Or, it would have been.

Bowie died close to ten years ago, and in those ten years I have had thoughts come and go about what I should do. You see, I was writing Bowie-inspired Sci-Fi Poetry back in 2015. I quit for a while when he died, picked it up in 2018, then quit again.

Today I brought it back.

This is OUTWARD TIME, which you can get for free by visiting the link below.

It’s that simple.

The point of OUTWARD TIME is not to be a mere homage, however. I am not a popular Netflix show, I want to do things my way. So, if you have no idea who David Bowie is, that does not matter, because the poems within this book are 100% original, unique, and weird. They are just a little closer to Fan-Fiction, Parody, and Literary Response than anything else I have written.

OUTWARD TIME is a short poetry collection designed around the idea of a time-travelling man or woman, rediscovering their own past anew. It is not clear if they are in the future or the past, and in that way the protagonist relates to the Cosmic and Primordial Bowie, who they see briefly on television, defending long hair for men.

The collection also comes with a hefty postscript, explaining my process as a poet with an autobiographical aside about how I came to be a poet, and how Bowie played a part in that.

Intrigued? Here’s a poem from it.

TROPHY WALL

there’s a brachiosaur vertebrae mounted to the wall
and she picks ammonites and counts their whorls
casting herself in very different worlds
away from time-worms

the new people say when the moon is empty
and all the stars are dead
she’s out in space living free in our ignorance
but she’s really in our head

The mini collection is free.

Outward Time

Okay. I am going back to WHO KILLED THE HUMANS? See you all in a few weeks or days or other temporal interval. Missy the Missile has an adventure to go on.

Petticoat

bombardier’s dream was sold upstream
kept in glass and dressed up obscene
this petticoat funded with plundered gold
can barely protect against the cold

blue and white turns green-grey at night
as the sun bows for the endless moon
and expensive coats and watches and homes
feel like trinkets beneath the coming doom

the market street is all but dead
and poor mother is still off her head
and there’s something in the radio about the effects
of wasting a life running away from dread

outside, nuclear winter is wrapping up warm
as leader-men construct their swarm
of Übermensch with glowing eyes
their favourite nightmare reaching the skies

And immediately after, a FREE FICTION FRIDAY post.

Free Sci-Fi Friday - A Halfplanet Press project

FFF - Sorry I'm late!

Sorry I’m late everyone, I had some real-life stuff to deal with and I don’t always schedule these emails far in advance, as I am always looking for new promos to share with you…

Read more

3 months ago · Phillip Carter

A Bowem is a poem inspired by David Bowie in an anachronous way. It is not a mere retelling of his stories, nor is it a direct response to any lyric or interview, but it is rather a new tale told as if in conversation with the entirety of Bowie’s catalogue, bringing together past and future in a way as to make the brains of anyone fizzle, even if they don’t know a thing about Bowie.

Importantly, if the knowledge of Bowie was entirely erased from humanity, a Bowem still has to make sense. In that way, it is its own creature.

I invented Bowietry in 2015, and I’ll do a post talking about it soon, but for now, here’s the first Bowem. Several small collections will come out over the next few years, with the first one at least being free.

This Bowem also uses the Collapsor (tm), a poetic device I invented in 2015 also. The Collapsor, if you’re not familiar, allows for English words to be superimposed in a quantum superposition whereby the reader (or listener) can settle on different tracks, or worldlines, leading the poem to multiple different emotional or narrative conclusions, or many simultaneously. It is this weird element of poetry that actually inspired the dimension-hopping chapters in my debut book Who Built The Humans? (which, by the way, is now on sale for only one dollar everywhere, including Amazon, who finally caught up with the pricing (link below)). Here, the Collapsor is in a peculiar place, the title, and gives the reader the chance to read the poem’s title as Arthurian, Arcturian, or both.

