In an unsatisfactory narrative sequence, the forgettable protagonist, who is alone even in his dreams, realized he could hear the motor that turns the universe through timelines. A while later, an apocalypse came along, and the humanoid Delfina told him it would be best if she buried him alive in sephine.
We’d escaped the alien mechanisms,
their aleatoric annihilation of all life,
and reached a stretch of cratered
parkland at the Menai.
In a pendant past, still waiting
to become, my dreams were ever
wandering in a lifeless land:
the high night of suburbia,
where the homes were anthracite
compressed from smoke,
and the streets all ran with bitumen,
flowing over aeons to Nocturnia.
I’ve held the laments of strangers in my arms.
They come to me because of who I’m not.
Like with like, in vacuo, a meeting
of invisibilities.
The city has no interest in my breathing,
it contaminates my lungs with anti-air,
infuses them with vacuum.
Yet, should I leave this wretchedness,
to find a place where burnt-out cars
are overgrown with vines,
where the breeze blows allergens
and dust, and determined insects
seek comfort in my flesh,
my heart would be tormented.
2021
In the beginning, my home was a barracks
filled with strangers.
With picks and shovels in gloved hands,
we dug sephine from the earth,
from glimmering veins of pale crystals,
soft like melting snowflakes.
I have signed up with the magical Meerkat Press to produce a two volume set entitled The Purpose of Reality: Lunar, a collection of poetry, and Solar, a collection of short stories, both with artworks.
The mellifluous Meerkat published the Love Hurts anthology, where my story Jacinta’s Lovers appeared, and it is a great pleasure to work with them again on The Purpose, which will be edited by the talented and thaumaturgical Tricia Reeks.
Steve Simpson lives in Sydney, and he’s never been able to work out exactly what he does, although he would probably feed the cat if he had one. His poems and stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, and he’s signed with Meerkat Press to produce a two-volume set in early 2022: poetry and short stories, both with artworks.
In the visual arts, works created with his image evolution software have been shown at several exhibitions, and he recently developed a unique system for generating art from mental states via EEG (brainwaves).
In the sciences, he’s published over 200 research papers, most recently in clinical neurology, and awards include the Peter Doherty Innovation Prize, for WeldPrint™, technology to make vehicles safer. A monograph, “Physics without Butterflies,” is hidden in the mists of the future, and he likes wood ducks, doesn’t everyone? In the ether underworld, he sometimes calls himself @inconstantlight.
1 June 2021
More about Ablative Promenade I here.
More about Ablative Promenade II here. The Promenades are best viewed in VHD or UHD full screen, and they have soundtracks.
A while back, I thought that Ether was the luminiferous and invisible substance that filled all of the universe, and my idea of cryptic currency dealings was putting a coin in a machine, pressing buttons, and no cup of coffee appearing. Now I think that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) might be edible if you cook them with pasta.
“I cannot find a single word
I favor,
not a one, and my heart,
it pulses
like a stroboscope,
in flashes.
“Still, I started life as a half a packet
of Tim Tams, so I have no reason
to complain.”
Part of the Kaosa 2 art video, which was shown in the Fracas Exhibition at the Articulate Project Space, low-def version with soundtrack. A collaborative response to the Umeda Underground in Osaka, by the phototropic photographer Paul Sutton (insta) and moi. Video and soundtrack © Paul Sutton and Steve Simpson 2021. Where’s the poetry? The dog ate it.
Deija, the Martian Princess of Glass, was lounging on a chaise longue in her Dapto Castle. Her butler was nearby, drinking bluegas through a striped straw.
She sighed.
“There’s nothing new under the sun.
Is it worth invading the rest of this sorry planet?
It might all be like Dapto. This place
has infected me. I have a rash.”
“In misdirected desire, the cicadas sing
their enticements to my lawnmower,
but its blades are dulled, and merely
caress the grass.”
“I didn’t ask about your feeble
suburban atmospherics.”
Inconstant light will be updating once per month from today, rather than once every three weeks. The reasons for this relate to the persistence of reality. It has nothing to do with the wood ducks, so they tell me.
What are you writing?
Come on, let me see.
When Eloise left, she took most
of the crow in the fridge, just left the bones
and the beaks for me, but I didn’t care—
they were always my favorite bits.
The sun is in its Ptolemaic orbit, epicyclic,
if I’m not mistaken, and its light is focussed on
the kitchen cupboards. Coffee’s in a capsule
and bread is in a toaster.
The songs of rowdy traffic lorikeets
are mimicking my neighbor yelling at the kids,
and a distant mirror is shattering,
with someone’s cherished image
dissolving in the daylight.
—It will do.
“There are only seven kinds of people.”
That’s the type of thing you will hear
if you listen to the oscillographic media.
Maria, whom I rarely listened to, continued.
In truth, people are entropy:
disorder and information. The closer
you look, the more you see.
Through windows within windows,
made of pixels, made of glass,
made of minds and made of paper,
everyone was searching at the speed of dust,
to ease the burden at their core.
Wishes within wishes, all queued up at dusk,
some saw walls and mazes,
and some were lost inside themselves,
bound to never find another,
and never by another, to be found.