The Afternoon When Nothing Was a Metaphor

 

We are walking through a yellow field open to the blue sky

You are chewing one of those long bits of grass

I am eating a banana

Loving the now-ness of the moment

Trying to remember if banana peel is bio-degradable

There are cows across the field but I reckon they are

Too far away to chase me and kill me

I tell you this and you laugh, as if I’m being droll

And not actually genuinely terrified of cows

I mean, banana skins must be OK to throw away, right?

They’re nature

But… is it because they’re from abroad, 

And maybe English soil is weirdly racist?

The tall grass brushes our hands

You are being light and funny and your smile

Looks good in the sun

We have no particular destination

I decide to throw the banana peel away

It arcs into the grass and disappears

You tell me that it won’t rot properly

I say, it will, probably

You say it’s litter

I say, where is it then?

You can’t find it

I think it’s only litter if you can find it

The cows are closer than they were

I close my eyes and enjoy the warmth of the sun

On my face

And the feel of your fingers brushing against mine

Hemingway

 

I’m trying Ernest Hemingway, I am

To be like you

To be a man

To speak words like the whip tough crack

Of leather on a madman’s back

To be as simple as I am profound

To grow the kind of beard

In which a lesser man would drown

But

The words that dance out of my brain

Are playful. Daft. And, I’m afraid

They’d run a mile if they met up

With the rough and twisted gnarly phrases

You carved into the wood

I suppose your thoughts might start the same

I suppose it’s in the drafting

That they shake the whims and notions away

The road you make them walk

Hones the muscle

Makes them strong

And I quite like the road

I’ll walk for miles, I’ll do the time

But it’s the journey and

The stuff we see along the way

That, for me, brings out the song

I know. I’m sorry, Ernest Hemingway

I’m not tough

I haven’t got what you might call “the stuff”

My words don’t have that discipline

And I love some of them too much

But don’t give up on me,

You old man. If you could see

The crossed out lines

And scratched through phrases

That scar this poem’s first draft pages

You’d smile, maybe, 

A little

Through your tangle of a bearded face

And find me on that long, tough road

And meet me

In the broken places

Star Stuff

 

Come with me and dance in space

Reach out and touch the constellations

They paint the sky like

David Bowie’s zig-zag face

The solar winds rip through

The fabric of our clothes

We are pirates

New Romantics

Kissing

Turning

Tumbling

Against the void, burning

We fall though time, 

Made of stars

Your pupils wide

A black hole forms within your eyes

I’m stronger now

My veins alive

With the moving reds and purples of the night

And we explode, and wine cascades

Down our throats like velvet snakes

You rise above me, silhouette 

Hair tumbling like Medusa

A visualisation of an echo

A pop art painting

You, repeating.

The floor dissolves and we fall through

An orchestra rises up to swallow us

Ripples of electric pink and blue

We loop around each other

A Mobius strip of call and response

Melting waves of sound

Fading to a single point

After-image dancing and receding

And the rising, gentle shuffle

Of silence

Above us in the sky

The wolf star 

Burning bright

Snubbing the Aliens

Ignore the aliens, and their spaceships 

Let their invasion plans proceed

They’re only looking for attention

If we go about our business

They’ll have no option but to leave

They simply can’t do an invasion

If we, as a people, all refuse

To look into their bulbous eyes

Do not look into the skies

Just stare intently at your shoes

If you do, by mischance, gaze aloft

Say something like, “It looks like rain,”

Ignore the fleet of spider spaceships

Our lack of care will 

Drive their reptile minds insane

The probably spent ages 

On those chunky nightmare UFOs

Painting them weird colours

And festooning them with guns and spikes

They’ll be furious at the squandered effort

The wasted time will make them cry

“Whose fault is this?” they’ll shout and scream

In cruel and hissing alien tongues

“Who forgot to turn the terror on?

Why do these humans look so calm?”

They’ll bicker and they’ll blame each other

While we show no signs of alarm

And if they start to blow apart

Our national monuments and statues

Exhibit nothing but relief

“They were getting in our way

In truth, it’s better to be free

Of these reminders of past troubles

Thank god there’s nothing, now, but rubble.”

Now, even if you die.

If zig-zag lasers strike you down

Try to carry on regardless

Limp or crawl, or, if dead, roll

Make it look like it’s a choice

Before we know it, they’ll go home

These aliens may be our superiors

In almost every key respect

Stronger, faster, much more sticky

Lesser worlds would fall quite quickly

But we are made of sterner stuff

We’ll act like nothing’s going on

As oceans boil and skies crack wide

We’ll maybe groan or tut or sigh

But we won’t give them the satisfaction

Of a terrified reaction

If they want to invade this world

We’ll make it slow and dull and tedious

We’ll grind them down with shrugs and sulking

Get the words wrong to their Galactic Anthem

A sort of low key disobedience

They’ll go back to outer space

And though they’ll technically have won

A hollow nagging doubt will fester

As they leave the smoking embers

Of our world, their mutant faces will be glum

The word will spread throughout the stars

“Don’t be tempted by that planet

They’re very mean about your spaceships

They scream, but I don’t think they mean it

They die in a sarcastic manner.”

Yes, the word will spread through all of space

And we’ll be left alone

We made the whole thing horrible

We took them to our leaders

And our leaders were unbearable

We made the message clear: 

Don’t invade the planet Earth

We can barely stand each other, and we live here

But for you… 

Well, for you

It’s honestly more bother

Than it’s worth.

Descend and Decrease

 

My fingers are moving through records

In a shop that smells of cardboard and authenticity

It is your birthday, soon

And you do vinyl now

Not in a hipstery, flamboyant sort of way

But with a quiet, gentle hum of joy

At the quirky out-of-time-magic

Of these wobbly playthings

From before you were born

And so I’m here, fingertips dancing

Through the thin, firm, colourful sleeves

Of a thousand LPs

A kind of muscle memory 

As they find 

Their rhythm

Separating

Excavating

Decades of faded 

Photos 

And paintings

And logos 

And faces

A flickering stop frame animation

Moving me back in time

Back to when these hands were smaller

Softer, more hesitant

Back when these sacred stones were new

Mysterious giants

Totems of wonder

Unknowable in depth

And number

I pull back, emerge

Try to take something of that distance

Of that strangeness

Out of my past

Into your hands

Onto your turntable

Set spinning while we pour wine

Into goblets, and laugh

And pretty much ignore the music

As we shift out of focus

As the record revolves

As its circles descend and 

It’s circles decrease

Dark secrets cut 

Into bright black grooves

Crackle

And release

And descend and

Decrease and

Descend and

Decrease

Infinite patterns of sound

Descend and 

Decrease and

Descend and

Decrease

Concentric spirals retreat

Descend and

Decrease and

Descend and

Decrease and

Descend and

Decrease and

Descend and

Decrease and

Descend and