Adventure Sky! more parts etc.

I can't do the formatting properly, but here, for no reason other than I need to update my blog before it breaks one of my fingers out of sheer temper, are some shiny new extra parts to my long poem ADVENTURE SKY!

(The first part of this poem can also be seen at Stride.)

ADVENTURE SKY!   a poem in progress

PREFACE

Wilderness of continents/howling

winds of up to speeds of/tsunami. NO SMOKING.

Bruise-blown sun hangs like a battered bulb.

Tornado silence. Newsflash: APOCALYPSE.

Cities/black steel craters burning without light.

Cinder priests consumed in last absolution:

“And few shall be saved,” according to the prophet

and space-time-continuum logistics: S.T.C.L.

Back to people murdering themselves for relief.

Road rage. Oxygen critical. Survivors

reviewing themselves in soft silver spacesuits

while earth burns/red mist shift-clinging to thighs.

Oceans boil over. Sungate. CRASH. Blister-pack

Arsenic Survival Kit.™ Here kids, take this.

Fasten your nooses he says bluefall founders –

some GOD forsaken rock Home Sweet Hole

in the ozone. Fragrant as ever. Amen

@rest.com Now take the w(h)eel Captain

O Captain Adventure. Our world is gone –

a stagnant used-up trashcan reservoir billy.

Life support stutters. Fans applaud. TOUCHDOWN.

Outside the porthole invisible glistens:

another dis-aster place de l‘étoile car smash

* red-eyed peripherique candlelit vigil

waiting to happen.         

                         – Goddess!   

                                      – Adventure Sky!

Sleep-pod eggsistence. Dust ® POUF! ¬ tinfoil

rocks. Pan right. One small stepladder –

                                                down arrow  ¯

(welcome) – humanity. INTRODUCTION ENDS.

Part One: The Journey

ON THE BRIDGE:                          

                                              SongStress enters,

clipboard in hand. Multisize uniform, fastened

at neck and groin. Pseudo-realistic

representation with same sex attraction.

Steel(breasts)-brush. Off/ followed by roll-up

roll-up male eyeballs bulging lesbian alert.

72 months to touchdown/don’t flashback.

Aftship, the Lawman is nowhere to be seen. Cradling

a ghee-tar on his bunk, feet up, he strums semi-

idle elegies to Earth. “Lost, ah lost …”

Amongst the seed-banks and proto-plant racks,

in green rubber spaceboots, the Shaman moves

with his soft hands from leaf to leaf, swaying

and muttering. Nothing much happens.

                                             STANCE.

Flashback to back: two visions. One earth burning

then – “Come in control…” – “ARK! ARK!” –

a rainbow of lights/fast-forward flotilla lift-off

steel-soft hardware/fluorescent tubes.

Behind, the dark pageant consumed audibly

in shear-off random starburst/pinpoints of light.

Rolling to starboard: rotating sections ROTATE!

deep shudder then – flung back – G-force – white lights

drawn into suction (artist’s impression) BLING!

Steadily shinily faster-than-light sailing.

Metal shutters DESCEND. Pale

corridors hum. “Bug Detectors Activated.”

Tungsten glow, watching the planet dwindle:

burnt stack on the horizon’s black smoke signal.

Bible-ash/soft with believers. Gold tooth wrack.

         CAPTAIN ADVENTURE’S LOG: 2200 HOURS

Had sausages for tea. Amazing what they can do

with/EMERGENCY. “Space debris sighted, Captain.”

“Blast it from the skies.”/synthetic pigs bladder.

71 months to touchdown. Carpet golf.

“Scan the universe for survivors.” / “Aye aye, Cptn

Adventure.” / Lines of Virgilius R6

feet, dactylic in essence, caesura in the third,

spondee to finish. Not so these.

Nymph, in thy orisons be all my ships remembered.

The Captain reminisces: ‘Light years from now

all this will be grassland and you, lady,

with furious incantations, or no furious incantations

but mown lawns at 3pm,

old Mr Patterson in his shirt sleeves, glowing,

the town clock …’ 

And so on.

LAWMAN’S BUNK

                                    Woo-ooh ®

                                                          SongStress enters

in a wave of / stuffed cat in hand / eucalyptus

and Old Spice. ‘Where is,’ she asks, ‘the governor

of this gang?’ (Polemic Pat, we called her.)

Lawman stands, cradling his ghee-tar, unbuttoned.

(The overheads of hyperbaton) We

who are about to watch Mad Max II again

salute thee, O thief i’ th’ night, hortus conclusus

guarded by the flaming swords of cherubim.

Lawman strums a bar and sings

his “Bee-Bop-A-Lula” definition of sin as

                  Water Theft

                  Refusal to Procreate

                  Destruction of Seed

                  Blooms in the Engine Rooms

                  Pretentious Crap

                           &      

                  Whitespindriftdandelionclockflotilla

We read out the digital displays and cry

across the vast exigencies of space

for those we left to die on a broken planet.

‘Lost, ah lost …’ Melted down to a toothpick.

But a new star beckons. Preserve the old ways, for/

‘63 months to touchdown, Captain.’/

they are soon lost to us. Like table manners.

The stars roll over, thunder / ‘GAS! GAS!’

‘Emergency shutdown: Sections 18

through 25.’ ‘Send in a team; check for

survivors.’ / ... et ad aeternam shine.

IN WHICH THE SHAMAN SAMPLES SHAMELESSLY

(a tongue twister)

Could be morning. Soft breeze in the living quarters.

Shaman taps at the air-con: 21°

Celsius. Physical jerks on the touchscreen.

A small cabin with rolling tobacco

and apple fritters. Deafening whiteout.

“That last mortar attack on Paradise Street ... ”

Exploding limbs and / ‘Oxygen levels stabilised, Captain.’

‘Re-open sections when ready.’ / the rest is silence.

Chilli dogs remembered. Birdsong Bar-B-Qs

from the leaf-fringed suburbs:

“When I consider how my light is spent,

I wish I’d stayed behind and burnt.”

But Shaman says: “Arise and go now,

for a bold coming we had of it

and that one Talent that is death to hide

is lodg’d with me useless, though dull would he be of soul

who could pass by such a pearly porthole.”

                                     Hark!

The touchscreen flickers.

“I heard voices in my ears, saying Ding-dong. Here endeth,

here endeth nine runner bean rows

and a sea-change into something rich and strange:

sea-nymphs, linnets’ wings.

O, for a beaker full of ding-dong

in a small cabin. Come in; my soul’s of clay

and wattles made. Here endeth

here endeth everything.”

                  Hic iacet liber.

So the old gods die.

Throw them down, every one of them, and let us make

no new idols but music.

The music of the wormhole.

The music of dust.

The music of alienation,

         synthetic whiskey in a plastic cup.

Of porn and peas and leaving party repartée.

For all things have their music.

Even betrayal has its music.

Even deceit is a song.

O SongStress, ­give us lemons, for we are thirsty!

Give us lemons, lemons/

& lemonade.

Ding-Dong. Here comes a chopper.

To Be Continued ...