After banging my little toe
Against that vicious radiator pipe,
Whilst strolling most unwarlike down the hall,
I decided to conceive a riposte:
Daydreamt a nano-tech nervous system
That could be injected into
Any kind of inanimate object,
And whenever it inflicted pain
You'd be able to lay down your law:
Solicit instantly assuasive quailing.
A genuflecting, imploring scream
As the kettle is thrashed with its own lead,
A yelp of cowering anguish
As the washing-machine is punished,
A satisfying yowl of horror
As the low, angled table is disciplined.
Then it all turned sinister, sexual:
I applied a pudic, velcro patch
To the vacuum cleaner's imagined crotch,
And battered it pitilessly with its trunk.
No trick cyclist could figure that one out.
Somewhere in time the astronaut
steps off the spaceladder,
makes a perfect bootprint
on the surface of this planet
made of dearth and disaster.
Things could be worse:
the all-important hose not yet
cracked, the intern days away
from her fatal decision to join the campaign,
the rocket careening through the void
like always, like a thing always
on the verge of falling apart
in the fug and burl of a world
in which we must always
navigate the dark song
getting darker, the sun
setting over the blackened
sea, the oily snow. You
step to the lip of the wormhole
and, somewhere in time,
look back and
wave goodbye.
