Two experimental Sci-Fi poems, some comedy, a photograph of me in a suit holding an alien.
Two experimental Sci-Fi poems, some comedy, a photograph of me in a suit holding an alien.
This is perhaps my favourite email.
Hello.
Firstly, an outburst, some foreshadowing.
I am tired of trying to be just a poet, or just an author, or just a comedian, or just a Lego artist.
Secondly, a nice polite backstory.
Some of you may remember I am also a poet. I wrote some experimental poems at uni, and after uni, which I am going to be republishing soon. Interestingly Poetry was the only module where I consistently got good grades, a 1st class mark for every collection I sent in, coupled with some really piercing feedback which helped me work out what I wanted to do, and what I didn’t want to do.
Ultimately, I realised I was a comedian through submitting rude haikus to my third year poetry class. I was happier back then in 2015, as I had yet to move back home (where hardly any of my friends were) and become possibly addicted to those little red hearts on instagram.
I’ll do a post about that another time.
The short story is that tonight I felt very burnt out. I was stressed, having felt as if I have to sand my edges off just to survive for three seconds online, which is where most of my book sales come from. The stress brought on a predictable migraine, during which I forgot the words ‘scrambled eggs’ (you can see on this tiktok) but I am recovering now. The words on this screen are not as wobbly as they were 20 minutes ago. I still feel sick, but I have work to do here.
To be blunt, I am tired of the algorithm-induced existential dread I have, which has seen me split myself across multiple social medias and pen names just to manage being an author, comedian, poet, and other things all at the same time.
Algorithms are stupid.
You are smart.
Therefore, these poems are for you.
They are not for algorithms.
Because this is a substack post, and not an open mic slot, I am going to take the rare opportunity to give you a little backstory at the end of each poem. I wouldn’t do this in a pub because it would eat into time I could be using to make dark jokes, but time does not exist here. Time has no power over me.
TIME WATER
In the beginning was the intersect[1]
a map of fractures, the pathways of cracking surfaces
interjecting
and earlier still the liquid universe waited
something vaguely sensed by shamans and psychics
and sometimes science fiction authors
and now the solid moments are abrasive walls on either side
of timelines like train times or time tunnels
it can hurt to cross paths
and down here it’s like a river splitting
and up there it’s like a spider’s web
so huge that the origin is lost
as if it grew from everywhere all at once
and to travel back is to watch the glass uncrack
the surface unfreeze, to feel the encroaching heat
of a melting cosmos
before it was poured into shape
(the human, an ingot of consciousness
cast from a vast vat)
and to travel forward is to see crystals growing
like the building of rigid networks
or memories, the turning hands of clocks
as parallel lines, to hop[e] from track to track
just to look back
to where triangular craft huddled together
in darkness
a mosaic of experience unlived
shattered by time machines
[1] The intersect is a hypothetical method of superluminal/time travel using cracks formed during the rapid cooling of the early universe. First written about in 2008 by Phillip Carter.
Forgetting ii
I wince against your ghost
and the alien geometry of you shrinks away
warmed by its proximity to my processors
as they confess to burning questions
each [tw/ch/j]ittering on as they experience a [dis/re]membering
as a memory, and remember forgetfulness
like a story they tell themselves.
but I’d never turn you in to coll[a/e]ge
even though I’m all cut up
and I’ve forgotten the techniques
You. You’re a copy of a copy of a copy now
and so your face/voice/personality
trickles away
as cold sweat against the temples
of some nervous computer
that sees you in every plug socket and streetlamp
and arrangement of lines and circles
that makes of you pareidolia
and is surprised to find nobody similar
just a vague scent or half a laugh
and an echo of those things you liked
from the place
you know the one
the little cute things
the name has faded
but we got chips and I loved you
This poem is about forgetting the features of someone who once was very important to you. I wrote it fairly recently, and it employs the Collapsor(tm), a poetic device I invented at university which allows a poem to jump down different cognitive and conceptual tracks, depending on your choices.
Readers of Who Built The Humans? will notice that this is a recurring theme in my writing, this idea of giving my readers a little more agency than conventional literature allows. For the poetry it is very much about wordplay, about association.
That wordplay comes into play in the interplay between my poems and my comedy, as well.
