On Show At St. Matthews (Poetry)

Saturday, and Art adorns the church,
the pews pushed back to give the works some space,
religion relegated to the back,
the secular brought forward in its place.

We’re baffled by the web of knotted string
stretched between two pillars, chopping air
into random segments with no clue
to what it means — and are we meant to care
or did the artist gamble on the hope
we wouldn’t judge it money for old rope?

Among the more conventional and safe —
framed watercolour seascapes almost prim —
the more extreme exhibits furrow brows
and we ask ourselves on whose pretentious whim
were Ken and Barbie’s plastic lives cut short
and sacrificed to flame? — Their burning caught
on video and shown as modern art,
when any child who got it in their head
to torch their dolls in this psychotic way
would surely be rebuked and sent to bed.

Why film somebody grating a fresh heart,
bloodied to the elbows by the task,
fingers pressing meat against the sharp
jagged metal, shredding it apart
as though in ritual? What gruesome point, unclear
and tongue-in-cheek, is being peep-showed here?

The droning of a disembodied voice
irritates, digital and trapped
in a recorded loop, snags on the nerves
and worries til the spirit’s all but sapped.
Curious, we came to look today:
that voice succeeds in driving us away.