John Danvers

Texts 90's

Cage’s Tales

one winter, touring, weaving & dancing, tending a grave ~ the table is real, in every sense ~ twenty people in the woods ~ a taxi down town ~ we have the impression that we’re learning things, the years pass, we’re still alive, everything is God, nothing much to do ~ one of the girls said, "Listen". I just sat there, listening ~ this is not idle talk ~ we take things apart in order that they may become ~ fish, when she jumps in the water, asks, "Am I a butterfly" ~ even in broad daylight, the Four Mists of Chaos: thought, stones and emptiness of sand ~ Walking in a thunderstorm from one village to another. Blind, covered with sores. Stumbling over something he fell in the mud ~ she would never steal again wearing high heels, furcoat, and a rose in her black hair. She may have been thinking of the mushroom ~ when it is terribly dry a rainbow makes good sense ~ just something natural ~ no more, no less

Auerbach Portrait

these bones are the whole house ~ surface silted ~ impulsiveness fixed as conviction ~ doing & undoing, making & destroying ~ flickering immobility of head & hands & eyes all locked into contorted likeness ~ rubbed ghosts of stuff ~ somewhere between ingrained image & blankness, impatient weaving of pigment into ravaged façade

Goodwill View Exchange*

- based on account by Tom Pilston of an interview with Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma. Independent on Sunday, 22.11.98

one black car Rangoon pagoda roadblock ~ dusty room drumming rain on iron roof ~ jinx woman with a wilful smile no time for piano-playing ~ change will come ~ they are frightened of shadows of restless monks, we are frightened of monks who sometimes are not monks ~ wreaths of jasmine golden spire heroin warlord cornered dog ~ change will come but when? ~ we don’t talk but we say a lot ~ you know what a prison is? fear, fear is a prison ~ in a dusty room serenity bites the cornered dog

* The Burmese government referred to 200 MPs locked up at unknown locations as ‘taking part in..goodwill view exchange’.