Oscar

Of course art imitates life; we are life, 

All we know is life and the absence of it. 

We know the truth, we know the lies,

We know the hands shaking, the voice trembling as it mutters into the mic. 

We know the bottle, half-full, not enough but almost,

We know some salt and pepper shakers with a spare in between,

The knife block with one gap, the comically large mug,

The flask without a cap, and the sodden rags.

The dishes pile, the post-it note smudged,

A message that read ‘see you soon’ above a heart once loved,

A bottle of fairy, a dying basil plant, 

They don’t live for long, and their stems bend apart.

A fresh spring onion cutting in a ramekin dish, 

An ice cube tray, each silicon divet filled with plastic fish.

In the corner, by the door, a bag of bags, and nothing more,

But old grocery receipts, shopping lists and lint.

Messages from cousins, pictures years-old, mountains, treetops, clouds and sun are synesthesia,

I love you, pen hearts, buttons, names, faces, colours, pawprints, remain on the freezer,

Below magnets commemorating life—the life I imitate—what remains of what has been, and what will be left when I’m gone.

Pictures of me when I was full of life, though I am not.

I’m an old bread maker lodged atop the fridge, 

I’m a curled campervan postcard crammed into a ridge,

Of a cupboard from whose handle hangs a broken candy cane,

From a Christmas, once past, that lasted before my next came.

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'Oscar' antithesises the sentiment of Wilde's The Decay of Lying in order to establish a speaker who is grounded in their begrudging. As I hope the recording demonstrates, this poem reads more as a list than a devotion; an observation of what simply is. With great frustration, the speaker disregards any greater relationship between art and life past creationism, and exemplifies this until the final stanza. Here, the speaker's existentialism draws from transcendentalist imagery in a tragic irony. The speaker reveals the root of their nihilism, while simultaneously contradicting their initial statement. The speaker's life will imitate the art they have created.