V.

Somewhere in the melancholic wooden-spoon
multi-verse — I’m coming down with a fever.
Though the oceans of the grey-rock planet are
freshwater, its shore is salty. There, my demi-hero

stretches his reincarnated limbs (sharpened by
celestial favour), reborn in much the same clime.
The horizon is less than titanic, John C (you used
to be a man, you used to be a pet of a groovy cat).

VI.

He looks at the atmosphere: the moving – sparkling
sheen, the various hues – though somewhat in a trance.
He is between life and death, a philosopher as supple
as a butterfly. The walls of the sky are basking in

the light of a black star, his oblivious soul feels
the limbs of the sea in retreat. The waters left him
on a shallow shore, idling in oriental laughter. Half
wet, half dry, he lies in wait for more imagination

VII.

to kick-start his all-human ills. With aversion he feels
the chain anew, he remembers the stories – the Grecian
and the Persian, and the irritation of living, he uploads
the multi-verse and sees the magic treasures of earlier

NeverEnder times. Sedate grey fishes sporting red fins
(wonderful replies to the practical joke of Great Mind)
surround him, re-assure his eyes astonished yet delighted,
overwhelmed by the light swarming overhead, an aurora.

VIII.

The creatures watch him in the unbroken silence. It appears
they do not have a thing to do. After the green and yellow rain,
the temperature has dropped; not a single sound interrupts the
stupor of this strange young planet where the whole of John C

is stripped of his former existence and everything rolls past
his sense in a tremendous moment of flowing pause, uninvited.
Later, in the evening, the ‘rosy flood of twilight’s sky’ creeps in
with a prayer and a sore bottom. Tall buildings flash in the

IX.

darkening distance: light-houses of bee-hive artificial
stories, counterpoint to the ever-green root, the shortest
path to ceaseless autotrophic joy. John C’s first thought
is sorrow and hope – all rolled into the emotion of ‘I wish’.

A giant ship, steel and claw (haunted song to me), engulfs
the waters ahead, breaks the billows, fortresses of meditation.
It comes closer with a menace, the shrill solitude of the near
satellite fuels the fire of the remote stars and the ship burns.