Poetry, Fiction & Paraphernalia from a Barren of Dreamers

The Black Swans

Black Swans

© Ketha.Ledchu http://www.flickr.com/photos/ketha/6638616131/



the black swans
sweep up the sky
in the evening,
clear­ing the heav­ens until
we can see the
heart of things above us:
stars and dark­ness.

the black swans
fly silently, black wings like
grave­stones in the air,
eyes look­ing
straight ahead.

the black swans
dare not look down.
the black swans
dare not see
the world in the evening:
fac­to­ries wreathed in sun­set fumes
vomit-golden.
hol­low chil­dren swollen futile who have for­got­ten
what milk tastes like.
coral like old men’s scalps
dead in warm water.
Allah and Jeho­vah
hid­ing in bunkers
afraid to show their faces
afraid of bombs,
they never asked for bombs;
men killing men again and
again and
again.

(we do not kill black swans, the black swans say.
but they dare not look down.)

I Wish I Was An Asylum Seeker

This is a poem about this and about this.

I wish I was an asy­lum seeker.
Asy­lum seek­ers have it easy.
Here, at home, I have prob­lems I can’t solve.
I have to pay rent. And to pay rent, I have to work.
And to work, I have to talk to peo­ple in offices.
And to talk to peo­ple in offices, I have to walk there.
Or take the bus. My life is pretty hard.
But if I was an asy­lum seeker…
If I was an asy­lum seeker I’d hop on a boat and I’d go where the wind and the cur­rents take me.
If I was an asy­lum seeker I’d leave all my prob­lems behind. I’d say I’ve had enough of those.
I’ll just leave. There won’t be any­thing hold­ing me back.
If I was an asy­lum seeker I’d sail my boat to Aus­tralia. They’ll put me in a deten­tion cen­tre there. I’d get free food. I’d get free accom­mo­da­tion. I wouldn’t have to pay rent. I wouldn’t have to buy gro­ceries. I’d have asy­lum seeker friends. We’d stay up all night long, talk­ing about how lucky we that we don’t need to worry about our lives any­more.
I wish I was an asy­lum seeker. If I was an asy­lum seeker, I’d have such good sto­ries to tell. I’ll tell how they came and mur­dered my fam­ily. How they came and mur­dered my friends. I’d tell about the poverty. About the hunger. About the floods and the wars and the way noth­ing ever got bet­ter. About the peo­ple in power who didn’t care about us.
But if I was an asy­lum seeker, I’d sail my boat to Aus­tralia, where the peo­ple in power care so much. I’d say, Mr Abbott, you’re a good man. I want to be in a deten­tion cen­tre, Mr Abbott. I want to live behind bars, Mr Abbott, I want to be con­fused and scared and I don’t want to under­stand what’s hap­pen­ing to me. And he’d say, I care about you. But I don’t like deten­tion cen­tres any more. I’ll do some­thing dif­fer­ent. I’m going to sail my navy, my big expen­sive navy, and catch you, and I’ll be really nice. I’ll fix your boat. I’ll fix it for you. And I’ll send it back. I’ll send it where the wind and the cur­rents take it. I’ll make sure that you get home safe.
Oh, I wish I was an asy­lum seeker.

Winter And Withering

A short, short story. I’m try­ing to think of ways it could be longer, but they’re not com­ing. I might revise it before I do any­thing else with it. This is the first tale I’ve fin­ished set in the world I’ve been dream­ing up with Miss Zoë (also on this blog) — a world of grow­ing words and per­sonal weather, of under­ground print­ing presses and sin­is­ter trains, of pub­lish­ing pirates and much, much stranger things besides.
Zoë — I know he’s writ­ing sto­ries — maybe the laws ease up after the events with Miss Staedler-Parker and Oliver Dolour?
The rest of you — hehe I might as well be talk­ing in code.
Any­how, enjoy this one:

 

Win­ter & With­er­ing
A Tale


Ded­i­cated to Danny, Emily, Sasha, Nate and Miles, for their words.


