Leon Pozniakow

Today my bedroom calls back to the closet, to a time of nonparticipation.
At nineteen in my room smoking cigarettes and dancing in the
mirror I practised my appeal.

A bird of paradise come budgerigar cooing into the scrutiny of
my reflection, confining to private reservoirs the swelling tide of
my homosexual desire.

A heteronormative society was then (as is now) the stage. My
best performance–a secret tryst–acted out night after night in
the reflective glass.

In these 100 days locked away, my teenage dance moves echo
on. The performance of my making spirited with the same eternal
investment: To desire, to be desired. To love and to be loved.

“Love is stronger than death,” said Orpheus to Hades,
“Nothing is stronger than death, little musician”.

As I wove the fabric of Promise I felt the charge in every ring,
hand-fashioned, wound, coiled and cut, opened and closed;
mechanically, not a motion wasted as I lay propped in my bed like
a convalescent.

It is not a labour of love but a declaration. A poem in thirty-thousand
rings butted into a sheet tracking the myriad commitments,
gestures and acknowledgements that link us together,
promising our tomorrows to one another, protecting the
simple fruit and its seeds which are the future.

The fragility of now asks for permanence, for strength, for stability.
Yet, everything does come to an end, death won’t be escaped -
but we can build things as we journey towards it.
Permanence is the illusion, in love as in life.
It is the love we feel, that is worth remembering, worth looking a
fool for.

Love - the prince of intangibility! The surest and most abundant
material we have.

As I lie awake in this room I think about the objects I’ve made
here. I think about their weight, the craft of their making and
the intention behind that craft. It’s a matter of spirit, a matter of
investment–in the act to materialise solidity out of vapour. the
object never IS. the object is the container, the vestibule, a
piece
of code.