Chambers of Horror
The good the bad and the ugly
I’m imagining a statue
of a man in anguish standing
in a public square;
but I haven’t yet made up
the proper patriotic words
to chisel on its plinth
to say why it commemorates
the body as an instrument
for undergoing pain.
But have I mixed grave monuments
to famous men with glib exhibits
in a wax museum
where villainy and virtue mix?
If scoundrels have to be lampooned
in stocks or on a scaffold
it’s one small step to taxidermy:
stuff and mount the bogey men
like beetles in a box.
Or skip the stuffing and the mounting:
stick their severed heads on spikes
then hang them up in chains.
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs is poetry editor of the on line magazine London Grip and also helps to run the North London reading series Poetry in the Crypt. His most recent collection is Pictures from a Postponed Exhibition (Lapwing 2014), which features artwork by David Walsh.