Let me in
We utter to the sycamore gatekeepers.
Two or so of us. We speak for ourselves, move as one.
In unison we mooch by aliens. They rest on the benches.
Their nourishment otherworldly. Their muscles slack.
Stacking goods from interplanetary visits:
Nebula ribbons, dark matter shades,
And worm hole bum bags.
All paid for in sum.
Drifting from grass to earth, we sense the honey hiss.
Different sweetenings curling here or there,
Swerving upturned mouths and hunching backs.
Returning to a crunchy twig thud and mud so forgiving.
Pass us a sip of life, we say. Our water orbit reminds:
All breathes, all flies, all are somewhat spent,
All skies that only glistened, would fidget alight again.
Pass the retired dancers and sunken thighs stumbling,
Whose loose feet skip to the candy chorus their legs remember.
Working against current, fighting gruff tides.
Tides of September slumber.
We recall a purring summer instead,
Twitching hums to any rhythm left.
We ought to head where their stillness descended,
I say to my shape-shifting companions.
Bops and weaves which wait around the bend,
They play to our delight; deliver us in tune,
To other friends, who beg we quicken and catch up.
They lie amongst the nymphs and faeries.
Out flies fluttering forest gliders, confiding in shifty blades,
Angling hips, outfits snatched,
Those who await can but offer their back up.
Flickers in trees o’er yonder lakeside,
Across the ripples, bouncing to greet our telescope gazes.
Look! The goblins guard the mushrooms,
They’re projecting all the light for us to amaze at.
Some of us cannot spy them, maybe another night.
Perhaps it’s for the best,
My vision contorting,
Our direction a mess.
We pace toward the deeper shrubs.
A brutalist structure, corrugated and bare,
Which appears at once beneath thicker leaves,
Towers upon us, staring, calling.
And it spits out a space-suit satyr.
Their complexion utterly perplexed,
Telling us we must adore it.
Oh, we disappeared for… what was it?
Just a few tics? A couple sets? Whiles at a time.
We were too caught in non-Euclidean
Shapes and shades that flew behind the DJ.
TVs, or portals, or mechanical eyes,
Whatever pockets of flying paint,
However long we were acquainted.
We were entranced. That’s all I can say.
Like the floating satyr before us,
We too were thrown up and out the warehouse,
Slightly torn up; the Orchard presents
A spot for rest. We pour our bodies into hammocks,
Cemented, clay-baked for not a moment too long.
Save the day for revival, Aceso spurs us on.
Pan onlooks from deeper within, luring us to forward press,
Foxtrot and frolic our dangling locks.
Jesting at our desire to mesh with relaxing mats,
He bumps up his arcadia hypnosis,
But forage we must for winks of shut eye where possible,
We ambled away, revitalised, intact, and torn in the idea:
Should we adhere or ignore him?
When our saviour sun spoke clearer, we veered for the latter.
Galloping lacustrine lights that confront us,
As the day whispers not, turn us to jitter.
Flirting with the water surface, an encouraging hippocampus,
Urging us to slither deeper still.
This forest is a cave? An ocean? An endless space!
One of its nooks boasts wooden arches.
We slumped here for enrichment.
Wordsmiths and august echoers
Mellowed us, they are the pinters.
By day their barn was sophisticated, creative.
Under stars and iridescent illumination,
A feral transformation. Willing us drastically technical,
We are young to the holt, impractically unskeptical,
And of course we step in time.
Still magnetised by land laid when continents kissed,
A bitty pocket opening,
The pavilion. A rustic song-palace.
Here, Yesterday, with this exact lot.
A metallic winged butterfly,
Started menacing on the mixer’s drum pad.
Or was it a moth? Either way, their beat was akin to
A medieval woven tapestry smacked with a bop
That was oh so protoconscious. It would’ve been a calamity
If we weren’t so simple too. And that memory,
That was then. So separated. It musta been double digit
Rollies since, when was it? Ten-ish.
Our lungs bad. Our divided fungi abandoned the fidget,
Now they soothe with tunes
Played in tandem with the gut biome band.
We can stand no longer, one contested.
A wiser one called that rave nerves. I’m sure as shit anxious to
Groove and raving whether muddy turf, beaming sun,
Pissing rain, unforgiving earth, a rumbling tum.
Even if one, just smile at the speakers.
Speak to me sweetness.
Sourer flowers take our hands and lug us.
To the crux, past the aunt teachers,
Furthermore lie the untidier creatures,
Their nods are wilder, levelled at rarer resonance.
Beside outer-rim vessels and jewel-bedazzled caverns,
Let me go. Allow me roam. A stone’s throw and
A couple more throws, till we smell normality.
Irks of reality, your tone will tell,
Do not sedate us, dear Houghton.
Grow us well.
Empower us in the dirt beneath.
Meshed to an earthling,
We bounce to root quakes,
With magic belief.
Our union undertaken,
Overruled by synchronisation.
Onward, upon us a vibrant fog.
Only it’s blazer pockets,
Offering boggling depth,
Oust an alternate option:
A shire for the wired, the innards contort.
Those sparkles aren’t sapphires.
They’re tooth gems etched in roof dwellers
– With otherwise indiscernible features –
Which shine for yellers when cheers erupt.
Centauri silver irises,
A little unnerving, mostly inviting. I turn twice.
Once to my left: a few cards of the pack.
An empty right side: the rest got lost a way back
To orders of aces and jacks of the mycelium court.
In vices and merits, then, surely, we ought to
Take their preachings. Grab a gulp of water,
A pair of vine-wrapped mechanical wood wings,
Whose pinions are powered by bark, and
Breach inward.
