Voices is intended to be a collection of poems written and illustrated
by Mike Burr .
aaa voices
the dust of winter is just beginning to flow through the valleys
the sky is warming with that first low light
i have woken early as its my signing on day
i set the alarm but have risen early like the thin mists outside
the alarm is an agitation
i have Sally Oldfield's "Water Bearer" ringing in my inner ear
its the track Mirrors - " we are mirrors in the sun .."
i go downstairs and put on the vinyl LP
i have had a vision
not the dramatic kind of "Chicken blessed by Caravaggio"
but more subtle and more reserved after all
I'm not English for nothin
it relates to a painting of my son
i should explain that i gave up a what city folk
describe as a good career
to become an artist
I've always been an artist
its a degree of temperament
not wild and railing or weird and misunderstood or profound or aloof
but creative
just creative
and in this isolated little world i paint in oil
and how i can paint -
like Merlin amid the air
i can make the paint fly and sing
and have bizarrely harnessed science to its ancient carriage
i digress
today I'm painting my only boy
in two versions
one primitive on Sadolined board
its harsh black under-paint left to underscore the outlines
changing the ligament of the image in that pub in Sheffield
so that their course are weaving drunk
and the colours garish
heaving to that cause
curved with the scimitars of art deco
in its intoxicated plath it teeth grind
its lips slur and spill
the second picture
is the one about which my vision has transported me
the face painted with picture realism
he has one eye near closed
his face twisted
quizzical
that eye looks from the necklace he is wearing
as if it were a summary mandala
but in contradiction to reality
i left the picture open to the left
not as it was - alcoved and despairing
its deep maroons filtering the heavy air
the answer or so i thought
would be to add a view into that space on the left
but the vision has asked
that i lay a black figure on the vacant sofa to the right
this i think cannot be
as the ethereal shade could not all fit
within the bounds of the canvas
a shade as shadows where detail is withheld
and it must appear from the curling smoke
of the cigarette i hate him smoking
and which he was not smoking
and I'm am agitated
and i know that where there were two frames
full of the steel of history and of old Sheffield
the must appear the image i so like
the strange pattern of the wheeling and spoked oath
my picture then becomes like Davids
a pledge
is it to blood and ancestry or maybe love
or perhaps it sings sad songs of failure
and aspirations lost upon life's petty wars
you the viewer will hear it in your own unique
and qualified way
this is the voice of art come calling