function PopUpWin (Location, XLength, YLength) {
window.open(Location, "Pop", "menubar=no,toolbar=no,location=no,scrollbars=yes,directories=no,status=no,resizable=no,width=" + XLength + ",height=" + YLength);
}
function NewWin (here) {
window.open(here, "new", "menubar=no,toolbar=no,location=no,scrollbars=yes,directories=no,status=no,resizable=yes,width=760,height=200");
}
var windowPoem;
str01= "spaceman 1.
i do not count the time
in this cocoon the metal is my pulse my mind a slow murmur that echoes the soft throb
i cannot feel my flesh, my body is as large as small as the rhythm that flows through it
wherever i go, i cannot pass outside myself whenever i arrive, it will be the moment of departure
i do not fear either space or time but only my self's fear in the grip of something greater
yet if it fills me, i fill it too i am stretched immeasurably thin to the ends of space
and i do not count the time ";
str02= "spaceman 2.
set free from the old migrations where will you go, exiled nomad
i will wander the stars, which are perhaps the summer pasture of my species' time
to fill myself with the fresh wonders i feel my memory is hungry for.
if i return, it will be to our winter and if i do not, it will be no matter
i have few possessions, for weight is dangerous i carry my home and death, within me, always ";
str03= "spaceman 3.
our meetings are warped and out of time that we long to meet well is the nature of our love
and here between all habitable worlds and the burning stones, in these deeps where shoals
of lifeseeds swim to new beginnings i seek the timeplace where we can meet and join.
maybe and maybe only she at that time is hidden on the other side of this existance
set the starship for the black hole, autopilot i will search the place where we are dreamed ";
str04= "spaceman 4.
we went in close to many worlds and the closer in we came the more we felt a simple sense of coming home, rather than unease at the unknown, the foreigness of it all.
but we were not prepared to stay and the awe we felt was somehow more a matter of scale; and also everything fresh has its magic.
and yes, all journeys alter you and in more subtle ways than you fist notice; but the intention to return
carries the virus of your past to the stars' end, and back on its home ground it finds easy ways to break out as before.
we will always come back too soon scarred maybe but much the same until we determine never to return whether walking round the block or on a lightship to the galactic rim. ";
str05= "spaceman 5.
how does it feel to be awake? he said in words that were not quite of the language
i could not move my head, could not laugh, yet it seemed so foolish, so unreal, and he stays, serious, as if waiting for a sign, some prophecy to affirm this resurrection, keeps talking of cold sleep and centuries, strange rituals.
if it should be true then i have dreamed away lifetimes, have even dreamed i dreamed, and never wondered how it would be when i woke, what face, what name, i'd bear.
this is perhaps that very dream, how can i tell? i remember too many maybes, no starts or conclusions, and though i recall this corridor of clear containers from somewhere, sometime, that is not uncommon.
i must stay calm, watchful, above all unpreoccupied; do the best i can to meet this dream's demands. ";
str06= "spaceman 6.
He had floated through the light years: it was not as restful or as effortless as he had first imagined. but he amused himself by coping with curious difficulties - the minor struggles to perform small tasks, to feed, to wash, kept him from total aimlessness. What else was there to do? The ship, the voyage, were out of his control, even to stop would be a slow grind down to death. That time passed for others he knew from reports heard long after the event, and his own messages dropped behind him as if they belonged to someone else. The sun was behind him, he moved into his fading shadow. Entranced, he drifted in his small space while the ship edged into and span out of the orbits of great planets in a time too huge, to uncentered to concern him. Only now as he returned, he sensed the slowing, was forced to focus on coming down to earth, and realised how unprepared he was for living with dragging heels, and felt the weightless years accumulate into a burden, so leaden he was almost crushed beneath the gravity of his situation. ";
str07= "spaceman 7.
