MICHAEL
On the first of January I noticed a car parked in my local park, on a small clearing between two patches of trees. Without my glasses and thinking it was someone who just got extremely merry on New Year’s Eve, I didn’t explore further. It wasn’t until about three months after that I noticed said car was still ‘parked’ there, and went to explore. As it turned out, it was a car that was stolen in November and then abandoned there, where it was set on fire. A token of human violence next to the early blooms of Spring.
Sarah, my flatmate and brilliant florist, and I decided we would use the rest of the buckets of flowers we got from Narcissus when lockdown was announced to adorn that burnt, rusty carcass of a car which had, for the last five months, been used as a bin for dog walkers and such. By no means a thorough floral installation, it felt meaningful to us to be able to share some beauty in form of flowers with any strangers that passed by that car, then lovingly named Michael by Sarah, on their one-a-day outing allowance. I naturally took my camera to document our installation.
In an attempt to make Sarah laugh, I even wrote some poems for fun to go with the images. Poetry inspires a lot of my work and it was an interesting change to have the work inspire some poetry this time.
There once was a car,
A mini that went near and far.
Last Autumn it was snatched
And in a park despatched.
Not content with the pilfery,
The thief set it ablaze—
A pyrrhic victory.
Michael, this car was named,
By Spring still unclaimed.
Sat in its funereal pyre
It was dressed in floral attire.
There once was a car,
That wished upon a star
To be taken, uplifted,
From its pyre to be shifted.
From Autumn to Spring it sat,
For anyone to have a go at.
At first all doom and gloom,
But as April came, it bloomed.
Thank you, Michael,
Seemingly so trifle,
You kept the blues away
In these strange days.
There once was a car,
Covered in rust and char.
And as it sat, unmoved
People for a bin mistook.
Dog shite and broken glass,
All inside it was.
People didn’t care
What a bunch of *****.
I went back to check on Michael a few times after and was pleasantly surprised to see that someone had added fresh hyacinths after a week or so. Michael has now been uplifted by the council.