Ar[th/ct]urian

jiving out in space so high
the red star knows what’s up
screws the airlock nice and tight
takes his protein and takes his flight

round and round goes all our heads
sweeping sliding down grassy hill
mother would be oh so worried
but doctors put her on a pill

now she sines and waves as we crash and burn
cardboard spaceships spinning
and the future’s been written so there’s little left to learn
and mother stands there grinning

the town psych ward overflows with laughter
as papers flood with unwritten tears
and comics smeared, their reputations
left no room for childish fears

in the conservatory, someone lied about you
and in the library, someone lied about the universe
shelves are filled with dead men’s daydreams
from the profound to the perverse

so this isn’t a world, it’s a parody
it’s not a play, it’s an outburst
this fleeing town, this fleeting time
is little more than a starburst

and they don’t want knowledge, they want deities
to push them from place to place
they hope that, flicking through our story, some lonely god
might pause and remember their face

END

That’s the first Bowem in the Bollection of Boweitry, which will be published in January 2026.

It will be free.

What did you think?

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Merry Christmas everyone!

The sales pitch from outer space!

And, if you were after buying yourself Who Built The Humans? for Christmas, now is a good time to do it, as it is down to 1 dollar in all retailers.

WBTH

WBTH is my debut Novelthology of 11 Sci-Fi and Comedy universes, each battling over 47 chapters that you can read in any order, making the book as simple or as complex as you like.

WBTH also contains a mini Sci-Fi poetry collection titled THE ON-SERIES in which the world ends in various delirious ways thanks to your choices as the reader. This is where my popular character Tin Foil Tim came from. This was also my first published poetry collection, hidden inside WBTH as its purpose there is to appear once every three chapters like a satellite, to tell jokes about the heavy concepts either side of it (such as AI, the afterlife, and vanity presses).

I know it’s not been long since my last post, but I am in the mood to share this one tonight, and I might not be in the future, so here it is.

(an audio post may come soon, but my big mic just broke).

SWARMFEEL

I can feel the darkness falling
spikes of icy voices slicing through
like a star’s explosion
puncturing the ash-filled sky
with glitter and limelight

and then there’s the neuro-thump
the obsidian punch of grief
a dull thud in the morning
as hurried news
fractured and fragmentary
spreads out from the core
to extremities,
like the wings of some demon
its tendrils cutting through

and where these things merge
is a disconnecting and a dissonance
and a severance
and I am a heavy net of senses, hauled
and dredged from the depths
but not together, not any more

just a swarm of something
the un-building of a storm cloud now
my only comparable shape
(a thing which is not a thing
but a falling apart waiting to happen)

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This poem was written in memory of Sean Lock, on 18 August 2021, less than 48 hours after his death. I didn’t publish this at the time because it was too soon, and after that, I simply did not want to. It was a private poem, written only so that I might capture and then figure out how I was feeling. I had no intention of sharing it with the world.

Like David Bowie, Sean Lock was a genre in himself, an entire catalogue of brilliant wordplay. His death was like the collapse of a star - it sent ripples through the fabric of the universe.

His obvious kindness and his dedication to making his audience laugh, at any cost, inspired me, and it continues to inspire me today. He is the only comedian whose videos I will be drawn to regardless of my mood. Because he transcended the typical trappings of stand-up comedy and sitcoms, he brought something uniquely Sean Lock to everything he did.

May we all be a little more like ourselves.

So, here is my favourite video.

And here’s another one. A man can have two favourites, you know.

You know what, here’s another one.

May we all be a little more like ourselves.

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Ectogenesis*


A glass ovoid at the centre of a metal web
A tube is filled, the process induced
Choices made as a backlash to fashion 
Eyes: Blue, brown, grey, green

Months later he closes the book, stares into the fire
This is not his own, the edit                                                Extraneous
It will choose its own path in good time
He hopes as he watches the flames

The ovoid opens, flowerlike 
A human falls into silver arms
Fed and washed while he is at work
Life: Dull, interesting, short, long

He reopens the book, sips his tea
Eyes scan the pages.                                                                   Error
The author is contacted
“What did you want from this? Where is this child going?”   

The omission of a gear in a machine, a word in a sentence, a presence in a crowd
Can either chance function or meaning
Buttons are pressed, paperwork is signed, a child cut free
A triangle with two sides folds in on itself

The universe implodes




*Ectogenesis – The development of an organism in an artificial environment

END

This is a really old poem. It’s been on my computer for ten years now, and I feel it fits well with ECHOES ON SILK and A GLINT OF SUNSET, two poems which are stylistically related and from the same period of my life.

