of course poems that start ‘oh this was a dream’ are dull
but honestly this was a better than average one in that i
dreamt it 38 years ago and i still not only remember it but
carry it with me like a good luck charm though once i tell you
about it you’ll more likely think of it as an amulet of doom
anyway i must have just watched 2001 and you
know how fucked up that – and so our future – is i digress
but i’m pretty sure the film triggered the dream though at
this distance who knows or cares right? anyway
there i am floating about not space walking
space drifting space mooching space loitering oh hold on i’ve
remembered what might be a contributory factor / input
strand to this dream reading a book of disasters – hang on
what was a book of disasters doing in a school library i
mean was it a conscious attempt at priming us that violence
mayhem fate and the unpredictable alliance between
all three and the resulting random outputs are the only
constant in life so get used to it kids – anyway in this
book was an account of how on their return from space
some cosmonauts were incinerated because the hatch on
their capsule didn’t shut properly and of course i should go to
wiki to tell you more but this isn’t that kinda poem
and right now i’m kinda out of love with footnotes [1]
anyway i’m space loitering /space hanging about/ when i
start falling/ falling not dramatically/ with a flourish arms
waving/ that kinda thing no more like the proverbial i
say proverbial he did actually drop one didn’t he? stone
pebble that Galileo dropped next to the feather like that
straight down spirit level down plumb line down lift shaft
down oh maybe Towering Inferno is somewhere in this mix
too remember all the flames up the lift shaft making Faye
Dunaway’s eyebrows shoot up anyway
the point is down i’m going down and i’m
going and going still inside the space suit no rotating or
piking or somersaulting just arrow ramrod cannonball
whatever sonic boom through all the wispy hair bits of
the atmosphere not slowing down even though i know the
physics says i am and not burning up either just a white
heat Michelin Man with a body-borne hoover and a grudge
and on and on even though it makes it sound endlessly slow
which it wasn’t because then there is a desert no canyon
type thing arid not sandy and definitely a cactus and land
without leaving a mark on the ground not a trace a thud
on impact a sound not a dust mote an atom disturbed and
i pop the visor on my suit and find i have become a coyote
hyena a wolf what you want a moral too? fuck off
[1] i mean how much baggage am i actually meant to carry on this whole living trip
“New planet who dis?” from Neptune’s Projects by Rishi Dastidar.
Published by Nine Arches Press in April 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by Rishi Dastidar.
https://www.ninearchespress.com/publications/poetry-collections/neptune-s-projects
