'The Madness of the Day' by Dominic Symes | States of Poetry SA - Series Two
after ‘Dug and Digging With’ – AEAF, July/August 2016
Looking forward to seeing you all day
& arriving at the crowded gallery steps
I say ‘this gallery is full of the same people
desperate to see something different’
but I don’t really believe this I mean I am
only here to see you & like this room
is lit just to accentuate your
best features the more I look at you
the more I find myself lost inside a mirrored
box the kind that disappears into itself
it’s called ‘smoke and mirrors’ I’ve played it
before a mis-en-abyme a play
within a play (‘played’
& ‘playing with’) it doesn’t
make any more sense this time around
yet the writing is on the wall
I have to squint to read it but it’s there
the writing is on the ceiling too & it says
‘BLENDED RUBBER TRUMPETS
UNDER A CAR SEAT’
during the performance piece I let you buy
me a beer it goes straight to my head
like black helium balloons I get high
on this darkened ellipsis ...
everyone is being silent/polite there is
a Foley track a throbbing? my own heart?
a pulsation like the pattern of light
from a lighthouse penetrating your porthole
should we run aground
it’s turtles all the way down
turns out it’s only three pedestal fans microphones
we see what we want to see I guess
‘it’s the bubbles’ you whisper & we all clap
very loudly at exactly the right time
for the first time there’s a line for
the bathrooms at the AEAF
the companion text says this is not a ‘problem’
but a ‘secret geometry’ an inside joke
& when I come back out you are talking to
someone you always seem to know
more people than I do regardless of
where we are together you are
looking over some featureless shoulder
kneeling beside a box of books (as art)
I say to whoever is listening ‘if galleries are
the new cathedrals I’m glad we’ve
worked out how to get people
genuflecting’ & upright by the exit sign
I am overcome by the fresh paint on the walls (not
paintings) this is new (nauseating?) over
powering yes the crowd spills out onto the steps
for cigarettes I open my stick of gum
that says: BEWARE THE ARTWORKS. SOME ARE
FRAGILE & you wave to me start walking over
when Aida grabs your arm & says:
‘I’m supposed to stop you running into it
see this sculpture is made
of glass’