The Z-Factor
The world is full of av’rage talents,
Nothing-specials, soon-forgottens –
The world is full of you’s and me’s,
All dreaming silks but dressed in cottons.
Those stars are the ones-in-the-million,
While the million are all of we –
Ignoring one-another’s slop,
In search of stars we’ll never be.
Many Snappy Returns
Yesterday was my birthday –
Oh what a mirth-day,
And jolly-well worth-day,
Shining so bright !
But that was all yesterday,
And time never rests a day –
It moves-on and quests-away
During the night.
A Space Ploddyssey
As Kubrick prophesised
When the ape-men went exploring –
Space is vast, and time is slow,
And the future will be boring.
Red suited, black oblonged,
Very very small –
Man is dumb when met by wonder,
Stanley most of all.
The first three minutes of the movie are a black screen. I’ve heard this described as the ‘overture’, a not-unknown feature of big blockbusters in the Sixties. Thinking about it, this moment does indeed pull together all of the tedium scattered through the film into one masterpiece of Cageian vacuum…
More seriously, there is the interview between the BBC and Frank and I’m-Sorry-Dave. It takes seven minutes for each transmission to travel one way, so the crew give their answer, and have to wait fourteen minutes until they get their reply (plus the time to record the reply, unless it’s being streamed live). Shouldn’t we next see them looking as if they had actually got up and done stuff in those fourteen minutes, rather than look as if we rejoin them five seconds later ? The fact that the film prioritises the suggestion that they are so dull they would happily remain sat in silence than have any moments of – human interaction, work, getting a drink, their hair getting a bit mussed-up, even unintentionally swapping places – says everything about why this film and I can never be friends.
Brass-Cornered Boxes
Wooden and leather bound, fit for a steamer,
A portable treasure chest, waiting for gold…
The trunk of a journeyman, noble, or dreamer
A personal world in a box in the hold.
What wonders are lurking, restrained by its lock ?,
To be served-up on life’s hungry trencher.
Not wanted on voyage – but oh, when we dock,
Then its contents shall spill-forth and venture.
Sting
The hornet laid her sting in my leg,
Injected her toxic egg –
Her ovipositor dripping with yolk,
As if to joke how childbirth hurts.
The pain began in rapid pangs and spurts,
But at least, I said in spite,
At least it’s just a sting, this thing,
And not a hatching parasite…
Asterichthys
A sunfish may look like a sun,
And a starfish like a star –
But both are fake, for the only one that’s real –
The starriest fish by far –
Is not some Milky Way-long eel,
But Cetus – the stellar monster gar –
He’s bigger than Cancer, older than Pisces,
Swimming the span of the sky high seas.
Hazy Words
Whatever happened to ‘gloaming’ ?
Do they still say that, North of the border?
Or has it been lost in the creeping gloom
Of a Sassenach fog or a shadowy order ?
When the mist comes roaming,
We may lose sight, discard a husk,
As the twilight stretches ’cross the room,
And the gloam sinks in the dusk.
‘Tache-less
Those clean-shaved chaps all suffer hell
From a lack of stiffened upper-lips,
Their razor-bothered mouths are far too sleek.
When it comes to cunning twirling, well,
They simply cannot get to grips –
Their naked filtrums wobble when they speak.
No rakish pencil wits
For these tongue-tied sunburned Brits,
But the unconnected stubble of the meek.
No bushy walrus manliness
On faces long on gangliness,
Whose claims to hairy days are bare-faced cheek !
The Spotless Page
There’s a nagging need to write
That lurks within us, don’t you think ?
For the page is far too white
Until we stain it with our ink.
But more these days, I find
I tend to leave my paper bare –
Yes, their emptiness can blind,
But I prefer to simply stare.
There’s a nagging need to write,
And so I shall, some day, engage –
When my mind’s as crisp and bright,
And overspilling on the page.
The New Zoo
She has the memory of a goldfish,
In that she remembers pretty well.
She is a frog in a warming dish
That knows it is no place to dwell.
And she’s a giraffe who loves shut-eye,
An ostrich with her head held high,
A colourblind bull when the red rags fly,
And an old wife with new tales to tell.
Rhyming Couplets 