​weighing up: negative confessions for scribes, by Ruby McCann

​weighing up: negative confessions for scribes  
 
after all prayers for safe travel 
to those departed creatives
bring straw and clay 
and corn dolls to mould
for souls need a vessel 
to emerge from death 
and not all songs have melodies
or refrains holy rites ease
 
poor souls of art heavier
than the white feather of truth
to reach eternal paradise 
when admitted to the academy
one has to criss-cross cosmic pomposity 
underworldly lordy 
justly dead judgy creators  
mauling two-truths waiting on 
weighing up pros and cons
feathered birds flocking 
unruffled art absconding 
hall of judgement
 
rowing Lily Lake piercing
veiled eternal nirvana or not 
where loved ones wait
if riveted enough
 
when enlightened art wakens
masses queue-in pearly gates 
steer your masterpiece
seek out a jackal-headed-man 
named Anubis 
God of all mere mortals 
and time is fleeting
ask him what is right in the balanced 
order of creation? 
does art live eternally? 
by streams
beneath trees 
in fields of reeds 
 
he will intentionally ignore you
reference page numbers from souls handbook
even if you didn’t receive a copy 
absorbedly spellbound over last night’s lover
trapeze tricks swinging in his head 
thrown on peaks precise timing
too long ushering afterlife artistic musings
attending limitless golden scales balancing
soaring heavens glass ceiling 
sky-high-ing short horizontal bars 
hung by ropes with metal straps 
 
for support follow him 
he will escort you 
to hall of truth
where long haired artists
vent snobbery in smouldering sacraments  
smoke endless cigarettes
loaf around smearing walls 
styling petty profound profanities
in one-dimensional font
 
            fuck infinity
 
perpendicular geometric patterns
awaiting opinion-ed
sensitive Anubis’ ear
re-marks a riddle
is it possible to have art 
lighter than a feather?  
leaving you puzzled
 
overhead winged darting voluptuous 
wind-swept Goddesses 
bear fresh fruit and water
proffer overflowing wine goblets  
hearten gratified confusion
alighting golden scales
in the way one alights a train 
from Edinburgh at Glasgow Central 
tallying harmony and balance
twerking to Beethoven’s Symphony 
no. 7 in A major
 
dazingly dazed 
42-judges consulting 
three eternal fates 
staging close measured side-stepping 
squatting twerks harnessing power
blindly auditioning musicians behind a screen
eyeing art devoid of context
blending bias in performance
 
and should your art prove too heavy
whilst destiny’s gyrating booties distract
it will be thrown to the floor 
gobbled up by an armoured 
scaled beast with great crocodile jaws
far more sensitive than fingertips
legs bent and head low 
rosette camouflaged front   
marking you like a preying leopard
and a rhinos’ leathery lumpy broad-backed
loose piano-keyed vertebral column 
teething fatality in those towering
thrusting hip movements
once devoured cease to exist
there will be no jet-black drays 
drawing carriages
hearses or baroque floral tributes
no obituaries writ 
because no art 
decomposes death in real time
quite like an unbalanced feather

Ruby McCann

This poem responds in particular to the artwork, Painting Him Out. Click here to view.

​Ruby McCann: BA English cum laude (Trinity, Washington 2004), MLitt Playwriting & Dramaturgy (University of Glasgow 2017). She is a Scottish based flâneuse and creative practitioner experimenting across writing genres and artistic disciplines active on the Glasgow literary scene.  McCann has held multiple residences in the United States including the Corcoran Museum of Art, DC Creative Writing Workshop, DC WriterCorps, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Young Playwrights Theatre and Arena Stage.  In Scotland she was the first writer in residence working with Scottish prisoners at HMP Glenochil, and reader in residence at HMP Perth and YOI Friarton.  A former Chair of the Scottish Writers’ Centre (2014-2017), she is a founding member of Cheeky Besom Productions, an Artist Collective hosting the Glasgow Literary Lounge at Calton Bar in Glasgow’s east end.  In June 2019, Cheeky Besom Productions were shortlisted for the 2019 Herald Scottish Culture Awards for ‘Behind the Scenes Award.’ More recently, McCann wrote and narrated a film script based on themed sentence contributions for a silent 1960s, lost then found, Falconer Houston film to celebrate Paisley Central Library (2018).  She has worked with artists through the Eilean Nam Bam project: an exhibition celebrating the extra-ordinary lives of ordinary women (London 2018 & 2019). McCann is a recipient of the Mary Boyle McCrory Award for Excellence in Creative Writing (Washington, DC 2004) and was joint second in the Imprint Writing Award (2018).  Her work has been published in magazine, anthologies, exhibits, film and online. Her first collection of poetry will be published in Winter 2020.