How many times had he tried for a fresh start, a sign of sense, patiently, for he had all the time that was left to him
nor did it matter to him where he was. He was going nowhere fast, and nothing seemed to work, no procedure explained the fault;
he tapped the reset key once more, once more the screen flickered and crazed and held, once more he read the message
the same as ever, promising nothing: Please wait ... and again he said to himself, it's just a statement. anything
I think it means is only what I think it means. And then as before, the screen lurched and he sat motionless staring at it flashing
like a shower of asteroids, like that the ship no doubt plunged through; as if in a tunnel, a circular tunnel it made itself on its unguided track,
until it held once more, once more requested patience. And he was grateful for those two words. It was, after all, all he could do. ";
str08= "spaceman 8.
After the new life had been launched, the booster fuel spent, of all things her shape alone, if slightly damaged, was much as before. They sped through time, dazed, between auto-pilot and alarm, driven by the sound of the child, steering erratically through the surges and shut-downs of almost ungovernable energy; and when at last they rested it was already the future and when they lay on the couch and asked where are we now the ship replied: here, inside me. It spoke in the child's voice. ";
str09= "";
str10= "";
spa01= "the planets, the people
the planets, the people with their parasited skin their great molten hearts who dance their whirling egg-shaped orbits and hunt for death in the mouth of the sun. ";
spa02= "their bodies came back
their bodies came back but they didnt their pupils had swollen to fill the eyesockets they sat very stiff they were still staring into the overwhelming tranquillity, the depthless dark of those pools, on that planet where the glinting birds flick and are gone where horned white beasts invisible to each other search through precious forests for something they suspect to be themselves and the looselimbed longnecked dappled creatures that carry the souls of women sway beneath a sprawling sun ";
spa03= "the climb up here
the climb up here was hard and many died and arriving, we found food even scarcer and flying furry monsters a constant threat.
between each costly defence we still quarrel about rank and tactics, fearful nonsense, though most appear to like it better here. but i cannot decieve myself. this climb was mere pride, has solved no real problems.
we are no safer here at the thorny rose's heart than when we were lost men in the grass ";
spa04= "under dream interrogation
under dream interrogation they found out everything
the secret training in tension conversion, neurotic energisers, the complex rewiring that had made him into a psychic bomb
fine, they said, you can go now - your only punishment will be to live with it.
into the morning he carries himself carefully; knowing he may murder on some small secret trigger, rape on a simple signal or, for an unknown reason
explode in hiroshimas of the soul burn in dachaus of the heart ";
spa05= "she is wearing a dress
she is wearing a dress, one of her few i remember it from a warm day in the country
around her, the gusting refuse seems leaves or softens in coloured blurs, out of focus. a pack of wild dogs snarls around the corner, i fear, i look away, she disappears.
she is wearing a palegreen dress, one of her few. her hair is still long, though she cut it later.
across the street beneath the lightless lamppost she stares up calmly at this dirty unlit window. with desperate fists i smash the glass, shout at moonlight. a cold wind snaps among empty houses.
she is wearing a thin dress, one of her few, her lips are muted, her eyes are bright
a cat howls, a broken window rattles i do not take my stiffening eyes from her. she comes and lies beside me on the dusty shivering floor. i dare not move to touch her or see the room.
she is wearing a dress, one of her few, i remember it from a warm day in the country
and i do not know which of us must wake to free the other from this city deserted by the world and time ";
spa06= "I looked at the corner
I looked at the corner of the room: my shadow stood there. The one who wants to wrestle with, replace me: but he was staring at the door I had come in through. He was expecting me. And finally he left by that door as if it led into a tunnel I had never seen.