The city of Rhyme rests on the banks of the wide River Spine, and across two hills. The larger, Type Hill, can be seen from almost any­where in the city. Its bril­liantly white man­sions and wide streets all but sparkle in after­noon sun­light. The smaller hill is often for­got­ten, for it is less of a hill and more of a hump, and the old houses which cover it have, over many cen­turies, low­ered it fur­ther into the ground with the weight of their col­lected lives.
Nev­er­the­less, if a pale and unfit man were to make his way up its cob­bled alleys, by the time he reached the top, he would be quite wheezy. The weather did not help mat­ters — the morn­ing had been dark and rainy, and the fore­bod­ing clouds hang­ing over the man’s head made it hard to see clearly, so as he reached the level top of Tum­ble Hill, he slipped on a smooth pro­trud­ing cob­ble and fell to the ground. Curs­ing loudly, he picked him­self up. The knee of his pants — his only good pants — was ripped, and there was a dirty gash on the ball of his palm. He looked around, but luck­ily, nobody was in the nar­row lane to see him stum­ble. The man took the chance to steady his breath and sucked folornly at his burn­ing palm. All in all, it was not a good start to the day. His morn­ing tea had tasted like soup, his egg had been laid by a mis­er­able chicken and did not want any­thing to do with him, and his last bot­tle of ink was as empty as his pock­ets — though less full of lint. As if they were match­ing his feel­ings, the clouds above his head grum­bled with the promise of rain. The man squared his shoul­ders, did what he could about the tear in his pants, and walked up to the squat brown door of his des­ti­na­tion. The sign above the door pro­claimed, in blocky cap­i­tals, “A. B. With­er­ing & Son, Pawn­shop.” ‘& Son’ was crossed out in faded chalk. A smaller hand­painted sign under­neath said “All Weather To Be Left Out­side.” The man shrugged off his clouds with a small despon­dent sigh, and walked through the door to the sound of a bell. His clouds drifted up the alley, where they sat brood­ing above a pub.

 

