On nights when distant thunder
tore the canvas clouds,
Efedrina’s thoughts drifted far away.
“I miss the bismuth sun
and the overwritten sky.
The Wheel of Metâdia
is always turning.
The fire lilies drift skyward
to herald the summer,
and soft woolen dreams
become fish, fallen
from the winter sky.”
Previously on Alphabetic Fish: the protagonist has vowed to renew himself, but has done very little except write his diary. He met an alien called Efedrina at the pharmacy. Part A is here, and Part B is here.
I thought I knew my purpose,
so clear it was:
books were pages I might turn
to learn,
and never a moment
for artichokes I might deflower,
petal by petal,
dipped in lemon juice and oil.
Previously on Alphabetic Fish: there were no such fish, but the forlorn protagonist made a vow to turn over a new leaf, or any leaf, as long as he overcame his shallowness. The previous episode is here.
Today I will begin my real life,
the life that’s tailor-made for me.
But first off, I’ll check the weather,
innocuous conversation might be on the cards.
We’re swirling leaves carried on the flow,
pebbles skimmed across the waves,
seabirds too ungainly to reach the sky.
We only touch time’s surface,
and never understand its depths.
~/~
On Friday, she knocked softly at the door.
She was elderly and frail, and she
held a schoolbook out to me.
I know that we all travel from A to B,
but C and D and fish are
forever in my thoughts.
Delfina and Pierrot have decided to forgo the pleasures of Dapto, which has been barbecued by the Martian Battle Fleet, and visit New Zealand instead. Delfina has selected a large flattened cardboard box to transport them with the Von Bingen Drive. The previous episode is here.
Technical Note: the Von Bingen shifts travelers to successive alternate timelines where they are closer to their chosen destination.
“Sit down beside me,
I’ll explain how this works
on the way.
I hear the wind trains
passing in the night.
In the west, far away,
they’re travelling to the south.
Far away and never stopping.
~/~
Previously on Delfina: Pierrot and Delfina are stuck in Dapto, and to make matters slightly worse, Deija, the Martian Princess of Glass, has arrived with her battle fleet, armed with infrared energy weapons. They’re burning Dapto to the ground. Meanwhile, Delfina is chatting on the phone in a foreign language. The previous episode is here.
“Caio.”
She turned to me.
“That was Deija. She’s apologised
and invited us to her Dapto castle-warming
next week.
Light. A remnant from the birth
of the universe is sneaking
through the glass.
Birds. They called each other,
chirping more quickly
than they should,
a sense of urgency
because the world
is ending.
Me. In a cold bed, taking notes
in shorthand, or possibly Klingon.
Delfina and the newly-pseudo human known as Pierrot are on their way to Dapto in Delfina’s trans-reality transport, a junkyard Plymouth, which gets from A to B by successively crossing to timelines where the Plymouth is closer to B. The previous episode is here.
The park left us beside a dirt track,
gravel flowed like a river,
the vines covering the Plymouth wilted,
rolling hills rippled and roiled,
eroded into scrubland.
And when the scenery stopped,
we were in Dapto,
in someone’s backyard.
Previously on Delfina: to escape the apocalypse, the unnamed protagonist allowed himself to be buried in sephine, and became somewhat translucent. He went with Delfina to the Menai, where they found her trans-reality cruiser, a junkyard Plymouth Satellite. The previous episode is here.
Delfina was in the driver’s seat.
“Do you have a name?”
Apparently, Delfina didn’t know everything.
“My name is unimportant,”
I sighed, “It gives me no pleasure,
and I’ve found no consolation in living.
I serve no purpose in the world,
and I’ve noticed that the Plymouth
has no wheels, for steering
or propulsion.”
Click image to view a 50s video excerpt from Ancient Mars II: the Apocalypse.
Lie down beside me
and we’ll gaze at the furthest sky,
where once our dreams were carried aloft
in the updraft, in the flames of our personal fire.
We’ll recall our promises and secrets,
kept and broken, reflections
in a tarnished mirror, bitter lessons
learned too late.
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.
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