Exemplar Art: Old Knows Penultimate Exhibit

Friday, January 16, 2009

Old Knows Penultimate Exhibit

This weekend sees the penultimate event at Old Knows Studios in Nottingham .. I am honoured to have been part of this terrific collective of artists for even a short time ..

Stay tuned for information about the Cold War show being exhibited at Deda in Derby next year .. and about the final event showing at Old Knows, 'Closure' .. http://www.oldknows.co.uk

Historical Continuity and Homelessness

The HoBo Jungle

His Icy stare kept me distant
Till the day I saw the Fear
Through a Blind Eye
And a Blue Tear

Chuckie was sitting on the Brownstone steps
Had no Money, had no Job
Had no Prospects
A patch on his eye
Hit with a blunt Object
A gash on his Arm
Oozes blood across the Tracks ..

Railroaded!
By a thousand Dreams of
“You can make it Here boy
If you can make it There boy”

Better run on Home–boy
Home is Gone?
No one cares?
Here .. have a drink Son.

As a Union Flag rose
Over Cotton Southern skies
Powder tattered soldiers
Scattered as Dust
Dragged the dirt
Of the economic Debris
Of setting Slaves free
Of the war of the Lincoln Years

Now Home boys
Homeward Bound
A dirt road Across the Tracks
Downtown, Down Boy
There boy .. Here boy
Hoe boys!

Industrialisation
Family Separation
A bigger and Better Nation
Go west Young man .. Go West!

The New Frontier
To great green Coast
Loggers had come
Lumberjacks to some
All flannel and Button fly Blue jeans
Build a New Home
With your army beans
We’ll give you Tools
You supply means

Axes slice into Raw Pine
And Redwood giants
Of Kwiakutl land
Soiling Salmon waters
In the Forest of Symbols
No Totem grows there Boy
Here boy
Hoe boy! .. Tiiiimmbeerrr!!!

A Train whistle blows
Into a steaming town
Business Booms
With thriving saloons
Rogues dressed up
For Bar room Brawls
Every Saturday night
Square Dancing Fiddlers
Call Gospel tunes
For Sunday morning sermons

Filled with the Spirit
Guilt built the town;
Vandals .. scandals ..
And Money flows with Wine ..

The stark Cold winter blows Ice
Into Lonely hearts
Up on Yessler Way,
And the frozen
Greased cobblestones
That Stretch down to the river,
which leads to the Mill
In Seattle,
At the bottom of the Hill
Called Skid Row ..
Dried up with the dent
Of debt in the Docks.

Cowboy Culture;
rounds up the buffalo,
pulls an ace from a Stetson,
calls it a Fool’s House.

No more new Frontier
No more work Here
No more Here boy
There boy
Hoe Boy
No more Homeward Bound
Now just Ho-Bo

Sepia toned newsreels
Of Winding breadlines,
Unshaven
The depression era Tramp
Bindle stick over the shoulder
Knotted Polka dot hanky on the end
And a Big Toe
Poking from a
Two-Tone
Two sizes
Too-small Boot ..

Out in the woods
Just over the rusting Tracks
Simmering Coffee
In blackened Kettles
On boxcars’ Tiny kerosene stoves
Rolling Fag end butts
Into Newsprint,
The Rubber tramp’s
Vagrant vacant smile
Cut thru society’s Dreams
To the emotional Bone.

Meaty modernist Mass producer
Cigar chomping Capitalist seducer
Draws Small town Dreams ..
Big City schemes
Big Screen Themes
To Sunset Showdowns
At the corner of
Hollywood and Vine ..

Nothing left to Conquer,
Nothing to Destroy
No more Land to Ravage,
no life Here Boy
There boy,
Hoeboy,
No more Home!

As the last rays of a copper Sun
Soured the Dull Grey
Facade of the city skyline
A momentary Glint
In Chuckie’s good eye
Catches
His Fading dream of hope,
And with Creaking Spine
He bends
For the discarded soda Pop can.

With a pound of Aluminium,
twenty-six Tins in all,
Chuckie will earn
Seventy-eight pence in change
From his Haggard old benefactress
Who runs the
Scrap metal Recycling centre ..
Churning the Old into the New ..
Turning the Past into the Present;
a Salvage ..
for Dignity.

c. Kevin Wallace
1992-2008

excerpts from ..

the narrative poem ..

'Xmas on Christmas Island'

Christ dad!
Will hell have to freeze over
Before you see?

Lightning flashing from east to west
From the island of the day before
It was the light that no one saw

A secret concealed
Held us spellbound
A mystery revealed

Christmas ain’t Christmas
Now that Daddy’s not around.