The pawn­shop was as dusty and dark as the space behind a wardrobe — with the dif­fer­ence being that the dust there is made of dead moths and house­hold argu­ments, while the dust in the shop was made of poverty, for­get­ting, and regret. The man did not know which kind was worse, but he felt imme­di­ately like walk­ing back out. Clamp­ing the feel­ing tightly behind his teeth, he trot­ted over to the high counter. There did not seem to be any­one around. The man won­dered idly if pawn­shop keep­ers them­selves had been pawned off by dis­ap­pointed wives and busy chil­dren, and never col­lected, which would have gone a long way to explain­ing why any­one would choose to be a pawn­shop keeper and why they looked so very for­got­ten. He was inter­rupted in this promis­ing train of thought by the appear­ance, above the counter, of the pawn­shop keeper’s hair, which was wispy like dead mayflies, and which was fol­lowed before too long by the rest of the pawn­shop keeper. He had a face like the moon, grey and pit­ted with mem­o­ries, and wore a waist­coat made of pock­et­watches.
“Yes?” he said. His voice fit­ted him, though the man could not say how.
“H-uh, hullo,” said the man. “My name is Flo­rian, Flo­rian Win­ter… I have an account.” He said this with a great sad­ness in his small, qua­ver­ing voice. Noth­ing could have made his embar­rass­ment greater. Noth­ing could have made his regret less painful.
The moon-faced man peered at him. “Ah. Yes, I remem­ber you. Are you col­lect­ing?” His mean eyes added, “I very much doubt.“
“No,” said Flo­rian, in con­fir­ma­tion. “No, I need to sell.“
The wispy hair dis­ap­peared momen­tar­ily behind the counter, and returned with a large ledger.
“Your account isn’t very good, Mis­ter Win­ter,” said the pawn­shop keeper, scan­ning a page. “It isn’t very good at all.“
“I know,” said Flo­rian. “I know, but I can’t make rent. Please let me sell. I’ve got good wares. And I’ve got a story in the post. It’s a good one. A mys­tery. They’ll pay me for sure. Ten crows, and thirty more when it’s pub­lished.“
The man leaned in closer.
“You’ve been pawn­ing here for four months, Mis­ter Win­ter. Four. I’ve not seen a crow from you in all that time. And I know for a fact that before you came here, you were pawn­ing with Mis­ter Durlew in Wend­ing Lane. And he never saw a crow nei­ther. I don’t mind, Mis­ter Win­ter. I’m not say­ing I mind. Time’s run­ning out on your old wares already, a week more and they’ll be sold. But I’m just of the per­sonal opin­ion, Mis­ter Win­ter, that the more wares you sell, the less chance you’ll have of ever get­ting them back. If you see what I mean. It’s a-” he glanced down at the ledger. “A vicious cycle, Mis­ter Win­ter.” The mean eyes met Florian’s.
“I need to sell,” Flo­rian repeated, low­er­ing his.
The man clasped his dusty hands over the edge of the counter. “Tell me.” Flo­rian felt small and eaten.
“Ver­ily,” he said, shuf­fling uncom­fort­ably in his shoes. “Obstruc­tion. Frip­pery.“
“Ver­ily I’ve got,” said the man. “I can give you a pil­crow each for the other two. Any more.” It wasn’t a ques­tion. He knew Flo­rian had more.
“Verisimil­i­tude,” Flo­rian con­tin­ued. “Augury, man­nequin, periph­ery, para­pher­na­lia. Sar­coph­a­gus. Derelict. Win­nowy. Tinc­ture, lucubra­tion, lugubri­ous, sal­low.” The moon-faced man scrib­bled in the ledger as he spoke.
“A pil­crow apiece for derelict, tinc­ture and sal­low, half a crow for augury and periph­ery and sar­coph­a­gus. Hmm. Two crows for lucubra­tion. And two for verisimil­i­tude. I have the oth­ers. More.“
As the words were writ­ten down in the ledger, Flo­rian felt them being drawn out of his head like the river mos­qui­tos drew his blood at night. He no longer remem­bered what he had said, and felt empty and crushed and as if he were betray­ing his very tongue. He racked his brains for more words, but none more came. He thought as the man’s gaze pinned him to the dusty old floor.
“Despair, despon­dency, des­per­a­tion,” he intoned. “Poverty, beg­garly, insol­vent. Hol­low. Hope­less. Des­o­late. Void.“
The pawn­shop keeper cut into him with piti­less eyes.
“Oh, Mis­ter Win­ters,” he said. “I already have all of those.”

Egyptian History

I don’t write poetry all the time. My writ­ing process goes some­thing like this: a line, a con­ver­sa­tion, a thought will inspire a string of more lines. As I drive, or while cut­ting onions, or talk­ing to some­body, or sit­ting and read­ing, I will form a com­plete poem, aloud. Then as soon as I’m at a com­puter I will write what I remem­ber down, and it never seems as good as what I said (I need to invest in a dic­ta­phone — to prove myself wrong, most likely). And then the poem will gather pixel­lated dust until I need some­thing to read at a slam, or I remem­ber it and want to send it to a friend, at which point I will open up the doc­u­ment and edit it (or edit it right in the email) until I’m hap­pier with it, send it away/perform it, and con­sider it com­plete.

It’s a truly strange process, but it works. This poem is the result of one such process — it was writ­ten about a month ago, in the car, after lis­ten­ing to a song by the The Jane Austen Argu­ment called Sil­ver Suit. The Jane Austen Argu­ment are a truly amaz­ing Mel­bourne band — a third cabaret, a third heart­break, a third laugh­ter, they hit all the notes on all my heart­strings and I love them dearly as peo­ple — lovely, kind, hum­ble peo­ple who, I very much hope, are going to get all the recog­ni­tion they truly do deserve. Check them out and tell your friends.

