There are skunks, and a flask of warm gin, and a barrel of laughs
in the ravine where Sam’s kept far away from the unlighted house,
kept attached by a collar to a chain that links up to a cable
that runs overhead between trees stood a good way apart.
He runs back-and-forth, forth-and back, back-and-forth when he’s able.
He barks at the skunks, drinks the gin, and he looks in the barrel
for the joke why he’s here, in the fading hope this time he’ll get it.
We take time to contemplate the universe,
our approaching sleep embraced by alien arms.
Is our galaxy avoiding the void?
How many super galaxies underpin
the nothingness on which all matter rests?
I fall asleep while you count falling stars.
I wake once more on our planet on the edge
of falling while revolving round a star
that itself is falling casually in step
with myriads and plethoras, and with slews
of things and forces I don’t understand.
Not that it matters as the fall continues.
There are books that wrench the soul. You will have yours.
I have my own list, adding sometimes one
or crossing out another if it piques.
These books have something in them which ensures
that they change us in some way. A few are fun.
All of them medicate a soul that leaks.
2:30 rolls to 3. The night train stalls.
The pistol grip on the angel’s sword confuses.
How to use the thing if Satan calls him out?
Clarence and Edward gaze at bowls of porridge.
They wrack their brains remembering why food
was necessary — when they were alive
in the temporal fashion popular on earth.
I fly through and land between them. 4 o’clock.
Partygoers cycle homeward roads.
We three submerge into the dark canal,
play musical chairs with an ogre and with the god
of manuscripts. We snicker how his name
means wimp in the language prevalent on Orion.
‘I need closure!’ Clarence clamors. Edward grins.
A sun is rising somewhere and we chase it.
‘Which words resemble me?’ I asked.
The Red Queen answered, ‘None.’
‘Is that use or mention?’ I inquired.
‘Do no words look like me?
Is “None” my doppelgänger, Ma’am?’
There was silence in the Hall.
When someone laughed, ‘Off with his head!’
was what the Red Queen screamed.
Her liveried rabbits strode my way
and pointed tungsten pikes
at what I hoped was someone stood
behind me, and it was.
It was my password Were who laughed:
it was my old friend Were.
Were simpered still, subjectively.
The Red Queen rose, irate,
and ripped a pike from a rabbit’s hands
and smote Were on his pate.
And what was Were right up to then
went weirdly inert.
From the nose bleed nudged by queenly pike
rose flowers on Were’s shirt.
I wished no more that I were Were;
were that so I’d be dead.
I woke and wept for Were who wasn’t
anymore, and left.
We fall into silence and through it
to end up with rib-cracking sighs
the size of a minnow or an inner
tube connecting the cosmos to sin.
We grunt as we board the boats shunting
the bodies of the people we were
to the other side widely imagined
as resembling a permanent state
of stasis in motion, a notion
hard to swallow now we are au fait.
‘I pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood, With that sour ferryman which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.’ ― William Shakespeare, Richard the Third, I. iv.
When Nathalie, the dancer, asked me out
I envisioned somewhere sweating in a gym.
She said that, no (she spiced ‘no’ with a pout)
she meant this time a fête she’s giving Clem.
She looked so pert, so powerful yet slim,
I knew this was no offer to disdain.
Such fey good looks, so go-ahead and trim:
perhaps it’s posh to be balletomane.
Arriving at her house in stylish Zuid
I plunge into its hall. The lights are dim
and ballerinas stand en pointe to scout
for Clem’s arrival. Suddenly heads swim,
as he comes through the door. The brothers Grimm
would suffer glottal stops, he’s so urbane.
Accepting the hostess’s kiss, Clem’s stance is prim;
perhaps it’s posh to be balletomane.
Their seriatim shuffling mounts to rout
when the would-be divas spot Clem’s turned-out limb.
Host Nathalie espies a chance to flout
the plans she sees them plot to annex him:
To stymie staging for her diadem
she choreographs him by me. This constrains
the ponytails from roping Clem with vim.
Perhaps it’s posh to be balletomane.
This evening I’m too suave to ask, ‘Who’s Clem?’
(more gauche than ‘Elvis who?’ or ‘What’s cocaine?’)
With feet croisée and arms en haute I skim.
Perhaps it’s posh to be balletomane.
The room is warm and, wishing for a drink,
I ask old Clem, ‘What’s your atomic weight?’
He laughs out loud at this daft thought. I think,
‘At last! Here’s hope for fun at any rate.
If we’re to bate our boredom why not bait
a hook with slice of new clear fizz? Begrime
night’s visage with a fillip. What’s one? Wait:
‘Electrons moving back through troubled time.’
I tell a fable: the atomic rink,
fey place where observations calibrate
the rays and darks, and flavour quarks. This kink
appeals, send Clem’s brows up to browse his pate.
He asks the eager girls to illustrate
by dancing as he bongs upon a chime
and we both chant how positrons relate:
electrons moving back through troubled time.
Lord, how they dance! The blonde stands on the sink
and galaxies attend her whirls, debate
with worlds unborn till divas’ lashes blink
and call them forth to glory. This is a fête
like none canals have seen: we postulate
the theorems, then they dance them. Grace! Sublime
small sparks are born, then gyrate off and mate
electrons moving back through troubled time.
Dear Hostess, note the exhaustion of our state
and bring fresh grape to boost the bold enzyme
that kicks our progress up to Kali rate:
electrons moving back through troubled time.
Zuid (literal translation south) is a fashionable residential area in Amsterdam.
Earth Tourist 