stand on tiptoes, her arms stretched in the air as though she is hanging from a rope.
4th SCENE – Mid angled view of the model struggling to stretch as much as she can. She looks at the camera and rolls her eyes.
5th SCENE – Head and shoulders of the model. Model glances to artist and then to the camera as if telling a confidence. She recites the following poem confidently and conversationally as possible but with an affectation that suggests she doesn’t want the artist to over hear her.
on tiptoe, the stretch of my body
displays the nubility of youth
as I struggle with this creaky ballet absurd
in pursuit of a semblance of balance
a dangling conversation of stress and strain
my muscles ripple up and down bone
I am a flame in a constant state of flux
the curve and fullness of my breasts
the flex and stretch of my haunches
are a provocation to the artist’s eye
whose surgical pencil skips like a conductor’s baton
notating music across a page
a life time isn’t time enough to capture
the startling beauty of my possession
in stone, in clay, in paint
all he achieves is rendering me earthbound
reducing me to the grind of gristle on bone
but occasionally, just occasionally, something miraculous occurs
his shadow is solidified by the light I cast
lengthening like a sundial across the wall
his permanence an illusion of my brightness
temporary and for no longer than I pose
knowing that in the wake of my enlightenment
is his art’s ultimate demise
Model turns her head away from the camera and looks towards the artist.
6th SCENE – A brief wide angled view, showing the model from the artist’s point of view. Artist tells model to relax. Model relaxes.
7th SCENE – Camera behind the model. The model is in a pose similar to Monet’s Olympia. The artist is drawing on the other side of her from the camera.
8th SCENE –Camera looking down on the model. The model turns her head slightly and gives a double take and frowns at the camera’s intrusion. The model decides to carry on with her monologue with the camera and recites the poem below in an irritated voice.
this slab belly is underestimated
smooth as a stone, polished and perfect
it is too often rushed across without attention to detail
until his black pencil touches the paper
when his eye leads his imagination
or his imagination leads his eye
centred in this featureless plain
pressed like a thumbprint, my navel is an oasis
the centre of me, for the moment
the centre of his entire universe
if this white wilderness was a landscape
he has not the time to cross it
he would hover above me like a lover might
amazed by my female beauty
sense how I would give to his touch, consider
how I would move beneath him, savour
the fever of anticipation, imagine how
a line could reveal my secrets
Artist shows irritation with the model for fidgeting. Model shows annoyance at the camera.
9th SCENE – The model is bent over the bed looking into the camera. A wide camera angle to show the artist drawing her from behind. Model recites poem below with even more irritation than before and ends with a sneer.
my body is nothing but a specimen
to be dissected and examined
not with the keen scalpel of a surgeon
nor with the ground axe of a serial killer
his tools are more mundane but no less sharp
pencils, paper and an unforgiving eye
my humiliation is not of his concern
his hand commits to its disciplined craft
control, interpret, respond to my body
define me until definition defines itself
freeing his hand to follow my line
until it cuts cruelly across the page
the artist in him demands his prerogative
to report his version of my truth
to his lecherous friends who’ll graze over me
dwelling where the eye lingers most
and time will be its most treacherous
my breasts, my rump, my thigh, my crotch
The artist suggests the model should look at his drawing. Model gets up and goes to look at the drawing. She slowly screws her face up and then turns to the artist and slaps his face and walks out of scene behind the camera. A door slams.