I continued to drink my tea. What else could I do? While the rival against whom I am powerless stalks me blindly as I stray into that exact place and time where he will find me. ";
spa07= "the river resurrects
the river resurrects old bones and memories what we have buried is curious to recall a few are talking lazily beneath wide trees the ice it seems is now receding everywhere collonades and windmills rise from the endless lawn
after the chariots of fire more subtle forces rule us: the sun's song and the many tides: across the hillside fall the shadows of clouds and silver dirigibles, drifting like our days, these bones, in a wide calm river ";
spa08= "everything was possible
everything was possible we toyed with the tides set fire to rainbows swam among the clouds built out of boredom broke to feel an end yet when the sunset comes and then the moon our wishing keeps this bland sun in the sky and among the leaping chaos the games with space and time I am seeking a rest that our great success denies me: the sweet slow sureness of decay ";
spa09= "after the space wars
after the space wars he could no longer stand the ways of anything that lived or bred
made his religion out of stone and silence and finally, fulfilling his communion, came
here, where, so far from stars or sun that the great stones do not cast a shadow,
he walks among the vague green tinge of gases, where no thing lives or dies,
drifts on as aimless as a silver ghost until the heavy thump of his own breath and blood
affirms his inescapable humanity his weakness, fear, his life so full of death.
unclean and terrified, he runs back to the signal beacon at his tiny camp,
but, bounding crazily, his heart burst. he had, perhaps, a tumour.
and the great stones do not quake or shout or cast a shadow
as in his decaying flesh and stores the dark seeds of life are spawned. ";
spa10= "she tends gross tubers
she tends gross tubers in a roselit gallery picking off bright insects and devouring them whole and when the brackish water comes, she clears its way scraping in the sharp earth with twisted hands
her mother, who taught these rituals, now lies wizened as charred wood, beneath the vast fronds: her mother who had known the moon and bled for it she offered to the plants and did not eat
and though that smooth slab set into the cliff led, had said her mother, to outside and death, she had been taught fiercely: the plants keep us alive and felt this death a sign of their displeasure
she traps bright beetles, furry longtoothed bugs; drowsy, drowned in humid roselight and ferny rustlings while into the kernel, deep below the arid husk, the tubers great teeth gnaw into the earth ";
spa11= "who watched a room
who watched a room in redrimmed darkness die fixed on coordinates he could never remember desiring who moved in the dark spirals, the blurred constructions emerging, snapped into place, in wheres without when, in nows without there, in heres without then who vanished to himself and reappeared carrying out purposes forgotten or withheld who shifted from every possible time or place to find always another here and now awaiting him who was a universe and all its parts and time who was a hinge, a door, an eyelid flickering has come to here a room ticking time a warm soft and unspeaking back another somewhere on a visit ";
spa12= "toying with the narrow
toying with the narrow centre of a woodknot he discovered a passage through the cosmos
with one fingertip through to the outer rim he tickled the edge of eternity
his hair fell out immediately. a nearby spider dropped dead. someone called to him, softly from an empty room.
my mistake, he said, politely, withdrawing his finger bright with suns and stardust ";
spa13= "
"We came in peace for all mankind .."
as the first act of insurrection someone took an ounce of pyrolite to module one mainpark after curfew and watched by earthlight as the old imperialist lie, the names of the coarse warriors who put it here, the name of the corrupt president who sent them here melted into the melting plaque ";
spa14= "and when we knew ...
and when we knew it was the end we drove out to where, centered upon a vast saucer of deserted land, the huge uncabineted speaker of the interstellar telescope faced up towards the screaming sky that night
and there we set up, plugged in, and while some danced or drank or fucked or prayed or killed
with the throb of our blood forcing our fingers with the earth's current surging up and out drowned in triumphant tidal rhythm as each light leapt to greater darkness we played while the stars burned out ";
spa15= "The Dwarf s Story
Looking back, I suspect that the authority staged even our escape. We were a nuisance of sorts, I hope, and it was more convenient that we should be run off than be killed.
Still, they made it look good, firing after us till we made hyperspace - but the blasts were just to frighten us and no doubt the vidinews said that we were traitors fleeing to the enemy.
The spacejump took us here, which was also curious, for it was habitable despite the lumbering beasts and frozen surface, and though all our women died in childbirth I cannot tell if that was also planned.
So here we stayed. There was no point in going further, no way of going back.
Nothing lasts long on this planet and we form no attachments to the natives -
even the race of superapes who have more recently come to power are too large and clumsy, childish, to talk to. They cannot help and indeed would fear us.