What did you think of this poem?

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Behind the scenes

I am planning to get the book out eventually, but of course my aversion to becoming a lazy bastard suckling on the AI teat means I am doing all the hard stuff myself. I think that makes for a better product. I am the juicy ribeye steak looming heavy above the limp and lacklustre mcdonalds mcsomethingorother. Also I am levitating and firing lasers out at my enemies. Imagine that, giant spaceship steak. Delicious. Also it’s a vegan steak if you want it to be. That’s cool. Mushroom steak. Even cooler.

Anyway, I am still figuring out the kinks (not those kinds) with the distribution to physical bookstores. Once I’ve resolved that, I’ll feel more confident about bringing the poetry out, as I feel it would really benefit from being outside so I can dress all pretentious and book reading events. These are much easier to get approved for if you’re in stock at the venue.

I have merged two older, smaller poetry books (Branch Density and False Vacuum) into one volume, and added some newer poems also. The full book looks like it will be finished -before- WHO KILLED THE HUMANS? but it might not come out before. I really want to get WKTH out before 2026, so I am focusing heavily on the editing now. We’re at 87,000 words, and I want to cut back a bit (not least to fit it into conventional story collection lengths, but so only the best bits remain).

I am also working on another short story collection… but more about that some other time.

The reason I am writing multiple books simultaneously, of course, is that that’s just the sort of person I am. I’ve also been designing Lego bookends, statues, making Minecraft content, and writing that 90-minute Sci-Fi comedy show, which people told me they felt they should have paid for.

What a compliment!

So working on multiple things makes my work better. I don’t feel like I have to justify my process to you of course, you’re smart and you get me, but sometimes these newsletters escape my target audience and I’ve noticed in the outside world people can sometimes be confused when they hear I am working on multiple books at a time. So this is why. They all inform each other and become richer as a result of their simultaneous creation.

Anyway, polls aren’t working right now, so if you want to suggest a genre for my next post (comedy, poetry, scifi, WKTH excerpt or something else) do so by commenting! I’ve got loads in the drafts.

And before I go, signed copies of WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? are now available on eBay. Shipping worldwide. I don’t see the shipping money, all goes to eBay.

https://linktr.ee/Phillipcarter

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I will post this on the official free fiction friday page when it comes to my time to promote the giveaway, but it’s already open, so I thought I might as well show you now. It’s at the end of this rather short email.

What follows is the first poem ever written about the Atanattat, those spiderlike aliens which Lax Morales is a member of.

His older brother, Scohhrin, was going to be the spider beast in this poem.

This poem was one of the first instances where I used square brackets to add invasions of backstory or new tracks. The intention was to have these bits unread on stage, so the poems would grow if people bought the books. the line “eyes turned the blue of the sky” has been added in 2021 to further the link between this arachnid priest and Lax Morales. Reading it back, this one might also explain where the idea of the brain spiders came from.

As you can see, all my stories, poems, and jokes, have a shared multiverse.

This isn’t something you need to care about (every piece works on its own) but if you’re a bit of a geek, like me, you’ll love digging up these links.

Echoes on Silk

In a small rural town, four hundred years away
an arachnid priest had inherited the position 
of leader, shepherd [their previous leader now buried]

he scuttled his way up the brickwork
down through a hole in the roof
a knocked slate, fallen, would never be questioned.
Extra legs tucked in under boots
their fibrous ethereal forms tautened into something human
a bipedal lie, mandibles secreted under impressive sideburns
eyes turned the blue of the sky

silken trousers and silken robe
empty minds willing to receive
hands cupped to gather the words
he spat from the altar 
people pouring sound into open heads
vestigial third eyes closed

he offered truths they had never heard before
stories of heroes, saints recycled
the web he wove [so complicated]
stretched from brain to brain
liquid silk congealing

