Tapestry of Tablets

As part of 'Museum Week' I will issue one poem every day inspired by my recent trip to London. During this trip I visited a number of museums and art galleries, certain objects or images really prompting me to write, then and there. These poems are the result. 

Even the streets themselves seem like museums to me, a single extended human hand to take my ticket.

This first poem 'Tapestry of Tablets' was written whilst observing the exhibition 

Cradle to Grave by Pharmacopoeia in The British Museum. in two lengths of outstretched fabric are knitted over 14,000 drugs - the average prescribed to a British person during their lifetime.

Tapestry of tablets

Watch now as  this exhibition

Unravels us

These travelling capsules

These blind inhabitants

We convince ourselves are safe,

Worth having.

Is this the future

Or the stage

For the past masked? Is this a table

For ritual eating

Or embalming

Of days, days, days

Dragging

For too long I have been mourning

For another language

Why

Do these coloured fragments

Convince then

 Of something to manage?

A close-up of the piece