They believe in many variations of Science and Oneness, and play a complicated game called Right or Wrong, which permits ritual murder to settle their differences.
Such sports disturb us, as does also the recent rise in radiation levels which, though it makes us feel more comfortable and even life up on the surface bearable,
cannot make us glad, we who carry the error of our ancestors around with us in shrivelled wrinkled frames, huge heads and eyes that shrink from light.
I keep to my deep shelter, which looks as much like home as I can make it, re-read the classics and write poetry. I can no longer say whether I have achieved, or am achieving, anything.
If the apes invent a starship, maybe then we might act, go back: to whatever reception, to a more definate death. Till then I devote myself to the meditation of the crystals, of the smouldering stone, of energy, and of the slow waste of time. ";
spa16= "A Ghost s Story
When we knew there were aliens amongst us, might even be ourselves, we came back to our ancient arts.
Face dancers, shape shifters, and those whose eyes glinted out at us from other bodies than their own,
forced us to look through flesh into the driving current of a form, the essential colours of its energy.
More, we came to view all bodies as wet cells, contained by gravity, space and time, charged with the force of instantaneously alternating life and death.
Despite knowledge and our purges, we were overwhelmed. Finally we retreated out of bodies altogether, though some insecure maybe, less learned or nostalgic,
moved into trees. And what the men-forms call or think us shows that they still have not tracked us here, or maybe
they have forgotten both us and the war as is customary with barbarians. We do nor forget; but neither do we feel
defeated: we possess the planet freely. and their confused fearful currents now seem less to us than animals or plants. ";
spa17= "The Same Old Story
This was a small planet called Earth like 47 other planets within the galaxy. It was underdeveloped in technology and short of raw materials, most of its people went hungry and its overlords had turned much of the northen hemisphere into a factory whose antiquated methods were destroying the health and food supplies of all.
Its people were simple, easily led, and could have constituted no threat for many generations, being engrossed in endless petty squabbles, corruption and survival, so that their best traits seldom found and never kept social expression.
Our agents sometimes stayed here temporarily in the fight for freedom from the Imperium, but whether the inhabitants knew of the conflict or would have understood the reasons if hey had is doubtful. Despite this, it was to deny us even such crude defenceless shelter that the imperial forces, in breach of the basic conventions, set fire to it with solar flares. The few survivors have nothing but fused soil to farm, flee from contact, are dying desperately.
That they were crude and murdered each other is true, but they had a childlike grace, a sense of beauty and interested intellegences that were appealing. The death of these peasants diminishes civilisation.
It is the corroded courtesy of history to remember soldiers, their doings and their deaths, but these who died in their peaceful occupation of staying alive from day to day, on their own earth, will be forgotten; the crime against them ignored in cheap vidimix of starship conflicts, obscured by the great events at the galactic core.
In consciousness of this we have erected this monument, engraved these lines from a poet of the great reconciliation: " For too long our heroes have been killers - the true heroes are the creators of life." ";
spa18= "The virus s story
You may think us an unimportant race, small of stature, of no great intelligence, but we think such comparisons not odious but impossible; what we know we have is a huge positive, revolutionary dynamism, and our society leaps as one into each new direction called or offered. We breed with joyful prodigality but without lasciviousness, and each new generation maintains that adaptive trait, the ability to learn new tricks to suit the times that is the threadmark of their ancestors' survival, rise and triumph - for we have now penetrated most of this world, though there are naturally certain climates that we find more amenable, and though we have encountered some resistance we feel that it must always be the temporary product of fear or ignorance.
And we do not see you as alien, for in our humble language we term you brother, host; for we are all descended from the same dust, spawned of the spermy comets, and our lifethreads and yours are slowly intertwining as your own once entered other hosts, and grew in the first humid fluids of this world.
