darling i'm clearing up

darling i'm clearing up
it's cold here - and there?
i'm pulling up my hair pulling up
my hands, picking up the ribbons, the glitter
pencils, smiles - look:
pain went right through
the body called it in
the body waits - it wants/wanted to change
but it stays put
[pain will change it]
then it will go out, another
see? through a coloured
slit / then there's a ladder
and then everything's pink
[BLACK]
[wrong window]
start again -

darling i'm clearing out


Written in one go in a warm cafe in Stockholm's Sodermalm on an icy morning of October 2007. Eleni Theofilaktou had invited me to write a piece for her upcoming exhibition, "Darling, I'm clearing up" at 'tint' gallery in Thessaloniki, Greece (November 2007 - January 2008). She'd sent me photos of some of the works she'd be showing [e.g. the two below], we'd talked, I'd been keeping notes, mental as well as written. I sent the piece to her as a photo of the manuscript [above], since she'd liked the LLEL/LIR/LYR manuscript. She decided to make colour photocopies of it, which her show's visitors were free to take away with them.

[The english version is my own.]