Daddy was a brave man ..
Daddy was a fool
Daddy was a cave man ..
I learned more from his life
Than I ever would at school

He wore a crown of thorns
Had a twinkle in his eye
As bright as a fine cut
Diamond jewel
With the devil he locked horns
And he always loved to celebrate
This season of the Yule

***

Two hundred odd years ago
Captain Cook and his crew set sail
For all the tea in china
And a stake in the glory of the age
They rounded the horn the cape
They were halfway round the globe
Writing on history’s page

With cutlass in hand
And bombast and bluster
They circled the earth
Seeking Solomon’s hidden treasure
Eternal fame
All the gold they could muster
Yes, the empire was growing
Yet still it stayed the same

In those days of fool’s glory
Or 1777 to be exact
On December 24th
For the honour of old Europe
And their brute might
They landed to name
This Christmas Island outback
Not knowing what day
When they’d crossed at night

Magellan, Vespucci
Cook and their crews
Straddled geometry
To give us some clues

Figments of fragments of texts
From the Holy Bible
Providing a rival design
For which we’re eternally liable

A sign of the times
From imaginary maps
Through the tropics
And across the polar ice caps

A blue ocean current
A soft wind against their tail
Exploration and conquest
Building our shrine
To the island of the day before
Either side of an arbitrary date line

***

Daddy was a slave man ..
Daddy was a tool
Daddy was a poor man ..
Daddy broke a rule

Daddy went AWOL
To meet mum at the village café
So they sent him as test subject
To discover doomsday
They played with his body
His mind and his soul
While he was stationed
On that historic Pacific atoll

TWA the Polar bear line
Took them across
Northern ice flows
The wind was a gale
On that trans-global flight
Into the Arctic aurora sunshine

Men bundled for frost
Towards the South Seas doldrums
The second coming hidden
From the media’s sight
Selected to witness
Its symbol and sign

Those were simpler times
Going back ‘56 to ‘62
Before the Beatles revolution
And the counter culture grew

Dropping the H-bomb
Began the new age
Birth at the core of the atom
Dividing the cell in one stage

Memories of Papa
In pa pa paradise

Underneath waving palm trees
Covered in spice
Kon Tiki Kiribati
Scot’s Porridge oats
And fried totties
A legacy of secrecy
From the fifties to the naughties

East or west clouds burst
And hung in the air
Building iron blocs and laying
The foundation of the wall
The political fallout
Expanded and glowed everywhere
To the White House and heaven
And secret meetings in Whitehall

Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Berlin and Brooklyn
Stockpiling fusion
Nuclear power was seen
As progress a step in evolution

***

Polynesian gods numbered
In their thousands
As megawatts and
Mega tonnes exploded
Came crashing down as idols
While islanders watched
Cartoons on battleships

Grapple hooks coca-cola
Lager beer and bully beef
Boxes washed up on the reef
So much post-war grief
Behind banana leaves
What the elders feared
And perhaps always believed

The magnificent package
The valiant jet contained
Shattered peace forever
Fire from heaven that rained

Here in pa pa paradise
Every day is the same
Government won’t acknowledge
The men who served by name

Memories of Papa
In pa pa paradise

One degree from the equator
These cargo cult
Hydrogen bomb volunteers
Scattered lives forever
Among dusty remnants
Of a thousand and one children
From the English lowlands
To the Scottish highlands

Bringing their hopes their dreams
Their family jewels and their fears
Round the world they flew
Too many too young
To shed so many tears

***

Daddy was a knave man ..
Daddy could be cruel
Daddy was sent on tour man ..
Daddy fought a duel

There’s water-skiing sailing
Sun-bathing and scuba diving
Six-inch nails bent into hooks
For big game fishing
A drink in the bar

Stagnant water and rotting tents
Low-yield weapons under barrage
Balloons open-air cinema
As fine coral dust turned
Into thick coral mud
Of course nuclear tests

Lavatories were dig holes
A battle of beer turned into a riot
Castaways caught
In a plague of flies
RAF uniforms
That turn green overnight

Coconut plantations
DDT bilateral cataracts
And giant mosquitoes
But there was to come a day
When all the men
And the birds went quiet

Under the palm trees
At the end of the beach
X marks the spot
Our treasure discreet
Come on get down
Here on your knees
Grab a shovel and lend me a hand
We’ll bury the beer
To our necks in the sand

We’ll keep it cold
And away from the crabs
We’ll dig it up later
And have a few laughs
We’ll pull out our brand new
Bowie knives and give
The rusting tin two clean stabs