This was a very long pre­am­ble for a pretty short amble. To the point: this is a poem about my dad, who passed away two and a half years ago, and about whom I have writ­ten many poems but am happy only with this one.

Egypt­ian His­tory

You taught me Egypt­ian his­tory
Under the wat­tle in the back­yard;
Between the toma­toes tied to stakes,
Around the Hills hoist and
Here in the lawn­mow­er­shy grass
You built me obelisks and tem­ples
Of sand­stone and old Nile silt,
Your soft hands helped me up pyra­mids
And your soft eyes were swing­ing lanterns
That glim­mered in steep dune tombs;

The wat­tle tree is gone now
And the toma­toes haven’t grown so well
Since you’ve been gone,
But there are still obelisks
Among the weeds
And tombs to dis­cover
Like secrets
Along the driveway.

The Cold

Before

There was war
and waste and
fire and
bright things

 and peo­ple

There was the cold;
Thir­teen bil­lion years of cold,
An unlucky num­ber
And nobody
To count it.

Tartu

Tartu is a city in Esto­nia; I was there a few weeks ago. I have an odd sort of rest­less­ness; when I’m at home, I want to travel, and it’s smells that set me off — air-conditioning reminds me of air­ports, palm tree oil on Papuans in the bus of the Pacific, the city after rain of Lon­don after­noons. When I’m over­seas, it doesn’t take long for me to long for home, for the smells and tex­tures of our small house, the noise of my girlfriend’s, the heady hope of uni in the morn­ings. And when I come back, it’ll take me only a month to start pick­ing up those other smells again, call­ing me away.

Tartu

In the park
Where the birds
Crashed
in black waves against
the cliffs of
long-abandoned houses
(plas­ter skins peel­ing in
    wide shreds
        ),
In the park
sat a girl
who could no longer read
the stone words
of her stone book
with her soft stone eyes,
And the autumn-yellow exca­va­tors
picked the old church apart
in slow
ner­vous iron clutches.

I Have Complaints About Doctor Who.

And I am going to voice them.

 

Redun­dant spoiler warn­ing: This blog post con­tains spoil­ers about Doc­tor Who and Buffy and a redun­dant spoiler warn­ing about this blog post con­tain­ing spoil­ers about Doc­tor Who and Buffy.

 

I watched the first episode of the sec­ond half of the sixth sea­son of Doc­tor Who tonight with the Girl. Actu­ally, let’s just start here.

 

Com­plaint #1. Why is it nec­es­sary to have a mid-season break? WHY? Did we need a reprieve? Was it get­ting too much for us? I think I read Steven Mof­fat say­ing some­thing about this a while ago, actu­ally, but I can’t remem­ber what it was, but I bet it was some­thing along the lines of “we wanted to build up the ten­sion for the fans in a big way so they could really expe­ri­ence the won­der of Doc­tor Who.” I am going to get to your issues with ‘sus­pense’ in a minute, Steven Mof­fat. Don’t think you’re immune.

 

Alright, so, me and the Girl were watch­ing the first episode of the sec­ond half of the sixth sea­son of Doc­tor Who, Let’s Kill Hitler. For those of you who have not watched Doc­tor Who: watch it. Okay, see, I don’t dis­like Doc­tor Who. Not in a gen­eral sort of way. Really. Watch it, start­ing from the first sea­son of the revived series, and it will be fan­tas­tic and you will laugh and cry and ride an emo­tional roller­coaster of uni­corns and dreams. So: I love Doc­tor Who. I stum­bled upon the first sea­son of the revived series when it aired here in Aus­tralia for the first time, not really know­ing what it was, and was per­ma­nently hooked. It was more or less my first fan­boy­ness. I got into the Harry Pot­ter fan­dom a bit later, but Doc­tor Who was first. I’ve watched every sea­son since then, as they aired.

 

Sea­son one was fun. Sea­son two was beau­ti­ful. Sea­son three was clever. Sea­son four was epic. Sea­son five was dis­ori­ent­ing. Sea­son six is actively los­ing my inter­est — and it’s not just me; friends of mine are giv­ing up on Doc­tor Who left, right, and cen­tre. And I am going to rant about why.

