MY DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER Poem by Caroline Bird

He says some fascinating themes are unfolding.
I've always wanted to be seen
as part of a social movement
to do with ease or truth.
The filming began a month ago
and he has access
to all my archives.

"It's a good medium for portraying the sly
tussle between intent and fear,
hesitation and resolve, when
a person finishes
a triumphant sentence and then fails
to sustain the steel
in their eyes, looks left,

blinks twice. We never hide anything, not really,
folk just doubt their first reading
but they saw it. They did see it.
What might they see in you?"
. . . Well! I signed the contract right there. Now
he cakes me non-stop
in make-up and praise.

"Do I look like I give a flying macaroon?!"
I commercialise my madness
for him, so he can spread the hype.
"Oh look I'm a big train!"
I said the other day. He loved that.
He wants infrared
lenses for breakfast

which no one's ever done, not even his rival -
a woman in an over-sized
pea-green cagoule and a navy
blue head-band like a small
girl who carries a midget camera-
man on her back and
pops up in every

pocket of corruption with a knife whizzing past
her ear, shouting "Tell me something
I don't know!" in the faces of
hapless area-boys.
"If she leaves a calling card, bin it,"
he tells me, convinced
she wants to steal his

latest muse for the cover of Time magazine:
"me with a coat on looking glum".
I won't answer any questions
about my secret life
or my scorpion jar, or health, and
besides he seems more
worried about ‘art'.