Friday 31 August 2018

PAN-GALACTIC SEEDING PROJECT

Another poem about space this post.
I think it came from watching too many cheap science fiction tv series. You know the kind, where every planet looks like earth. 

They land on a new planet,
step out into a forest reminiscent of Canada,
because that’s the cheapest location
for American television series,
those epics shot on a budget.
Space travellers never offer
an explanation for this carbon copy of earth.
No vague reference to some pan-galactic seeding
by a god-like forerunner species,
that accounts for the parallel evolution
and absence of anaphylactic shock inducing
nasty little microbes,
that you would probably encounter on a world
teaming with its own take on life.
No, it’s just a convenient other planet,
ready to be plundered. 
I read at Torquay's Stanza Extravaganza on Tuesday evening. It was a lovely venue and standing room only. 
I read some poems I had not tried out in public before and one needed re-jigging. You can read the original here

Poem for C

Given the economies
of supermarket squash
and the cheapest of vodkas,
it had always been
how much could he drink,
in the shortest amount of time,
to keep ahead of blacking out,
to avoid the grey dawns
when monochromatic
migraine imitating aftermaths
immobilised him in a space
where he could do nothing
but relive it all over again.

I met him in the fragile truce of sobriety
he called it his jigsaw days.
He placed his pieces
into shapes that just might work,
into patterns that had eluded him on the drink.
Some events, he confided, never end,
so you have to find different ways of getting on with it.

It was difficult to read in its previous form. Sometimes you only discover this when you are performing.
I've been listening to Corrina Repp a lot recently, but I've already posted her superb album here.
Anne Briggs has also been on the turntable this week. I've just found this snippet of a BBC4 series Folk Britannia.
English folk music doesn't get much better.
You can watch the series on Youtube. Here's part one.
Until next time.

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