a network of lies loosely hung 
all leading to the nucleus
the golden bell atop the church
ringing out every weekend
to drag them back in
the echoes on the membrane [like the wail of a violin]
shrill, calming, lulling them into unconsciousness
he gave them faith, in return they fixed the roof, kept him fed, gave him bodies
only clothes were buried, the skin for him, the gold for sale

one quiet winter night
his web spun, the silk thick
he climbed to the bell, worshipped himself
a victim wriggled free below
the scratching of human claws on stone turned him
the stairs had grown cold, his webs fat with condensation
he slipped
eight legs split from the robes, he fell down the tower
the bell cried as his weight tugged at it
the boy and the girl saw his writhing mass, screamed
a vibration in air enough to wobble the fibre, to alter the resonance
the priest unravelled to the floor, hissed at the children, mandibles in the dark
but brick dust had been loosened, the bell released from its perch
one last resonant hum before the fall
and the descent pulled the network tight
tearing minds filled with silken lies across the province
eyes torn from their sockets, ears shattered, tongues stretched
the web pulled further, dragging them in through the top
and the people appeared, piling in 

a congregation around a web of cracks
the bell dented, leaning into tiles
eight broken legs twitched from underneath
silk [cut by the impact] faded away
freedom until the next spider descended

Let me know what you think. This was very popular in 2015, and I haven’t really shown anyone since.

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And here’s the FFF. Posting the link early here as a bonus feature for anyone who follows me here at RealPhillipCarter.

https://books.bookfunnel.com/free_books_friday_freebies/l4wi8r6j9v

My last poem

5 My last poem original
02/08/19 00:26

Tonight I remembered why I don’t write it any more
this genre, this whole style is like an old building
because the architecture of poetry
(as varied as academics like to pretend it is)
has laws I never cared for
that grab at me now
that grew strong in my absence

and I guess that walking through the newly erected entrance hall
to this thing of words is like walking back into a family video
and seeing another angle to focus on
another thing to construct

and each line is pored over before being poured into the shape
of little metal coffins chugged into data graves
or pen and paper, hasty scribbles made modernist by train tracks
and skipping tracks, the changing lines
of our favourite record

and all those traits I glued onto some shell
cosplaying the new-new-new-romantic
who would probe the new frontier
then vanish, leaving behind a single charred space helmet

walking myself back into poetry
wasn’t part of the mission
I was always headed someplace else 

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I have a backup however. If I do go live, it will be on my instagram instead.

https://www.instagram.com/realphillipcarter/

I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of love my last sci-poetry post got, so I have a good feeling about this one. I might be reading this on the radio soon, as I have a slot at Allfm’s Manchester open mic, part of their 26-hour live show all about Manchester.

First, here’s a poem about the precise moment life began on Earth.

I will start with the first draft, and move along through time.

Lifestruck
(first written 29.09.2024 crossed out word being the only edit)

In the beginning everything was dead
and time struck the rocks
and the minerals
and slashed into the air
its cruel clawmarks
and bubbles learned how to stay move
without current
and current learned how to speak
between bubbles
and cells became life
became us

-
-
-

Lifestruck - 03.10.2024
(rewritten on instagram during my National Poetry Day livestream (something I'll be trying on Substack next))

In the beginning everything was dead



and time struck the rocks
and the minerals
and slashed into the air
its cruel clawmarks

and bubbles learned to delay popping
by trading minerals with the universe
and cilium became cilia became legs and fins
that would kick and swim

and so bubbles could 
move
without current
and current learned how to speak
between bubbles
and cells became life
became us

and bubbles learned to fear death
and make cheat it, passing on their code
in offspring

Like a cremation in reverse

-
-
-

Lifestruck - 03.10.2024

In the beginning everything was dead

and time struck the rocks
and the minerals
and slashed into the air
its cruel clawmarks

as the first thunderclouds burst
(an idea breaking overhead)
and current rippled out
through primordial ooze

and bubbles avoided popping
by trading minerals with the universe
swapping goods across cell membranes

and cilium became cilia became legs and fins
that would kick and swim
so bubbles could move without current

and bubbles learned to fear death
and cheat it, passing on their code
in offspring

So, three different versions of the same poem here. I’m torn between which is the best, but ultimately I think the shorter one is more interesting. The others pull in different directions, elaborating a bit too far on the idea. I really like the line ‘a cremation in reverse’ but I think it would be better in something like Earthloop, my upcoming time travel four-book trilogy.