 

I’m going to start specif­i­cally with this episode, because it’s repeated a lot of the errors the show’s made recently.

 

Com­plaint #2. Steven Mof­fat. I respect you as screen­writer and a show­maker. You are a genius of tele­vi­sion writ­ing. You wrote my favourite episodes in Doc­tor Who, three sea­sons, three times in a row. Blink was genius. Buffy The Vam­pire Slayer is my favourite TV show, but Blink knocked a lot of Buffy episodes off the lad­der as it sky­rock­eted up there in the lit­tle per­sonal rank­ings that live in my head. (The best episodes get cute lit­tle tiaras.) You (co-?) wrote Sher­lock! You wrote Cou­pling! God, I love Cou­pling. So. We know you’re really good. What are you doing to Doc­tor Who? Let’s take tonight’s episode as an exam­ple. It starts in a corn­field. Good! I like corn. There’s Amy and Rory, in a car, in a corn­field, this is great! There’s dia­logue! You can’t hear the dia­logue over the music, but that’s for the next com­plaint. I won­der, fleet­ingly, what Amy and Rory are doing in a car in a corn­field but every­thing is going so fast that there is no point think­ing about any­thing ohmy­good­ness. They find the TARDIS in a corn­field. The corn­field spells ‘Doc­tor’! Oh, bril­liant, you two, bril­liant! Okay, tear­ful reunion, the Doc­tor tells Amy he hasn’t found her daugh­ter, some psy­cho girl appears, waves a gun around, cut to the title sequence.

 

It is at this point, as the theme swells around me, that I won­der why Amy isn’t, I don’t know, sod­ding bloody trau­ma­tised. Let’s think back to the pre­vi­ous episode. To cut a long story short, Amy and Rory had a child who is a Time Lord except because time travel Amy is still preg­nant except because she’s a fake Amy she isn’t preg­nant so the real Amy has been kid­napped and gives birth to her child and the Doc­tor and Rory bring together old friends and go res­cue them and it’s tear­ful and bit­ter­sweet because every­one dies but they res­cue the child but then NO the child is also a fake and dis­solves and OH GOD but then River says no wait I’m your daugh­ter it’s ALL OKAY and the Doc­tor van­ishes in the TARDIS and Amy and Rory are shocked.

 

Well that wasn’t cut­ting a long story short, you say, but believe me it is.

 

So these are the things that have hap­pened to Amy:

  • She’s had a baby while kidnapped.
  • She’s had the baby taken away from her.
  • She’s been reunited with the baby only to find out it’s not real.
  • She’s been reunited with the baby only to find out it’s sexy River Song and also no longer a baby.

 

So what does she do, after inex­plic­a­bly get­ting home from a space sta­tion in the future (I assume) with­out the TARDIS because the Doc­tor ran away in it? She dri­ves around in a corn­field and has adven­tures! Let’s kill Hitler! If I were a real per­son, I’d be a bro­ken shell of a human being!

 

I’m not say­ing that Karen Gillan is a bad actress. She’s good! She’s preppy and respon­sive and funny and even stirs emo­tions in me which are not always related to her legs. I’m say­ing that her screen­writ­ers, and by that I mean Steven Mof­fat, appear not to be able to artic­u­late real human emo­tions in their char­ac­ters. They sub­sti­tute emo­tions with dra­matic ten­sion, and in a show where prac­ti­cally all the screen time is invested in the char­ac­ters, that fine, isn’t it?

 

Com­plaint #3. I promised to men­tion the music. Seri­ously. Is this the same for every­one, or is it just Aus­tralia, or is it just our TV set? I think it was worse last sea­son, but still — you know when there’s a dra­matic moment brew­ing because that’s the part of the episode you have to read up on, later, on Wikipedia.

