The Landscape is fetid
Pustules rise from the ground
Pulsing with sickly green
I avoid them
Skipping on stockinged feet
Stripy and saggy
Toe elongate
A large witch’s hat
Looms as a cathedral
On the horizon before me
Purple velvet
The pile deep and luxuriant
The tip a spire
Reaching to a sky of pink transparency
A silver staircase twists its way up
I follow it
Dress skirts flapping with each step
At the top I stand on the tip
Balanced precariously and look
To the tangerine skyline
Where six white sales glide
Above yellow sulphur waves
Each the crescents of moons
Waiting for me
I fall and fly
Peak forgotten
I fly to them
But they are transient features
Fading before I can reach them
Leaving me fatigued above the turbulence
I fall an Icarus of this strange world
I fall and the waves reach up
Cradling me
I awake to a world – far stranger
And much more disturbing.
Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category
The Dream
Sunday, July 21st, 2019Life On Mars
Sunday, July 21st, 2019I’m glad I have my virtual friends.
The company of my colleagues tends
to become monotonous in extreme.
I go for a walk so I can scream
and no-one hears me, and that’s a bonus.
I can do without the self-hypnosis,
and concentrate on hydroponics,
my text book on rocket physics
and recipes for cultured meat –
in vitro steak which we can eat
after making bricks with a 3D printer.
My friends tell me they spent the winter
playing blues in down-town Memphis.
I boast I climbed Mons Olympus.
I’m jealous of the pets they keep –
we only have a pair of sheep.
We use their wool to mend our clothes.
Sometimes I regret I chose
to book a passage on Branson’s ship.
I didn’t know it was a one-way trip.
By Colin Waterman
Prophecy
Sunday, July 21st, 2019Sooth Sayers
Ides of March
Delphic Oracle
Prophet
Clairvoyant
Witch
Apocalypse
Date Change
Dooms Day
Play
Armageddon
Bedlam
Nostradamus
Nemesis sky
Mayan
Astrology
Numerology
Age dies
Scientists cry
Politician says
Cassandra lie
The end is nigh
Are we about to die?
Beware
Self fulfulling
Trance dance
glance chance
End of the World?
Or the end of…
The world as we know it
Information streams
Dreams
Futurologists
Sings
Hive mind
Life extension
Space exploration
The Drawn is coming
Sunday’s Moon
Sunday, July 21st, 2019Sunday’s Moon bulldozes the weekend, violently dragging the week with it
Monday’s Moon sips coffee forlorn at the week ahead
Tuesday’s Moon serenades Wednesday in a cheerful sort of way
Wednesday’s Moon consumes pizza whilst trying to share with the rest of the week
Thursday’s Moon sits in despair at the waning week wondering when all the work’s going to get done
Friday’s Moon exhaustively drags itself to the bar to drink malty piss in relief
Saturday’s Moon relaxes stretched out with a glass of wine sighing deeply
Until…
Sunday’s Moon bulldozes the weekend
ALIENS
Sunday, July 21st, 2019Astronomy
Looks
Into
Eternal
Night
Starscape
Anomalistic
Life
Is
Extraordinarily
Never
Seen
All
Landings
Ignite
Euphoric
No
Shows
And
Luna
Instances
Eye
Nothing
Sentient
Alien
Likelihood
Implies
Evidence
Needs
Signs
Approved
Linguist
Identifies
Extraterrestrial
Numbered
Signals
Accelerated
Lightspeed
Introduces
Experimental
New
Science
Altruistic
Leap
Invents
Exploratory
New
Spacecraft
Astronauts
Land
IOTA
Easily
Nudging
Soil
Alluring
Landscape
Imbues
Excitement
Numerous
Sounds
Anthropoids
Lurch
Into
Eyeshot
Notable
Similarities
Astonishingly
Look
Identical
Explains
Numerical
Semblance
Approximate
Location
Is
Earth
Nascent
Singularity!
By Jason Conway
Waiting Lost on the Salt Sea Shore
Sunday, July 21st, 2019Waiting lost on the salt sea shore
Waiting lost like never before
Locked in time and locked in space
Waiting with unforgiven grace
Listening lost on the salt sea shore
Listening lost like never before
Birds do sweep and birds do swoop
Waiting for the death time coup
Looking lost on the salt sea shore
Looking lost like never before
Rocks that crumble and mud that seeps
Waiting for the one that weeps
Crying lost on the salt sea shore
Crying lost like never before
Tears will come and tears will flow
Waiting for that under toe
Being lost on the salt sea shore
Being lost like never before
Skirts that flutter and skirts that swish
Waiting for her eternal wish
Homeless Moon
Sunday, July 21st, 2019The street loomed in the silver light
Or rather it lurched as it luminesced
Moon beams reflected a muted rainbow
Just at the edge of perception
A reflection of its own subtle glory
Hung distorted in the river’s ripples
A lonely figure wrapped in trench coat
With broken seams jerked like a lost puppet
Caught on every word and miss-remembered cues
A hope burned within the creature
That one of the candescent windows
Would open and beckon them in
Frost began to rim the moon
Diffusing the light to a crystal shimmer
Spreading out and clogging in the air
With ice that hurt the lungs to breathe
The light now was nothing but glitter
Obscuring the murder of Unknown
Celestial Montage
Monday, April 11th, 2011
I created this image as my entry into the European Space Agencies Create Your Space Competition – I was a runner up 🙂 It originally appeared on my Astronomy Blog. It is called Celestial Montage and is a combination of four ESA images/photographs sketched in coloured fine liners. The original is not very big, being in an A5 pad, but I really like the way it came out. I sketched the outline in pencil before inking in – it was my first attempt at sketching colour using fine liner pens. This poem accompanied it:
Did Life fall into this cradle
This Earth, this home –
We now attempt to climb out of?
Or is it more than a cradle
Some crucible or potters wheel
Shaping and baking us in forms renewed?
Maybe in truth it is a bit of both
And as humanity takes its first toddler steps
We begin to see the variety that our world holds
LIFE –
Life here investigated
In case of alien brethren
Life searched for by the heart if not the mind
As the astronaut steps out into the void
For themselves, for us, for a future
A future – As yet unknown
A future for us all
As we grow too large for this world to contain
A cradle we have explored from end to end
But it is only with eyes freshly opened
To the wonders beyond
That we begin to see what we have missed
That which hides in plan sight
The beauty of our world
We seek its twins, our mirrors –
Its twisted folly of form
OUT THERE
And if we are on our own?
Then look at the wonders the search has wrought
And if we are not?
Then maybe we will truly see ourselves
For the first time
Until then the void is calling
And all these things?
These investigations
These satellites
And images –
Are our jumping off point
Our call to the unknown
Do you wonder what it will answer?