And what shape the future will form us into, whether size will ever be important to our success, as it was to yours, are stagnant thoughts. What is necessary will be done. Nor should you waste one cell-change to speculate on meeting us, eye to eye, in the course of the next million years. For the moment, honoured hosts, we are content, if not altogether pleased, that we are no longer beneath your notice. ";
spa19= "The assassin s story
And then that sirian job, a neat lasing of that pangalactic corporation boss, that was applauded on most 'free' planets, but led to excessive reprisals and less liberty
the cause and effect were predictable. this theorem of violence has been proved repeatedly in history, and it follows that one, if not all, of the parties interested, were pleased.
but which desired, which chose to follow that old model and for what ultimate end is not my business: to seek the bottom of such deep games is to drown
the terran overlords are devious, indefinate, create confused futures that perpetuate the fear of death and of each other that characterises the killings of their race, their hypocrisy and wavering consciences
what i do is more spectacular, perhaps, but their people are murdered daily by crude insensible laws, the blunt instruments of the ministry of plans,
are trampled by the blind elephant of power or die of apathy, of cruel jokes and of tiny malicious lies as surely as they had been shot or stabbed.
and whoever dies of whatever, some will decide to call it good, some bad, and their choice, of sides on this same coin, is guided by self-interest, real or imagined, or simply posed for propaganda.
i hope that more sense will be spoken when i am murdered, by others skill or my mistake: my race has learnt indifference to such distinctions, thinks them unimportant, even meabningless: for either all killing is good, or all is bad
or all is necessary; which is an interesting thought to play with while i sit in this small room - in a slum, a mansion, a spaceship, why be too precise? - waiting for my next victim who may be anyone, or myself ";
spa20= "A transcript of the holograph tape
a cloaked man was climbing a distant mountain. she watched as the distance got smaller and smaller in him, then sat on the sofa with the houselights off
an extremely large egg came rolling towards her. she sawed off the top and spooned out a beheaded body in a green cape. she put a top hat on its head. talk to me, she said. a stream of ribbons two doves a rabbits paw and an exiled king fell out. she cut two eyeholes and bats flew out. she peeped inside. mushrooms were sprouting on the neck. beyond them a herd of bulls was grazing peacefully. she put her hand inside and picked a mushroom. the bulls began to charge. suddenly a man wearing a green cape rushed forward and lured them away.
she stuck the mushroom in her hair. it began to whistle. she fed it some birdlime. it laid a small egg in her ear and hatched out several plots. there were lots of cabbages in them, leaves like curling green capes. the hat lost its top and smoke funnelled out. she dropped in two teardrops and the fumes turned purple. they filled up the small room for argument. she fell back on the sofa plushing and panting. a green head snuggled up to her with a detached expression. the body wandered across absentmindedly. he pulled himself together. they embraced.
the curtains closed to tumultuous applause as the screen showed the endtitles to the rustle of rising bodies as she leant from the sofa and switched off the set ";
sxr01= "Interview with the Star Captain
Today is good. I feel very well. (What I remember is what I must be) You are acknowledged. Is this a trial? (I am in control, I am useful and free.) All banks intact. The mothers still fertile. Home? This is home: what is miss, what is tree? (The dials, I must watch the dials.)
No comparisons. No private hells. The children? Zone L. What is cry? (Two and a half times time will tell) Smile? No data. I'm sorry, I .. (A bell. Change function. Obey all bells) No time but the present till we die (Today is good. I feel very well) ";
sxr02= "On the late massacre in P...
If they had had tentacles or three heads we would have treated them with more respect, if they had had exoskeletons or antennae uncertainty would have stayed our hands
but in their shapes we so our own vunerability in their faces we saw our own fear and treachery they were so like us. How could we be sure that we would not, in time, become them, given time, that they would not become us. And then how would we know ourselves, be chosen and unique in all the universe?
