The Ladder to the Hayloft

That a clock is only as fast as a cheetah
running round and round on the stones
seems to be a young kid’s scientific finding.

That a clock is only as fast as a wounded
cheetah, struggling with fifteen balls in
the air, seems more artistic, subjective too.

That oceans smile with liquid eyes and
fill themselves with rain is surely hypertext,
hypertext of Verlaine’s famous credo.

That I. T. may stand for Instant Travel too
could be nothing but a bone-idle pipe dream,
dreamed up on pot at a computer screen.

That Lucy in the soul with demons may
be an actual substance is almost chemistry,
almost musicology; and then I’m gone.

That Portability is the Apotheosis of Form
could be nothing but the modern narrative,
and apply across the board when you’re away.

That a flower-press ending on cannabis
could = a dialysis and a love poem hoping
to impress Flora could = more a motor

seems to be aesthetically pleasing at least,
if not an actual aesthetic anti-system,
like the colours of the vowels in English.

That the effect of acid the effect of acid-rain
on an imaginary species should = the same,
nothing, is not necessarily true if there

can be no more proof of something being
real than saying it was imagined, which
seems both Blake-like and Cartesian too.

That the effect of global warming on the
unicorn is a postmodern id is eco-poetic,
eco-poetry being all about an awareness.

That it’s impossible to remember a new
yellow line, as opposed to a new creature,
could be the Light-speed Law of Neuroplasticity.

That love is the hope the heart literally
needs in order for it to survive without
which it can stop is a stance before life.

That death is H suspended in deafness
could be history as much as anything else,
even ‘horse’ or ‘how about the housework?’
 
That Dog = pi times MC squared could be
the equation for a power-cut at the foot of
Black Combe, the Lakeland’s oldest fell, or

like plugging the senses in the mains; and
that O is the key of the babbling unicorn is
more musical Nature poetry again. Lastly,

that nothing minus nothing = water’s
effect on water could be nothing but mere
speculation and conjecture; or even Nirvana.

Then the Problem 1 in that Popperian,
epistemological sense is how to get down
again, safely, before the wind topples you over.

And so I have invented Backward Liquid
Maths, for my brother and I to share,
and I hope for each a peach in the wheel.

John F.B. Tucker

 
If you have any thoughts on this poem, John F.B. Tucker would be pleased to hear them.