23 July 2006

prison song 03

prison song 03
by Joe Blades © 2006

no going upstairs today
the way gated and padlocked
no soldiers sleeping up there
no spit-polish boots and
brass buttons on wool coats
they’ve the day off life
down in the river valley
or they’re inside themselves
guarding their fortified tea
while i crave relief not possible
acrylic medium drying clear blue
with night star speckles-spangles
on fallen roofing slate now
housing an account of giants
and castles in ireland—
scrap of a scrap of petite
artmaking in this casemate
a month or so back before
she escaped to port maitland
across the bay of fundy and
southwest down the coast
of nova scotia for the summer
a month from now i will be
taxing down the runway
at yfc leaving fredericton
for the last time this year
flying to montreal then east
in an arc over greenland
to munich and onward east
to budapest and way away
from where i am waiting now
for day to end and another
to begin—get on with it!


T-shirt: Odawa Pow Wow
loc: Garrison District Soldier's Barracks
temo: 19 C
sound: Lenny Gallant "Destination"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is interesting, is it clay slab?
are you responsible?

Joe Blades said...

This is the roofing slate addressed in the poem "prison song 03". A rock shingle. Whether Welsh or New Brunswick slate rock, I don't know. As an artwork I am responsible for the collage of paper on stone.