 

Com­plaint #4. I men­tioned this above any­way, in pass­ing, but now I’m going to men­tion it prop­erly. Con­ti­nu­ity. You might say ‘oh, but Doc­tor Who is a show with­out a fixed time­line, so con­ti­nu­ity is hardly impor­tant!’ Well, you’re wrong. Doc­tor Who is a show with­out a fixed time­line, so con­ti­nu­ity lets us under­stand it. There’s a con­stant slew of these prob­lems, and they’re get­ting worse. It’s like Steven Mof­fat is at a desk some­where, going ‘oh, oh my good­ness, oh, and then this hap­pens to them, I’m a genius!!’ which, granted, he may be, but if he’s a genius, it would be absolutely mar­velous if he tried even the slight­est bit to write the show so bits of it inter­con­nected with other bits of in ways that make sense to us in our reg­u­lar cause-and-effect-based timelines.

 

Com­plaint #5. What’s with the fad of putting new things into the show, build­ing them up for twenty min­utes, and then mak­ing a big reveal? It’s a) no fun and b) doesn’t work. Take Mels in this episode. She was inserted into the episode, out of the blue, because it’s more fun that way for those of us with eigh­teen brains, so that she’d be revealed as River fif­teen min­utes later. She was good enough friends with Amy for Amy to name her child after her. Amy has never men­tioned her. Did Mof­fat think, ‘ooh, I need some­thing dra­matic to fill up the first fif­teen min­utes of this episode, I’ll just chuck this per­son retroac­tively into the time­line so that the audi­ence can pathet­i­cally attempt to invest even the slight­est bit of inter­est, not to say feel­ing, for her, con­sid­er­ing that appar­ently she’s been hang­ing around Amy and Rory for the last decade, purely so I can use the Regen­er­a­tion Bud­get.’ I’ve got an idea, Steven. Spend those fif­teen min­utes devel­op­ing Amy’s char­ac­ter as a mother who’s lost all sense of sta­bil­ity in the uni­verse before she’s even prop­erly attained it; spend them explain­ing how they got back to Earth! And if you, ran­dom reader, reply that this way is more fun because action and fast cars and fun dia­logue, then there’s noth­ing I can say to con­tra­dict you, but just remem­ber that in the finale of the sec­ond sea­son more emo­tion was con­veyed in zero words because two char­ac­ters pressed their faces against a wall than in the words, para­phrased, ‘I haven’t found your baby yet, but eh’.

 

Com­plaint #6. OH MY GOD STOP KILLING EVERYONE. You are not Joss Whe­don. Note, by the way, that Joss Whe­don used his awe­some, soul-breaking pow­ers of killing cast mem­bers about five times: Tara, Anya, Joyce, Buffy twice. More­over, unlike Doc­tor Who char­ac­ters, when Joss Whe­don kills peo­ple, they stay dead (apart from Buffy, of course). Rory Williams has so far died approx­i­mately sev­enty bil­lion times. The Doctor’s died twice. Amy died, I’m pretty sure. Peo­ple keep turn­ing into goops of Flesh. I think that Steven Mof­fat is turn­ing into JK ‘There Was A Bat­tle But You Missed Most Of It But Now All These Peo­ple Are Dead Oh And Hed­wig Too’ Rowl­ing. I’ve prac­ti­cally given up invest­ing myself emo­tion­ally into char­ac­ters because there’s no point.

 

Com­plaint #7. The Weep­ing Angels and The Infi­nite Lame­ness. This is about the pre­vi­ous sea­son, but I’m ter­ri­fied that it’s going to hap­pen again with The Silence. The story goes like this: in sea­son 3 of Doc­tor Who, Steven Mof­fat wrote the best, fun­ni­est, most mar­vel­lous, most clever, sweet­est Doc­tor Who episode, called Blink. There was an enemy in the episode who had the fol­low­ing qualities:

  • With a touch, they’d send you back in time, but just far enough that by the time you got to the present, you’d be old and dying.
  • They looked like angel stat­ues (ter­ri­fy­ing angel stat­ues), and if you looked at them, they couldn’t move — if you blinked, for even a sec­ond, they’d attack.