But what do you think?

The radio thing

As many of you know, my first live radio interview was with Ruth at ALLfm Manchester, for WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? Back then in 2020, Ruth thought I might be Californian, and expected a phone call interview. She was surprised to hear I lived up the road, and that the radio station was set inside the very first library in which a four-year-old Phillip had picked up his first outside book - something which opened new worlds of weird.

I might soon write a little post about my life in and out of libraries, perhaps I shall do it tonight, and read a bit of it tomorrow.

Anyway, we soon became friends and I am now something of a regular guest and sporadic co-host on Allfm. We’ve even reviewed stuff together, like Daliso Chaponda’s very clever Citizen of Nowhere BBC radio show, which we got to see live (I asked an AI chatbot to prove Daliso was real, which it could not).

So, as always, the comedy and sci-fi and poetry intersect.

There will be bits of all of that tomorrow.

Allfm is doing a charity event with 4everManchester tomorrow, and I am part of the 5-7pm open mic. I’ve no idea precisely when I’ll be on, as we are reliant on other guests showing up on time to get things running.

I am in the UK, so I’m on UK time for this 5-7pm slot. Might be an awkward time if you’re in America, but the best bits might be recorded.

I will also be attempting to do some streaming in the studio, directly to the substack app, when it happens, but if that doesn’t work (I’ve never done it before) or you don’t have the app, here’s a link.

Listen now

https://x.com/4EVERManchester

I could go on, but let’s get to the poem.

As usual, I have included the date this was written. This isn’t my most technically complex poem, but I think it says something meaningful.

UNDYING

Undying
25.09.2024

As robots from my stories dredge themselves
from uncharted oceans
onto the beaches of my subconscious

I realise, that the world has always been ending
that the tide coming in on our lives
has come in before on others

and that the ideas we had of the world, washed away
were not an accurate simulation of it

the world is not towers and stairwells and parapets
the world is this beach, this endless beach
and the purpling waves that suffocate
and breathe life into it
like a heartbeat

END

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Sharing this quote also, because it’s hilarious.

Bonus material

The first novella in the THE STEPHANIE GLITCH is still free on Kindle Unlimited, and someone read 104 pages the other day!

This means they read it front to back.

And after I posted this tiktok video about it, not only did a five-star review roll in, someone else went through my tiktok and bought a copy.

And I now have 1003 followers there, meaning I’ve unlocked links, so I now have a direct link to my store on my tiktok.

@realphillipcarterMy bookstore link will go live on tiktok at 1000 followers. The Stephanie Glitch is one of my weirder books. Imagine if your migraines could tell you secrets about reality. now add an interdimensional traveller, an undead poet, and a sarcastic talking planet and skeletons and alien tombs and time travel and teleporting hot chocolate etc #thestephanieglitch #books #booktok

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Here are some words I found in my head. It’s up to you if they are serious poems or not. You know more than me.

[ Note: some of these are comedic and feature topics you shouldn’t show to your boss in the office ]

(I haven’t forgotten last week’s poll. A WKTH video is in production).

There’s context after each poem. I’m not the preamble type.

Have a postamble instead.

The next big thing

it’s great you know, this novel.

a hulking slab of meandering prose

twisting subplots

unreliable narrators

I don’t mean to blow my own trumpet

but it’s brilliant

if you like you can read it

do you want to?

I’ll push my novel between pint glasses

through letterboxes

I’ll find you on your break at work

and give you my novel

if you like

I can perform a reading

(of my novel)

on your birthday

or via skype

when you’re brushing your teeth

I’m the next big thing

did I tell you?

when you’re at the gym

I’ll put extracts of my novel

on the treadmill

read you laminated tearjerkers

in the sauna

seriously

it’s so crisp

and refreshing

I’m often catching myself

trying to drink it

you’re in it you know

well it’s not you

but it sort of is

if you like

I could bring a copy

or two to

the party?

hello?

