World Almanac

An extract from an epic prose poem, written in 1992.

World almanac,

ubiquitous, utility, tilt.

Rash rose, dancing bales,

fifty years, the hands.

Bucket rind blossom trinket.

Symbol of the hand.

One machine spoke

the other thought,

shapes in eclipse, out, the drawback,

accent on the first syllable, when all this is on fire.

I never realised, night is serious,

lights out congregation,

sixty thousand meters is nothing,

gesture driven viruses,

a dead bird’s skeleton composed

each of the hand’s fingers,

radio help, of no help what so ever,

leachate seepage, mucilage fuselage,

peaked white cap, when he spoke

huge tracts of the landscape changed,

This is your captain speaking,

one minute to midnight,

please fasten your seat belts.

Make a wish on the first star

you see through your windscreen

when you’re driving

out of town

tonight.

Fire tower diving bell. A bird,

legend of the bell tower,

fall capriciously, false directions,

three kids in a hammock to the sound of applause,

despite regulation haphazard dispute,

message reduced to a cinder on a silver plate,

the message was never received,

cataleptic, Morse, slow languorous wind,

spacemen in the jungle, BEST WISHES

XTZ 9162. To eat food makes you thirsty,

to drink, hunger.

It is not the vessel

but its body content, every day we are

never complete. I was interested, to test the flames,

it changes your skin. Don’t say anything, rabbit plum,

cool skin, dirt link hex grid, the robot monkey.

The time when a computer most purely emulates

the function of a living organism is at the moment

it lands in the canal and suffers irreversible damage,

tantamount to death.

Death for nothing. Weave gossamer, listen whisperer.

The Monday morning nine a.m. crowd

and you and I were there, we were

both there, you do not remember..? We may be

three thousand years ahead recognising the momentum

towards infinity. A handkerchief knotted on the end of a staff

looking over that shoulder to evade the hand monster,

rising from the seat in applause,

we must eradicate the dictionary’s accident,

pulsating fur nectarine as stone writhes.

Paprika dream, fever dream, fire apple red,

key to the earth’s core, a vision of the world

as a fifty storey building knife edge to the sun,

a mermaid figurine on the bonnet

of a steaming truck

through the frozen desert

of the Moon.