So we killed them - once we started the moans, the screaming, the red mist of blood certainly made them seem different; and then it was easy, as easy as killing ourselves. ";
sxr03= "Megaleague 3000
Earth has not anything to show more fair - the referee computer in its sphere floats o'er the pitch with electronic ear and cameras that zoom in everywhere to judge on instant replay; and besides, there are no human players anymore - their massive transfer fees made the sponsors turn to androids whose moulded plastic hides are easily replaced. The act's the same, they're programmed to gesture wildly, to shout, cry and groan - all the rituals held dear by the few billion who still watch the game on real-size viddy-screens (no one goes out) and press their buttons to boo, laugh or cheer. ";
sxr04= "Return to the planet of Ozyman
The desert stretched to the horizon, bare and empty - only two vast blocks of stone stood on its level sands. Old, decayed, like pillars from a ruined temple: we were sure something had made them when this land had life. But searching in their shadows we found simply nothing, no sign of who or what had raised them here. There was just a knobbly rounded rock, lying half-sunk near there, its huge hacked surface split by deep cuts that seemed to sneer, and on a slab beneath them we saw marks that might have sometime been words: man or king perhaps, perhaps mighty and despair. It was not important. This world was wrecked, by who and why no-one could know. It was cold. We were getting bored. It was then the odd-shaped rock yawned, opened wide blind eyes and wrinkled lips. 'Put me back on my legs at once!' it roared. ";
sxr05= "Search and delete
'#' include 'id card.h' '#' include 'government policy.h' '#' define GOOD 1 '#' define BAD 0
FILE *open (Yourname) gets (status) if (status == 1) puts ('sorry to have bothered you sir') if (status == 0) puts ('terminate') unlink (Yourname) ";
sxr06= "Information for travellers
As you read this poem you are on a spacecraft travelling at sixty six thousand miles an hour. It spins as it flies: since you began to read it has already turned nine miles to the east. Be honest, you didn't feel a thing. You are orbiting a star, not a very big one compared to many of the ten thousand million others that go round on the same galactic wheel, and are flying at a height above its surface of some ninety three million miles. We hope to cruise at this distance for another eight thousand million years. What happens then is anybody's guess. Despite its speed and size this craft is a spacestation, a satellite, not designed for interstellar flight. Its passengers rely on the comfort of a pressurised cabin to enjoy the voyage. We must advise you that, in the event of collision, loss of atmosphere, or any alteration in course which may result in overheating or extreme cold, this craft is not equiped with parachutes or emergency exits. On a brighter note, the spaceship contains an enormous variety of in-flight magazines, meals to suit every taste, and enough games, puzzles and adventures to last a lifetime. We hope you enjoy your voyage. Thank you for flying Planet Earth. ";
sxr07= "Starship blues
It's hard out on a spaceship, couldn't get much worse, All we get to see is the same old universe
The food tastes like rubber and looks like concrete tiles We only change our spacesuits every million million miles The captain's going crazy, he thinks we're crocodiles The doctor's seeing double, the atomic drive's got piles
We've been light years in a rocket-jam on the Milky Way It's 'Watch that star!' and 'Mind that sun!' all day We never get back home, we never see our pay The ones we left behind have all turned old and grey
Our ship's computer's happy, it thinks it's made of cheese It only answers questions put in ancient Japanese Something with no face and a horrible disease is doing something nasty down in the deep-freeze.
They told us we'd be heroes, go where none had gone before but we sit and stare at starscreens till our eyes are red and sore Sirius or Saturn, I don't care any more, if it wasn't for the black holes life would be a bore.
There's a jelly in my cabin, it's eaten up my berth Beam me up, beam me down, beam me back to earth ";
sxr08= "We are not alone
Captain's Log. Starship Saturnalian. Earth year 2030, day 358 - The new drive worked! We've tracked the alien spacecraft that vanished from earth's orbit late
last night. We followed its fantastic leap across the galaxy and now can see its sledge-like shape dropping in steep descent to a planet. Incredibly
a single cosmonaut whose suit glows red clings to its tail and holds long ropes to steer a group of prancing creatures: from each head sprout ariels that make them look like deer.