I’ve enjoyed reading that one at open mics. I wrote it in late 2015 and haven’t edited it since, but there is a dirty hidden line I might sneak in as improv. It’s based on an experience I had at a writing convention in 2015, where an aspiring and very pushy author kept putting more and more of the same business card on someone’s table at a pub.

Anyway. On with the next one.

Honey

and you’re just stood there in my night gown

like an idiot

a grim reaper, holding a serving tray older than both of us

and I think my friend uses your shampoo now

and I think my friends would ask where you’ve been

but they don’t because they’re not here either

out smashing their faces on glass ceilings

whilst I’m trying to shimmy the pipes

like that talk show host you like

that’s how you get ahead these days

but I’m not the one with tunnel vision here, no

I know where I’m going

I just don’t know where anyone else has gone

Honey is one of a series of poems in which I imagined a character astral-projecting himself back through time, to relive things at the end of his life. My serious stuff can get depressing like that, but I like it. I had a solid idea of where this person lived and what his house looked like, setting several poems there sporadically over a decade.

This next one isn’t as serious.

Kidnap

follow me home

from the school of lyfe

hit me with your

magic breezeblock

crush healing bricks

in the satellite dish

repurposed

force a baptism

through a sleeping bag

pestle and mortar board waterboarding

keep me on your drip

until the lonely molecule

finds its way

push a new-age cure

through the mind’s eye

of a hypodermic

declare I emerge reborn

from the sopping cocoon

next week

when headlines say

POLICE APPREHEND A VIOLENT HOMEOPATH

I’ll be out of here.

I believe I wrote this one in October 2014. It was the first of several comedic yet artsy poems which marked a critical change in my writing style. After scoring straight Firsts for all my poetry at university, I was worried this would break my perfect record. My tutors liked it, but the more comedic stuff that came after was deemed, quite rightly, an attempt at standup in a poetry class.

I never submitted the sillier poems to any proper assessment, choosing instead to bring them to workshops.

As you know, I have since done standup, including my own show at the Manchester Fringe, which mixed Science Fiction, Comedy, and Poetry.

But way back in 2015, my first ever comedy gig included the poem PHONE SEX, which I will include in an upcoming audio post. It was maybe my third proper rhyming comedy poem that was good enough to publish.

For now, enjoy one last one, a serious one.

Cavemind 1 22/09/2022

Crawling free, the fingers split and bleed

On jagged stone

The blood, cosmos-black in the corners

Where torchlight never reaches

And in the head, helmeted and freezing

Is an idea of a pilgrimage

And a rite of passage

And a secret passage

There is the ghost of an oaken door

This is the clamouring for survival

This is a filter through which you don’t just

Put an idea

But the whole brain and its casing

The whole wet computer

The body carries on, the head is bumped

A pain echoes from torchlight to white plastic to skin to skull

And back out again into the cavern walls

So, to conclude

• The Next Big Thing - Satirical piece about a very determined author

• Honey - Weird time travel poem

• Kidnap - Part of a decade-old series where I made a genuine attempt to satirise everything that ever existed

• Cavemind - Darker, weirder serious poetry. I really like this sort of stuff, but until fairly recently didn’t think I had the audience for it. So I’m glad you’re here

I am currently sitting on a huge document of most of my poetry, at leas the stuff I’ve typed up onto this particular laptop and not written onto my phone or into the dozens of notebooks I carry around. At present it is 312 pages long, and since the shorter and longer poems balance out, that means there’s about 312 poems.

From this bulk of poetry, I have extricated no less than five complete poetry collections. There is a silly one, three serious ones in a series, and another serious one that seems to want to be alone in a corner.

I have also produced a poetry book with my sister, which we are working out how to publish. We’re both writing under pen names for it, as it’s so serious compared to my usual stuff I didn’t want to confuse the publishing algorithms that know me as a sci-fi comedy guy. I don’t want to make a big deal out of that one either, as it was more of a personal mission to process stuff than anything else, so to me it’s not as interesting as the other books. It’s well-written, sure, but I feel out of my depth here, and I don’t fancy going back to the serious open mics to promote it.

