
Here are two poems about the end of reality, time travel, and university.
I have kept the footnotes in these two because they reference each other. In the poetry book they create a sense of time passing, as the story links did in Who Built The Humans?
I was briefly a serious poet at university. From 2013 until 2017 I occupied myself with trying to mix wordplay and my dubious knowledge of quantum physics. I also sometimes tried to make the poems sexy, because I noticed a distinct lack of that in the poetry scene, despite people’s attempts, and I liked the challenge of writing so far out of my comfort zone that the next day I would not even be sure if I wrote them. I would wake up next to a poem and not remember its name.
You get the idea.
And as you can tell, I have since evolved to write more comedy than poetry, and more sci-fi than comedy. Though sometimes, on special evenings, the three of them reconvene.
Blood cell (01/09/2021)
some unassuming mote, that’s how it starts
in the moat of rainwater ancient step[pe]s
become colonised by lichen. Cig packs
and fresher’s flyers lie sodden
as if some student exploded here
and I sat [t]here only once - to write a poem
and lost it apart from a slim memory slipped
between those two lines above
(where drones would one day film the place as if anyone
ever sat there to do anything other than film the place)
and a slimy line or two made their way further
and I slipped into something more comfortable
like the greasy feel of blood before it dries
and I coursed through the courses
with coarse suit coarse jokes of course
and caricature, carcass and canvas bags
like a tourist, cracking jokes about terminal Taurus
and bleeding my way through tube
to tube to tube station back to corridor
to back to back with the more famous ghost
of a future self, standing where the world was s[p]lit
from past to present
where spiralling half-fossils scoffed upwards
at cheap dress shoes, clip-clopping like horses
every July as we coagulated
then to reconvene on younger feet
each September, to survive half the night and fracture
during the last-minute clotting of darkened bodies
under thump-thumping mock-ambulance strobe
somewhere else it’s about to begin again
and I’m still dancing on old momentum
somewhere else someone else [false][1] in love
[1] To find a better match, visit APPENDECTOMY
Appendectomy
had I known
this was merely
the lingering
smoke, trailed
from pursed lips
merely the design of
a mind poised behind
furrowed brows
browsing libraries hidden
behind [falls][1] walls
doctrines and doctorates
where others waited silent
I’d have done something
whilst I was still fire
burnt through the last chapters
of your books and mine
without a glance
just to light up
just to suck in some final fuel
now it’s clear what it was, what I was
the appendix to an organism
I never knew I’d be tweezed from
an evolutionary afterthought
in the growth of an art form
a writer sits on the first floor of a modern building
waiting to be abducted by the aliens
he has learnt to call people
whilst the aliens in his journal
strange voices / strange looks / strange ideas
make more sense
[1] To find a better match, visit BLOOD CELL
It’s Friday again, so time for another Fiction Friday. I am tempted to move FF over to the Halfplanet Press Substack in a few weeks, to make more space for all my personal writing projects here. It would also click well with the Science Fiction short story and poetry award I might secretly be creating.
Anyway.
This first is MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU. True to its title, this one contains a healthy mix of spacefaring sci-fi and epic fantasy.
The second is Starships and Cyberpunks. I’ve been part of this one before, and it’s part of why this Substack is so popular. There’s some spacefaring adventures, sci-fi romance, and the odd touch of sci-fi horror in this one. All themes I’ve borrowed from in my own writing. My pal John Coon is in this one as well. I always know I’ve picked a good bookshelf when I see he’s there too.
AFTERTHOUGHTS
I am a big fan of Substack’s new tags. It means I don’t need to keep creating subletters for everything. I deleted the poetry subletter some weeks back, thinking it couldn’t justify its exitence if I barely posted on it. Tags are much better, and you can use them to navigate my content. This one, for example, is tagged with Fiction Friday and Poetry. Nice and easy.
We are also almost at 500 subscribers. I will be doing a giveaway for a signed copy of WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? when we reach 500. You don’t have to do anything to enter, just be subscribed to this free newsletter. The winner will be picked by a random number generator and will be emailed upon winning.
Sorry did not mean to trouble you so! Your work is so fun to read!
Phil you know I love your site and your work but wo my ADD meds which none if us with ADHD kids are taking right now since the kids need them more, I can’t really handle all you throw out that is wonderful in a single newsletter. Maybe you could have fiction Friday’s? Poetry Sunday’s? News Monday’s? Something like that? I need short. Not all of us do not yiur ADHD readers do...unless I am worse than they are which could easily be true! You didn’t ask for thus but thought you might be interested. DEKETE upon reading! --jen what was I doing? Oh dammit. I forget. Oh well.? Not bedtime yet.....