Three
Up there on your own today, you were crawling in a crowd. There was William Pope.L,
Supermanning down Broadway, Gail Burton circumnavigating a lake, Amy Sharrocks walking in shoes of butter
And Ana Teresa Fernández standing in her stilettos made of ice breaking apart in pain,
The ceiling of the sky, flashing day to night to day, spider’s legs descending like poles of rain.
Catling was crawling after a glacier, overtaking it, then overtaken by a town,
And I was up there, falling down over the bars of my cot, out through the shop and up the side
Of the Foleshill Road, the woman from the sweet shop rushing out and sweeping me up,
Straight from creeping into flight, a Gutai sculptor mauling mud, holograms, Gao Yuan crawling toward a girl
Perched on a kerb. Weitzenhoffer students performing subservience to governance
With flowers and wine; it was ‘a lot harder than I thought it would be’, said one, ‘fifteen feet feels like fifteen miles’,
And asphalt is ‘unbearable’ on the knees, even when not crawling over a land mine or through maggots.
Rahul Bhatthacharya and Tapti Chaudhury worming, tethered by a noose,
Scratching loosely cryptic messages in both English and Hindi, while
Lonnie van Brummelen dragged a cast of Hermes for months along the sides of roads,
Arriving at the caves at Lascaux, her Hermes had by that time dematerialised.
In the picture you approach a line of wooden posts, wire gridding a massive crystal vista,
Intentions as unclear as a quick change artist hanging around a street corner.
Acconci was under a ramp, cramped. The first of the slitherings dropped gently from memory,
After that a story my mother told me, and finally I crawled around the world wide web,
Finishing at some posts about wealthy celebrity artists and a grid of others unpaid for their services, then
Something about a live art experience ‘unique and tailored to the message and theme of your event’.
These were not at all like the wide world I saw in your Go Pro footage, watery and bright,
Glowing before your plunging frame, vast and dark, thrilling as you bent relentlessly to it.