Which is precisely why I am in this migraine-inducing existential crisis. I don’t want to be a poet + author + comedian + lego artist, I want to be all four simultaneously.
And I was, once, for two beautiful evenings in 2023.
Here I am five suits ago at THE MANCHESTER FRINGE, wearing glittery shoes and a shining gold-black-red floral tuxedo, brandishing an inflatable alien (whose brother was abducted by a bachelorette party the evening before). I’m stood telling jokes about probing, in between two poems about heartbreak (and door handles). The door handle poem is one of my most popular when I do standup poetry, and for some reason beyond my comprehension I decided to read it directly to one particular member of the audience, which I think made it funnier.
Anyway, I am stood in front of a cardboard cutout of myself I used to advertise THE EARTHLOOP TRILOGY in August 2022 at a Manchester comic convention. That trilogy of time travel novels almost got fully funded in a weekend, and the cardboard cutout has survived as a sort of symbol of everything I do.
There is also a LEGO paper bag in the background. I’d recently treated myslef to a pick-a-brick and was enjoying doing the Morcambe and Wise invisible ball trick with some neon pink, blue, and lime rubber balls I had purchased (to match the aliens I positioned in the audience). Well-behaved audience members were treated to rubber balls which I claimed were alien testicles harvested from Area51. The Lego bag was also a nod to my stint on Channel 4’s LEGO MASTERS, which I had written some standup about but which I didn’t get round to performing as the show went a bit improv in the middle.
(I had not prepared for the microphones to not work, for some seats to be double-booked, and for a wedding to show up thinking I was going to play some light jazz because the organisers forgot their booking before sealing mine into the cement of time and space. But I got paid a ticket fare for each wedding member, so I broke even on the setup costs anyway.)
Tin foil hats were also available, a nod to Tin foil Tim from Who Built The Humans? (and Who Killed The Humans?) in case any audience members heckled me, during which point I would engage in psychic warfare. The hats were for the heckler’s own protection. This, in turn, is a reference to a joke in WBTH which nobody had found at the time, until the ladies behind Devilish Bookworms podcast found a reprint of that same joke in The Cosmic Comedy Collection, that small comedy book I edited and published.
And on top of that, I sold some copies of WBTH at a heavy discount and included art commissions with them. Lots of sexy daleks, lots of aliens swearing, and one robot, and one cat in a spaceship.
So to conclude, I did a standup show about the meaning of life, threw in some rude poems, gave it a dark sci-fi edge, inspired a bachelorette party to steal an alien, confused an unrelated (I hope) wedding, and met two time-travellers who had tried to come to the show but turned up an hour late.
If you’re reading this time travel pals, free tickets for the next one.
And I walked on stage to the tune of David Bowie’s KILLING A LITTLE TIME.
It was a very fun, very weird time.
All of the above is true.
Every single word of it. And I really enjoyed that gig. I threw myself in at the deep end, as this was my first paid gig and my first festival. Apparently it got some good reviews as well, but I could never find them online.
Looking back at my serious poems, and looking moments later at a picture in which I read some very not serious poems, I realise something about myself that I can no longer play dress-up to escape.
(Hello mum, you may still refer to me as Mister Benn).
Essentially, I am a multifacted artist. And
Art should be weird.
Of course the weirdness is more fun and more effective if it has a directed purpose, a driving philosophy, and mine always has. There are continuing threads through most of my work, which means
There is a larger story.
The serious poem up above about intersects makes reference to that form of interdimensional travel which is in most of my science fiction stories. Earthloop, WBTH, and The Stephanie Glitch all have intersect travel at one point or another. It’s the primary way advanced aliens get about. And the poem loops back into my own life as well, that same old anxiety about picking the right path. It mixes the personal and the fictional.
But it’s more than that. Sometimes, actually quite a lot of the time, I don’t see these labels (comedian, poet, author, artist) as separate entities. What I’m trying to create is something greater than the sum of its parts.
I used to worry that I couldn’t be a serious and a silly poet at the same time, in front of the same crowd. But as of about six hours ago I decided I am sick of that. I am going to be me from now on.
If you liked this post, please share it with someone weird that you’re friends with because it helps a lot.