One hole to drink from
One to release the bubbling gases
Now we’ll bake in the sunshine
And when the big one goes off
We can bend over
And say goodbye to our asses

***

Daddy’s in his grave man ..
Daddy was too cool
Ashes to ashes ..
Dust to dust
Now a kind of fossil fuel

In nature’s fragile womb
Discovering the meaning of death
We’ve unsettled the old gods
With this nuclear test

A flashbulb memory
Caught on video transmission
Punch drunk airmen
In continuous communication

A missile crisis looms
In obscure patwa translation
Glory halleluiah
As the tests divide a united nation

Like a post apocalyptic
Heat seeking blast
Happening in our lifetimes
The very near past

Too many questions
Science and politics asked
Uranium strontium
Said men who were masked

Science must be advanced
No thought of consequences
Politics will share the glory
In these days of cold war tension

We can produce materials
For mightier crashes
New methods of spying
Bring civilisations to ashes

Paranoia propaganda
Lets all work to reveal the Brahma
Roll the troops out to our defence
Create an international drama

Collaboration
Between warring nations
In history’s greatest crime
The media will write the story
Spinning tales of a troubled time

Arise ye olde nations
The power corrupts
The clouds and the fire
A volcano erupts
Arise to battle stations
In Jesus we trust
Islands that breathe
All our nuclear dust

X marks the spot
Just 20 miles away
A target in range
50 years to the day
September 11th
And those twin towers
On the very same date in 1958
It was Christmas Island
And thermonuclear
Thundershowers

***

Christ dad!
Will hell have to freeze over
Before you see?

Lightning flashing from east to west
From the island of the day before
It was the light that no one saw

A secret concealed
Held us spellbound
A mystery revealed

Christmas ain’t Christmas
Now that Daddy’s not around.

"Turning like holy fools
To see a bright ball of fire
More brilliant than the sun
The world’s biggest funeral pyre

The glare of the white
Hot air was burned in a flash
Nations emerged reborn
In the powerful backlash

We gazed in wild unworldly wonder
Hoping that just maybe somewhere
Someone had made a huge blunder

Behind the protective bags
Of white coral sands
That morning on the equator
As the bright heat
Surged through us
Beneath trees uprooted
By the force of the blast
We saw the skeletal bones
Through the palms of our hands"

As all along the coral reef
A scorched tiny patch of land
What once were rocks
Now melting like the past
Turned to glassy
Grains of green sand
Each and every man
Whose fate was cast
Knelt hand in hand
As the colours
Of Christmas lights flashed

A hundred million suns unleashed
A hundred million sins of the beast

How many children
Will die in their blast?
How many children
Remember days past?

Who are those survivors
That drew hellfire from heaven?
Who are our fathers
To what madness were they driven?

The nuclear family is
A recent sensation
The offspring of the
Super power deterrent
We’re the next generation

***

Christ dad!
Will hell have to freeze over
Before you see?

Lightning flashing from east to west
From the island of the day before
It was the light that no one saw

A secret concealed
Held us spellbound
A mystery revealed

Christmas ain’t Christmas
Now that Daddy’s not around.

Daddy's in his grave man ..
Daddy was too cool ..
Daddy was a poor man ..
Daddy broke a rule ..
Ashes to Ashes
Dust to Dust
Now a kind of fossil fuel

What of the cancers
Colour blindness and such
What of leukaemia
And other illness we can’t touch

What of the blisters
Double sets of top teeth
What of the grandchildren
The seed of that reef

What of the ones who died
Too soon for their years
What of those men
Who fought back the tears
What of those boys
Who tried to get drunk
On root beers

Do the hydrogen atoms sparkle
When they bind?
Did the radiation illuminate
His open young mind?

Christ dad!
Will hell have to freeze over
Before you see?

Lightning flashing
From east to west
From the island of the day before
It was the light that no one saw

A secret concealed
Held us spellbound
A mystery revealed

Christmas ain’t Christmas
Now that Daddy’s not around.

Memories of Papa
In papa paradise

Sitting under the palm tree
Beneath the mushroom cloud
Did his whole world of knowledge
Unravel and unwind?

Did he believe
All the rumours and lies?
Did the sunglasses
Protect his bright eyes?
Did he think to question
The hows and the whys?

Or, was it just an imprint
Of the south sea sunshine?

From the island of the day before
It was the light that no one saw

A secret concealed
Held us spellbound
A mystery revealed

Christmas ain’t Christmas
Now that Daddy’s not around.

***

cKevinWallace '08

Exemplar Art

Friday, January 16, 2009

Old Knows Penultimate Exhibit

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