Axon: Creative Explorations

 

Space-Walker Looks Forward

 

The ultimate step outside

I’d like to be some time

free-floating irresponsible

nowhere staring at somewhere

weightless nothing to heft

breathing pure artificial air

sans everything but a view

 

of this pallid star

earth as whey-faced lune

preposterous distant home

all its features blanked

to a blue and silver dish

a patterned splash of glory

on a black gallery wall

a brilliant light-filled abstract

the human erased

but for my goggling eye

exploring

 

this ultimate loneliness

hoping it might lead

to a sense of comic

cosmic acceptance

the astronaut as clown

saluting his earthly love

amidst a glitter of star ice

sending scattered signals back

there is no gravity here

I can’t stop smiling

watch this space.

 

 

 

 

Space Walker’s Abstraction

 

Staring back to earth

the perspective is all pattern

a wash of creamy cloud and ocean

a plate of Stilton soup

good enough to eat.

How everything turns back

to hunger. Is it escape

or encounter this exploration

without apparent utility,

as inner space becomes outer

a process between me

and the world made abstract

in which it’s possible to love

the idea of people,

to remember acts of kindness,

to long for arms that hold and fire,

without lead or boredom bullets

or plain old hatred, the gun

toting madman in the gore soaked Mall?

There’s a lot to be said for distance

making fonder the thumping

muscle in the chest,

small blessings and mercy:

there is no news here.

 

 

 

 

Space Walker at Play

 

Free floating

cutting the ties that bind

saying goodbye to

gardens wild with blossom

training for loss

 

doodling this space

treading weightless

in the dark

clarifies the view;

no need for media pundits

 

the busy distraction

of multiple screens

pods, phones, ibook etc

the useless cackle

of political games

 

no, here you can kick

back like a baby

in a bouncer seeking

thrills and the globe

transformed to a simple

 

plate which suggests

something might be gained

from renunciation

this willed escape into

playful space.

 

 

 

 

Space-Walker’s Escape and Encounter

 

There’s no sex up here

dancing in the dark alone

a cool freedom ices the loving

the monastic mission

of the suburban spaceman

to see the world whole

and no one staring back

to think how can this perfect O

be accident?

 

In this reality show

being becomes lightly bearable

not weighed down by taxes

mortgage, super, the demands of

the week-end car-wash

trimming suburban lawns

in the rotten damp where fear

masquerades as rectitude

and love speaks the language

of cash-exchange.

 

Imagine re-charging the batteries

beyond gravity

cultivating a space to call your own

beyond powerful illusions,

illusions of power:

see how small that man

at the lectern looks

soaping soft slippery words

to fox and box you in.

 

If only I could send some signals back

a bulletin of how-it-is out here

intimations of meaning from darkness

the whisper I heard from a tired God

but think I’ve lost the code.

Earth seems suspended in night

a coloured orb flashing in the cold

a disco ball after lights out

and the dancers have all gone home.

 

 

 

 

Space Walker Out of His Depth

 

It can be moody up here

alone in the darkness

looking back to earth

generates the existential

angst of astronauts:

how little we are, how big it is;

how quick our time, how long

the aeons of the universe.

Tempted to praise

what should reason worship

or find sacred but itself?

Is it possible to speak of faith

without sounding credulous?

What image might suffice

to hold the mystery?

Dogma won’t do.

Religion needs to bend and warp

like the space-time continuum;

learn to play with sub-atomic

particles. Sure, God isn’t

Super-Daddy with a white beard,

but maybe the unspeakable

beyond the weirdness

of scientific metaphor:

accelerating gravity

burrowing black holes

in the fabric of reality.[1]

Does this help allay the terror

of our smallness or our violence,

our carelessness towards the poor

and the planet I orbit

without progression,

addicted to this privileged space?

 

 

 

 

Space Walker Considers Re-Entry

 

It’s mental, up here, mental as anything:

this, the only place of escape,

the space you make for yourself

an illusion at least of freedom,

though it’s hard to shuck off

the increasing weight of years,

the growing loss,

the hopelessness of politics.

But somehow out of infinite darkness

these plates of light, the beckoning stars,

appear calling us back to belonging:

we are all made from the same dust;

all bodies shattered and heavenly at last.

Here, simultaneously, you can see

the long and short perspective,

the shallow streams or infinite depths

of mind reaching to grasp the expanding

universe. I persuade myself this is where

I want to be: on Mission Impossible

trying to realise something new;

one small step, etcetera. And for

inspiration my three-year-old grand-daughter

staring up on a cold, clear night saying,

Moon, Oh Wow! Her eyes round with delight,

flying saucers reminding me how it is love

sends me exploring, and love brings me

down to earth once more.