LANTERN

LANTERN

bottle rocket
ship lantern

nothing so poignant
in my humble opinion

braving the dark pond, the calm lake
that is the ocean
that is the immensity of
intergalactic space

soaring high, showing the stars
what we are worth
how we can make stars
that explode and fall
with our chemistry wisdom
every
colour of the rainbow
(where in the cosmos
star that burns lilac,
star that
burns lime green?)

the stars our audience here
so tiny from our perspective

our moment of
triumph
ecstasy the dead Universe
out there has never felt for itself, seen
the like of

no feared fable of entropy
the lantern boats sail, burn
are consumed, sink
disappear

tiny energy, cause
and effect
to perfection
our hearts hopes
on that little
Odyssey with you

the morning rain turning all
those spent cardboard tubes
to mulch

the stars
in recess, no doubt
conferring such distances involved,

such titanic energies

doubtless stirred into some
kind of reaction by
all our performance

SEA ARABIAN

Back where
I started not
quitw back.where everything started in
our two hundred million
year galactic rotation

I blow into the tiny sail of my
home-made ketch
sending it across the
puddle which is
now my sea Arabian

trading for spices not
for blasphemous, iniquitious things that Empires
need for gold
and glory

seeking out
fine wines and art and
cloth of great magnificence

trading with
what little I have to give

did not occur to me (since my
play play world
did not aspire to the realm
of thought experiment)

how toy boat is in motion, I am
in motion
planet is in motion
everything is in motion
at fantastic velocities

everyrhing, though there will.be
buy-outs, investitures, mergers
acquisitions, collisions,
the mighty galaxy,
Andromeda, blue-
shifting our way
whilst the rest of the Universe
hurtling away from us

moving so fast their light
disappearing

soon
not a hint of what was
out there
to remain

something in our hearts
perfect for such darkness

as I search the visible heavens
for stars with Arabic names

kingly stars, to guide my
puddle-boat as it navigates
its waters

dark drowning waters
so many stars even

captured in
my splash of puddle ocean
wish to
last until morning

reflection of the shifting
nature if the cosmos
(same puddle quite
obviously never
sailed the same time)

and the vagaries of
our time, human
time

with its moments of light
sagas of epic
darkness
disaster

unspeakable monstrosity

magic city of Baghdad
namer of these stars

its people slaughtered across
the sands more than the stars

far more far more

stood
in the path
of the golden horde

and my little ketch
so worse for wear,
battling nights
of all weathers

soon to be lost
wrecked upon some shore

back where it
we started:
movement
our purpose
movement
our all

FABRIC

FABRIC

felt the fabric
both in respect of
space and
in respect of time

hard to separate them
when the threads flow
over and under each other

before our eyes and
out into the black distance
where we
              see red shift
blue shift
    Andromeda
                    so much
gravity pushing and pulling

feel so expanded beyond
the limits of
      my little self

I cannot
    talk at all