The primary five can’t come out any time soon because I am working on the big, obvious things. Primarily WHO KILLED THE HUMANS? and MACABRE MULTIVERSE, the new yearly sci-fi horror thing I’m making with Halfplanet Press.

Here’s a bit of the cover.

So there’s a lot going on.

My next post should be an update on WHO KILLED THE HUMANS? which I will be making as a Youtube video and then cross-posting here.

Please do comment if you have any thoughts about these poems.

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The following poem is from an upcoming collection. It was written less than a week ago and follows on from the style of False Vacuum and Branch Density, which I plan to republish near the end of the year.

This isn’t a silly poem about door handles. It’s a serious one. Yes, I do write serious poetry sometimes. I won a scholarship for it once and got my highest grades in uni for this weird style I invented, but I haven’t posted much here because I didn’t know if anyone would entertain it after I graduated.

So I hope it makes sense here.

The book it’s from will be out in paperback, hopefully, by the end of the year. I’m also working with someone to make an audiobook for it, which will pave the way to audiobooks for longer books,1 so anyone waiting for a Who Built The Humans? audiobook can set their coldbeds to thaw you out some time in the next year or two. It’s happening.

Here’s the poem.

It’s one of those weird, modern ones that doesn’t rhyme on the surface. But it does have some underlying structure I think you might like.

Sum[m]er (05/06/2024)

trudging through the depths of summer

I slink through time, wade against the current

of what little we remember

the silt pools between toes and you

hold up some piece of pottery you found down there

and we pretend it’s ancient

further still,

paddling pools put away one year

and kept away forever gather dust

and dust invites more of itself

and fills sheds and garages

I have memories of punctures found

by drowning swimming toys in tepid water

flies writhing to death on the surface

Lego boats, custom-built, bobbing along soundless, endless oceans

and characters looking out, embarking on soundful, endful adventures

and beyond the paradoxes, huge dragonflies loom impossible

on echoing wings2

and never show up again, their sleek chrome greens reflective

of that single glowing crystal our adventurers once3 set sail for,

the colour outliving the creature by orders of magnitude

and time is a swamp we cut a path through

it is humid air and the cracking of mud into chasm

and the organising of the ends of things, a procession of heat-deaths

for each imagined cosmos, a line of grasses trodden

and sand compressed

Please do let me know what you think. It’s about as close to a first draft as you’ll get from me (I edit whilst writing, and performing4).

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I want to get into posting more poetry and it helps if I know what stuff everyone likes, as I have loads. I wrote about 600 at uni.

You can click the banner above to pre-order WKTH or get WBTH now. Both are filled with sci-fi written in my signature ‘poetic style’ (paraphrased from an Amazon review). And they also have comedy poems. The comedy poems have a lot more alliteration and dark jokes than this one, as that’s their style, but they retain my voice throughout.

My poetry collections sometimes reference events in my stories, so there’s a real multiverse building here (a proper one, not one of those multiverses where dead characters come back to life just to sell more toys).

Unrelated note: Anyone want a Lax Morales action figure?

Substack doesn’t let you get comments on paid posts or posts with paywalls, so I split this post in half during development. I wanted you to be able to comment about the poem, feedback is fun.

So the second half of this email (coming soon) will cover how I wrote this poem, what inspired it, and will feature a bonus poem written way back in 2014 or 2015 which is thematically similar, and which also has yet to be published. It’s about the anthropocene era, something which I found endlessly fascinating back then.

So you won’t have seen that poem before unless you’re one of my poetry professors.

That second email will be content for my paid subscribers, or anyone who brings in enough new readers to my publication using the referrals feature.5 because you can slink around my paywalls with the referral system.

I won’t do email splits like this often, but your opinion on this poem is important to me so I didn’t want to lost the opportunity to read it. I’m hoping that in the future, Substack will allow comments on posts with paywalls, from everyone6, but that’s not how it works right now so I found this workaround.

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See you next week!

-Phillip