Anger not the sparks that fly
lest they might turn
their sooten wings against you
and raise their battle cry
for fire, for flame,
for glorious blaze
for ash eating kings
and queens eating ash
for fire to swallow the world
and soot to rule the realm.
I’m a bat from planet night,
the dark side of tidal locking,
hunting the air in the twilight stripe
for insects telling tales in their taste
of the bright eternal sun.
Terraforming
a blank page:
Start in a random quadrant,
marking touchdown in a tiny dot;
from there draw the first river
leading to pools of letters
and trails around untouched islands,
clouds of ink appearing as you
shape mountain ridges of words.
Set it next to a previous attempt
crumpled into a little moon.
Sun eruptions
golden butterfly wings
graceful dance of violent force
“Thank you for travelling Future Line,
please exit to your right and queue
for temporal decontamination.”
You pick up your small suitcase
— the kind of luggage designed specifically for this kind of travel:
timeless design, plain, with a hidden lock cleverly disguised and a secure pocket in the handle to hold the document chip.
Following the other passengers, as usual just a handful, you disembark the bullet-shaped vessel. The adjoining air lock is your least favourite part of time travel. Two at a time, the passengers enter it, suitcase in hand, wait for the door behind them too seal, then proceed to walk through the narrow, windowless tunnel, walking so slowly it feels like a claustrophobia inducing eternity in which the decontaminating rays crush your spirit and you question your decision to travel at all.
You’re next.
As you’re the last passenger of an uneven number, you enter alone. You close your eyes while you listen to the dreadful sound of the door plates sliding into lock position, clicking together in the middle, aligned with your spine. Eyes still closed, you start your snail-paced journey along the gangway between two centuries, letting go of your last breath of air from your own time. The lights are so bright you discern their colours through your eyelids. You believe to feel how the small markers of the time of origin are stripped from your body, tiny specks of temporal dirt being burnt out of your skin. Of course the process is painless and you know you can’t really sense anything beyond seeing spots of light, but this doesn’t stop your mind from filling in the gaps.
You almost run into the still closed outer door. Counting to five, you take a breath. Counting on to ten, you open your eyes. You straighten your back and check your hair in the mirror next to the door.
Time to get your job done.
What if we were
the only ones left in the world
and we just decided
to sleep?
The sky-thief
bags all the clouds,
stuffing pockets with blue
tip-toeing on ladder and roof
working away on the moon,
pulling threads from the tapestry of stars
and stealing from each sunrise
a little bit of colour
to recreate
the whole sky at home,
the widest room, all sky and distance.
Riding the neural subway
to the final station and beyond
disappearing into uncertainty of night,
dissolving in the neon lattice
flashes of light, of dark, of green
illumination passing by,
crossing the way,
following the tracks
— neon, neon and flashing darkness
signals underground
endless possibilities of thought,
riding, riding the synaptic surges
lost between sleep and strawberry taste.
“Sedentary”.
To me, the word sounds like sediment.
It’s a nice image,
a soft feeling, yet implying stability.
You sit on your sofa,
surrounded by books and pens,
taking in knowledge
and building new worlds,
adding layers,
strata of your life:
comforting blankets in rich colours,
deep burgundy, vivid desert pigments,
covering you as you let your mind grow
becoming a pearl
a planet
a universe.
Between brittle pages you find
Old strips of paper
Obliviously left behind;
Knowledge once sought out,
Marked by hands now forgotten —
And yet, in you,
Reading the same book,
Kindling familiarity.
starfishskies 