The planet's steaming, its surface smooth and dark as Christmas pudding. Prepare to land! ";
sxr09= "A short guide to the solar system
On the sun-side of Mercury you sizzle like a sausage. on the other side you freeze deeper than ice. Perhaps if you stood in between you'd become half-baked ice-cream, but simply stay away is my advice.
Venus is very sticky like a sauna in a steel-works- be sure to take plenty to drink. The smelly gases make you sick as you swelter through oil-slick - just think how your armpits will stink.
The Moon's dusty deserts delight day-trippers from the snobby rocketjet set. They can lie on beach chairs in designer spacewear and don't have to get their feet wet.
Mars is marvellous, if many massive red rocks make you happy. And there's red rubble, red dirt and red dust. And at night it's just the same, but black. Don't go. It's not worth the trouble. ";
sxr10= "Talk
We cannot live with ourselves, we feel alone, we need a reassurance - new gods, barbarians or slaves.
Machines speak for us to the stars, metal ears flower in the fields, listening. We are waiting, please, say something, anything.
What do we want to hear, we who have not learned to talk to each other, to ourselves?
Yet we are so anxious, and soon we'll go out there, stand shouting in the dark under the lighted windows; thinking the further we are from here the closer, the louder, will be the voices.
We want to hear talk - to feel, to see, is not enough to fill the haunted hole of silence: suspecting we are decieved, rejected, we watch the stars, the moonlit ceiling - talk to me, we say, talk to me. ";
sxr11= "beyond the glass doors...
beyonnd the glass doors, looking in to the drowsy gallery occupied by only one attendant, sunk in a black armchair quite at home, looking at a painting of the painter and his woman who look into the gallery from their back garden through long windows in which each of them is reflected in the act of looking at, of photographing, the other
they are very formal, as figures in a wooden weather-house, but the season of a painting, a photograph, never changes: neither one of them will step forward and force the other back, they will be forever tied together in that time and place while their substantial ghosts are free to wander into fresh affairs: here they will look forever at everyone the same and everyone will look at them differently
and the attendant who has dropped his glasses has looked sideways in bending and seen me looking at him through the door: he will be forever bending from that isolated chair in my mind where i stand, slightly furtive, beyond the glass doors, looking in ";
sxr12= "riverbed poems
1. the bed is a raft floating down a river like the amazon beneath the tall tomato plants young men and women stand upon the bank some whose faces we remember, naked, bearing pipes & feather crowns but we are as deep in each other as the forest & the bed knows its own way home
2. the bed yields to the waters desire hollows to the deep surges & the bodies whirlpool, bears the swift currents & rapid white foam
but in the later calm the river is so wide that all the nights horses can come and drink together
& the sleeping waters dream their curious ways to dawn
3 the tides in our bodies bear us through the days & in the way of water we end up where we had to go
in the near moons pull where we lie curled as droplets the currents meet, mingle & part, we never leave the sea.
