ass. 9

I'm back again scrutinizing the Milky Way
of your ultrasound, scanning the dark
matter, the nothingness, that now the heads say
is chockablock with quarks & squarks,
gravitons & gravitini, photons & photinos. Our sprout,

who art there inside the spacecraft
of your Ma, the time capsule of this printout,
hurling & whirling towards us, it's all daft
on this earth. Our alien who art in the heavens,
our Martian, our little green man, we're anxious

to make contact, to ask divers questions
about the heavendom you hail from, to discuss
the whole shebang of the beginning&end,
the pre–big bang untime before you forget the why
and lie of thy first place. And, our friend,

to say Welcome, that we mean no harm, we'd die
for you even, that we pray you’re not here
to subdue us, that we’d put away
our ray guns, missiles, attitude and share
our world with you, little big head, if only you stay
What would you do if an Alien landed in the playground?
Would you stand there shouting, ‘Teacher, teacher!
Please Sir, please Miss,
There’s this great big thing with wobbly eyes and six pink legs, Sir!’

Or would you stand still and stare,
And maybe poke at it a bit with sticks
And throw a ball in its mouth,
Or perhaps push Shorty or Fatso or Snotty forwards
To see if they got eaten ?

Imagine if the teacher came out instead and shouted,
‘Oy! You there! You with the six legs! Yes, YOU!
Get back where you came from NOW!
THIS INSTANT!’

What do you think it would do ?
Would it sit there, humming,
Before gently lifting off and floating away back into space ?

Or would it stick a long tendril out,
Wrap it around Teacher,
And suck Teacher back into its mouth?

‘Yum, yum!’ it might go,
And you’d all cheer, and laugh,
And maybe one or two of the girls would cry
Because Teacher was really quite nice, after all.

Or perhaps the Alien would open wide a wobbly eye,
Shoot a long, lazy glare,
And then raise two tendrils in a V-shape
Before blowing a big raspberry?

Well, what would YOU do if you were an Alien
Landing in the playground ?

I know what I would do.

I wouldn’t stay THERE!