That was it. It was amaz­ing. But then Steven Mof­fat decided to make them a main enemy, and, because, pre­sum­ably, the orig­i­nal incar­na­tion of the Angels just wasn’t good enough, they gained the fol­low­ing qualities:

  • They moved when the char­ac­ters weren’t watch­ing but we were, which made them look sort of like really con­fused stone inter­pre­tive dancers.
  • They could speak.
  • They were a bit funny.

And sud­denly, the most ter­ri­fy­ing Doc­tor Who enemy of all time was… kinda lame. Steven Mof­fat is bril­liant, but doesn’t know when to stop. In other words, he ruins his own good ideas.

 

Com­plaint #8. The lit­tle things that ruin the big picture. How was River not poi­soned by the poi­son on her lips? Maybe it was iocane pow­der, says the Girl, and she built up a resis­tance to it, because she comes from Aus­tralia, which is, as every­one knows, full of crim­i­nals. If the Tes­s­e­lecta is out hunt­ing for geno­ci­dal mani­acs, wouldn’t they be inter­ested in Doc­tor ‘I Destroyed Two Races’ Who? Is it because he dies at a fixed point in time that they can’t cap­ture him? They weren’t plan­ning on killing River, so why would they kill the Doc­tor — they’d just tor­ture him. Why does nobody notice shout­ing, gun­shots, a regen­er­a­tion explo­sion and a TARDIS crash-landing in Hitler’s office? Oh, right, it’s all in the name of that elu­sive beast, dra­matic ten­sion. Well let me tell you, Steven Mof­fat. I wasn’t tense. And it was because I was los­ing my abil­ity to sus­pend dis­be­lief, which Doc­tor Who had done so well, so well in the past. And tiny con­tin­uinty errors isn’t your fault — Doc­tor Who isn’t so much full of them, as made out of them. But I have only started notic­ing them when the show has lost me to the extent that I start look­ing for things to pick on.

 

Don’t you see what you’re doing? Doc­tor Who is sup­posed to be fun because it’s mag­nif­i­cent, clever, witty, thought-provoking, trope-abusing and grandiose. Now all that’s left is fun, empty fun, propped up on dra­matic ten­sion that doesn’t go any­where and sup­ports no mean­ing­ful con­clu­sions, and then you attempt to bring the fun and the dra­matic ten­sion to a sat­is­fy­ing finale but instead you leave your audi­ence con­fused, unhappy, and lost.

 

And that is not how Doc­tor Who should be.

You Are My Fukushima Nuclear Plant

Another slam poem — one I keep for­get­ting to put up. After writ­ing things like this I prob­a­bly shouldn’t be allowed to write any poetry, at all, ever ever.

You are my Fukushima Nuclear Plant.
When I saw you, my heart beat
Like an earth­quake. I wanted
To get to know you bet­ter. Because you’re beau­ti­ful.
I gave you a wave,
Just a wave, a lit­tle one,
All I wanted
Was to say ‘Hi!’
And there you go, explod­ing,
Our rela­tion­ship isn’t built on love any more.
It’s built on nuclear fusion.
And you can’t make a home from nuclear fusion.
You can’t raise kids with nuclear fusion.
They’d die. It’d be awful.
So you exploded, not even once,
You know, you made your point the first time,
You didn’t have to waste all that flam­ma­ble gas
Just to tell me you hate me.
I can see you hate me.
Bitch.
I’m just try­ing to get to know you bet­ter.
And you know what?
I’m going to start cry­ing now,
And if my tears carry your nox­ious pol­lut­ing waste
All the way across Japan, killing thou­sands of home­less
Japan­ese peo­ple,
Well, that’s your fuck­ing fault, isn’t it?
I didn’t want for this hap­pen!
I didn’t want for any of it to hap­pen!
All I did was give you a lit­tle wave!