INDECENCY

           

         The show confirmed for me why i don't attend galleries:         
        I always end up feeling like a prisoner-inspector
        With death-row inmates already hanging off the walls or,
        More à la mode, disembodied and rotting on the floor
        For me to actively step over and forget.

                                         *                                                                             

          I left before trying the Argentinan Malbec Bob
        Had recommended in atonement for his impatience
      – For which i couldn’t blame him:    Jill looked about to give in,
        Like a student at last convinced her young prof wanted more
        Than a sycophallic mistress and really cared for her.

                                             *

           But what did i know?   I was just a sic psychologust
        On vapid vacation, and they were mere other tourists,
        Strangers not just to me but, no doubt, to each other too

                                              *

          I walked out of the museum and into the night’s cool.
        There was a taxi idling outside and i simply asked
        The driver to give me a tour of the town by night-light.
        He nodded and switched on his meter and said – What’s up Doc?
             The voice was neither unfamiliar nor intimate
        And, in the dark of the box, it took me a few seconds
        To recognise the face above the hand held out to me:
        It was Raimonde Winterkiss without the black-framed glasses
        He always wore in the jail where i was his counsellor.

        (from *fatima solagua arterra’s nudes* by Brian Chan, 2015)