First Contact Off The Coast Of Jupiter
You say you call this place Europa;
we call it the world.
It’s where we move and are
and where the heat and cold live.
Our explorers have moved so far
they returned behind us,
by which we now believe
the world is spherical, like us.
When we float up we’re stopped
by lack of therms.
We move too slowly to think.
The medium gets hard.
When we sink down we’re stopped
instead by the constant squeeze.
So, we float here mostly,
live our lives, communicate.
There are many of us;
1101011100101110010 at the last count
and we are getting more.
There’s plenty of medium;
it sustains us well.
We take it in, it helps us move,
but we recirculate it when we’re done,
so it is much the same.
We have considered how things
might work in other places;
We have imagined
all manner of possible worlds,
but, when you arrived we were amazed
by your intricacies, the shapes
you make, your many
acute vibrations.
You say you come from beyond
the cold. A word you use,
‘outside’, is unknown, something
we have not considered.
So tell us how things are with you,
the way you live, why you have come
and tell us of your world.
Is it smooth? Is it wonderful?
Apparition of Face And Fruit Dish On A Beach
It started with bananas: the way the ends snap off
and pull the peel, three or four strips of skin,
the furrowed fingers inside. Next came peaches,
which needed a knife, and grapes, red and green,
with seeds in both. I ate the seeds.
Soon, there was little but problems passing
greengrocers, expulsion from the still-life class.
Now I live on the beach, where few apples reach me,
just the occasional washed-up fish
from the never-ending tides.
Someone once said ‘You’ll wind up looking
like a fruit bowl’. There’s prescience.
My domed forehead could be frosted glass,
my eyes, vessels for juice. I wish a linen napkin
to wipe my chin, to keep stains off the white sand.
Jabberwocky 2: This Time It’s Personal
And as in calloohed joy they danced
A Jabberwock, the dead beast’s dear,
Sat by the body, sliced and lanced
And bawled through hissing tears.
O travesty! O calumny!
Say who has slain my mimsy friend,
Who only ever wiffled free
And burbled as he went?
Now see the Jabberwock, small man –
The claws that catch, the jaws that bite –
See how I plan to take the hand
That snatched away his might.
She found the knight upon the path.
They fought. By frumious ploy,
She snapped the vorpal blade in two,
Likewise the slithy boy
And when she’d slain the outgrabed knight
She turned and left his head in place.
She gyred and gimbled through the mire,
Long cursed his uffish race.
“Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.”
Simon Williams
Simon Williams lives on the edge of Dartmoor and writes for a living and as a passion. Some of it is poetry, where he’s happy to experiment with different genres, styles and subjects. The serious stuff tends to go into books. The lighter stuff tends to get performed. This may change.
