Last night
A mouse crept in my bed
and whispered in my ear:
We’ve noticed your indiscretions, your little
deviations from the norm

The greedy thoughts you fight
to keep locked inside, well fed
The nature of your trivial fears
pinned softly in your pinafore
like your well-pressed pride, which needs to be whittled
Down to size in humble form.

Listen: you can be a sheep that frights
Or a lion: leading, never led,
but never less, and never more.
I say: but sir, I have the mettle
and at least half the gorm

To be the creature in the light
and the brute incestuous bred
Could I not be a leonine sheep, or more
So the sheepish lion, rattled
By the sins I’ve borne?

Because (good sir)
The lines between are shades of grey
When you split me apart one day
You’ll find me in the marble bay
Kissing all my beastly ways

Hit me, bruise me, mark me, but don’t forget me.
Don’t leave me, one foot in the gutter and another
beached on the white shores of a blistering beach.
It is one thing to feel pain, which they say only makes you human,
and quite another to be denied, utterly
rolled in your mouth, a wet, moist pit
that you spat out onto the sidewalk and abandoned at birth.

Touch me with your slender fingers, your artisan hands
hot to the touch against my body, perpetually frozen in first light.
I say yes ss-ss-ss-ss uh and you say
I wonder why
it is that when I screw you in you make no sound

and I say, father
you made me this way;
it is in my nature, my XXY chromosomes,
hidden puppeteer strings that steer me
into a skewed, false smile that cannot speak.

It is the sound I heard on that warm summer night
cicadas, I think, their sound mingling and whistling
in perfect singularity, a certain uniform noise
that I heard
as you shoved me into the burning furnace

at which point
I heard nothing at all.

The first thing you notice when you walk into Tate Modern (besides the boggling number of camera-happy tourists) is the long queue extending down the cement slope towards the ticket office, a bit like pilgrims on their road to Mecca, and a bit like movie-goers lining up for a hyped film. Because that’s essentially what Damien Hirst has become - entertainment for the masses who don’t understand his work and don’t care to understand. This is not an exhibition: this is a freak show.

I had never seen Hirst’s work firsthand, aside from the still-impressive A Thousand Years work, then showed at the Saatchi, where it attracted viewers like the flies that buzzed and died inside the glass, a life cycle of ultimate futility. It remains, perhaps, the most impressive work on display - certainly more than the Kusama-copied dot paintings echoing dismally across the white walls of multiple gallery rooms (why, indeed, are people queuing up by the masses at 4:30 PM for the 8:00 Hirst show, while Kusama’s is direct entry?) People give them a glance, perhaps slightly confused by their mundanity and partly wondering if it’s actually decorative wallpaper. The commercial mass-production of his work comes across loud and clear, from the bland Carrara marble sculpture to the butterfly paintings, and to the consumerist Hirst goods readily available in the exhibition shop. This is the first time I’ve been to a Hirst exhibition, but I am exasperated already. The show feels as dead as the marginally interesting domestic animals cast in formaldehyde, but still, surprisingly, the tourists and art-types mingle, entranced by Hirst’s illusionary magic. Tired, but still working, as apparent through the long queues lining up to see the inside of the spliced cow and the live butterfly room (we didn’t bother waiting).

I wanted to see the shark, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living: here, I thought, was one of Hirst’s most iconic images. But to a large extent, this work, too, was a disappointment. Firstly, because the original shark of 1991 had been replaced. Secondly, because the magic of this, at least, seemed to have shriveled into nothing. A dozen viewers peer into the glass, interested in the science of the shark’s anatomy, and certainly not intimidated by its size or open maw. If anything, I felt sorry for the creature: it seemed to be silently screaming, caught by Hirst’s exhausting descent of artistic creativity. 

The most disappointing thing is the fact that he had so much potential. I see it in the animals - dislike taxidermy as you will, but they remain some of Hirst’s most interesting works - and I see it in the collection of medicine pills, arranged meticulously by colour and reflecting ourselves: a medicated society high on drugs. But somewhere in this room, his potential is lost. The pharmaceutical cabinets, the humongous ash tray, the rows of materialistic diamonds, and most of all, For the Love of God: the famed diamond skull, placed pretentiously in a dark room allowing only fifteen viewers in at a time (the rest are penned in the Turbine Hall, waiting patiently for twenty minutes for a glimpse of this spectacle) - somewhere along the way, he sold his soul to commercialism and he has shown no sign of talent, creativity or originality ever since. It is such a pity, because he could have been so much. For the love of God, what happened to you, Damien Hirst?

It strikes me that Damien Hirst is so obsessed with death that he has forgotten how to live. What perturbed me the most about the exhibition was that the sheep on display were not Hirst’s preserved animals, but was actually the flock of humans bleating in the gallery rooms, lining up obediently to view yet another cleverly planned extravaganza. Bravo, Hirst, bravo. You put on a good show, but there’s a reason everyone writes witheringly negative reviews about your works. You traded your integrity for financial success, and essentially you transformed, like one of your juvenile butterflies, from an artist to a businessman. A mighty fine businessman you are too, but don’t expect us to wallow enthusiastically in your self-indulgence. The show always ends.