i dream like pebble, like coral remembering nothing you dream like fish or the waves themselves
when we wake we find curious ripple marks upon our thighs such as the sand shows at the ebb ";
sxr13= "accident
1. as i swung round the corner a figure jerked into my frozen sight in the dim light a body spun then like a clutching shadowy squid swept past the window i did not turn to look as i drove on trembling, unable to stop the unheeding fierce machine
my back turned but my thoughts behind me, with nervous arrogance formed from fearful resignation, i walked away into the open road. i heard the roar, i saw the horns of light, my already slashed mind tried to throw me back but i had gone too far and it found and met me
watching you go, i was too confused to move, trapped in a vacuum wanting to say: go quickly and come back, in the same breath, and then what i had been half expecting, a massive roar as time and space crashed back and tossed and trampled you while my mouth twisted to my belly, i not only witness but victim too
2. the nearside headlight judders the glass is gone its silver flaked, while twisted upward by the impact a bust bulb jiggers at its wires end. below and slightly behind, the metal is bent into a mould with no resemblance to any part of a humans anatomy
not even a moan. the haunted hum of streetlights the weary yellow incandescence no sprays of blood only a thin trickle from a mouth that loosened as the body stiffened to sprawl like a scar across the tarmac where space had ripped open and sealed up as suddenly
the lips contorted, the throat harshly clicking, the stomachs recoil that shakes the knees, the hands halted in their movement up to cover the screaming eyes or jam the mouth and its wordless crying to the deafened heart
3. while we were in motion i could have screamed at the avengers: it did it, look, i cannot stop it i am a powerless prisoner but now we are still i know the machine has deceived me the blame has been shifted back to me, to these trembling hands stuck to a lifeless wheel
the ambulance men are too tired for speculation, bodies are bodies, and the possible collusions a victims tacit acceptance the execution of a traitor the dismissive gesture of a lover or those perverse or opposite realisations of desires a killers for suicide a victims for hurt a witnesses deception the secret reasons for being in that time and space are part of a play that finishes for them with this one entrance to remove the dead
my skin has been stroked smooth but his hand cannot touch the flesh beneath that still feels torn and hopelessly damaged and when the stroking hand slips between my thighs i do not shudder with pleasure but in violent sympathy with gaping mouths, wounds, and hands i will never feel again. ";
sxr14= "chance
i kept an eye on the main chance & when it turned its back i grabbed a slim chance with both hands & hid it in my sack
& when i teeter on the edge or stumble in the rough i put my head in the sack & ask 'any chance?' & it purrs back: enough ";
sxr15= "old man
the old man on the cloudshaped sagbag stroked his beard & wiggled his forefinger
creation? he boomed, ah, creation. well, all you need is sufficient energy & a bit of substance. a universe however needs an awful lot of energy & a whole tablespoonful of pure matter, you know, that stuff that man calls spirit hard to come by, old chap, tricky stuff. i'd stick to something quieter if i were you like falling in love or inventing games. mark you, no matter what you think you're making you can rarely be absolutely sure ... i remember this lama in tibet who ended up suffering from dsoanthropy & believed himself a cross between a male yak & a common horny cow & all because he would insist on ...
the cat uncurled & strolled away
well! the old man gave an almighty huff & disappeared into the spaces between his atoms ";
sxr16= "she's waving ...
she's waving at the window again, thats the third time this week. i usually turn away. it's a bit embarrassing to feel you're being watched: she must be able to see me or she wouldn't wave .. maybe a long time ago. i don't know. it's vaguely familiar. the shape of the nose maybe the hair. can't tell from this distance anyway. no i don't wave back. i did once but then i wasn't sure if she was waving to me or someone else or maybe the street in general
she's still doing it. it seems to get more frenetic but that's like anything if you watch it long enough i suppose no more likely crazy anyway i've never met her, spoken to her. i'm sure maybe it's the way she waves that i've seen before now it seems slower: must wear her arm out waving like that now a hand's come and tugged her away. that's that no. i couldn't see who the hand belonged to
";
sxr17= "cheering & drinking ...
cheering & drinking they sent him on his way but from start to finish it was nothing but ambushes
crazy masked men leaping out at every turn & crossroad stealing his horses, grinning at his empty guns, spinning him round
finally, he staggered into town with empty pockets, messageless & called for the sherriff, the deputy, the mayor the twelve good jurymen
even in despair for the badjohn railroad boss or any of his boys
but always they were elsewhere always the same answer
dontcha know, stranger they've gawn ambushing ";
sxr18= "it was in no way as hard ...
it was in no way as hard as it could have been
the monster kept trying to stand in front of him with open arms wanting to look into his eyes: he merely turned his face and struck the blow
but when the dark writhings on the head had stiffened, the rescued lady laughed so long at him he looked into the shield to find out what was the matter
the laughter shakes her thick wild hair she kisses him & leaves him there
in one more alley of the endless maze still his own sacrifice, crippled & fierce, trapped in dark mirrors pulling faces at himself ";
sxr19= "children of the planet of water
";
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text += "dave calder";
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