Where the wizard has the crowd on a thousand shoestrings,
Puppeteering them to sway,
Limbs, flying things, wheels, thin air,
However one moves, that sorcerer got it grooving.
Through basslines the unity encasing.
Our synapses fire and crackle at
Most subtle rumbles and every skanking slap.
I thought I knew a hand I grabbed nearer.
When the hive unravelled,
It was barely a talon, heaving me from unrest,
Another claw points me elsewhere,
Granting me a gallon of foreign elixir.
Ohhh this astronomical pterodactyl prophesised
A fantastical anomaly night filled with certainties promised awry.
To the prehistoric, I posited:
Does the day not await our fate completion?
And the bird-thing cackled:
Day could not wait.
For it dances in the nearest glade
To a spectrum sunlight tune,
Made of dragon fruit pinkish hues,
Yellows from a young leaf, and
Murky maroons of the tunnels beneath.
Spare the sun your youthful condescension,
It’ll cut shapes in shadows longer than you.
Behind me, a character from my closer crew,
I thought were askew and lost,
Is getting the same apprehension.
Except, they’re lectured by another casting member
Of the renaissance zoo.
A bipedal ewe with false teeth,
Wearing wraparound neon visors,
And Cinderella-esque climbing shoes.
I grab my mate beside her,
Offer an embrace,
That’s lucky,
I forgot you in the mist!
I step in front, we’ve each other again.
An outburst of life in flashes, then lows, then umfs,
Then calling harmony.
Presented by the tree that faces us,
It’s audience largely marching, miffed,
But partly passing sap around.
This nectar acquired down the thicker emerald hallways,
Which lapped around all the pinches of play area.
We all orbit something.
That ain’t profound.
And wherever, regardless, we never peep doors with scary errs,
For our stratosphere neighbours were friendly,
As were the donners of darker shrub corners.
Backlit shadowy beings, yes,
But they still wear ear plugs.
They’re not so outrageous!
Can you make out those nearing the raving void?
Switching figure and essence
For silhouette and momentary presence.
They speak only to the skittish wisps –
(Who get on with everyone, they’re rather progressive).
Observing these teeny wind-mites lurking on the outburst outskirts,
There appears a greatly missed face. Another lost chum.
It’s been eons, minimally a few stages!
They were panting,
Covered in a layer of gold sparkling soot:
I know… I’m beyond it … I…
Got stuck chatting pure muck to the mini hurricaners,
Scuttling along, absolute drainers,
Brought the storm with them!
I was wrapped up for ages,
No wonder I’m covered in dust.
I wager:
No point to decipher
I’ll meet ‘em someday. Come on. There’s too much to do.
We sauntered now, painlessly aimless.
Not complete, still missing another.
But they’ll find themselves, with a further travelling group.
In cavities uncovered only on the wrongest turns,
An unbeaten route, ambling intoxicated phases.
Pissing ourselves at the most remarkable yarns,
Spun by none other than the Mummy long legs.
Frankly, we couldn’t recall it exactly.
Not too dissimilar from our lacustrine endeavours.
Mother widow mentioned something similar to
A school or more of ethereal critters.
Their mutual: a mouthy mayfly.
A peculiar floater, I must say.
Bringing them together alongside precisely mild weather,
In a bubble which followed it with nanosecond delay.
Ma arachnid backflipped and hopped around,
Acting out the bug batch’s adventures,
Telling us this lot met the bipedal ewe too
(When they had more permanent dentures.)
She skipped in air and grounded with emphasis,
Mentioning how one of them, likewise,
Got a bit lost in the sauce.
Well then, silly, you shouldn’t be cooking!
She had to implore,
Which we must concur.
Her charm and narrative majesty are
Too much to ignore and dismiss.
Nearly flooring ourselves cackling,
When she speaks of the diamond back snake with a tickling lisp.
It’s iffy how time got the first train away from King’s Lynn,
Near or abouts halfway Thursday.
How many orbits?
This crawly yarn spinner afront us,
Ate away hours and hours of dance, it’s all a bit murky.
We’ll probably be entranced next time around,
It was worth the waffle.
No worries!
Just plea with the temporally ambiguous squirrel,
His tricky acorn performs triple oddities:
Peep the watch, more or less three hours before what you thought.
Skip with all the boundlessness,
Styling, sipping life till the ice slurps back.
Our fallen bud off in the woodland.
In a field of blood orange moons,
Find the stallions managing a cauldron of
Extrapedestrians, storied forest citizens,
Some regulars, some cluster tourers.
Stuff a supernova in the hold luggage,
We’ll soon be certified galaxy explorers.
Surely we’ve earnt that.
For however many loops we twist,
Friends who go up in smoke, wish upon to find.
See you past the giant steps,
At the dwarf star station, 8:35.
Mind the curved sack, my carry on’s a comet,
Craig said he’ll be there. Half nine.
Stop a second. Have you heard that?
Strung along a titan’s hair strand zip line,
Tethered above the crowd,
The final piece of the puzzle,
Donning unfathomable ornaments,
Melete’s sneakers, an absurd hat,
Loud in return, our awaited friend,
Juggling a Pegasus feather with wand elegance,
Spewing an endless light spectrum.
In their other grip,
Loaning a few of the wizard’s spare laces,
Gracing motionless ravers again
To join the stillness protest.
We won’t recall the exact moves,
But we were lightyears afar, jigsaw complete,
Decades in tune, pirouetting the hallside lake.
Go! Yes! Sneak the feet a rub, the knees a reset.
Or keep with the current.
Toss about in gleaming dust.
Continue to be misplaced with
Strutting grace amongst the most
Spatially uncontained specimens.
We claim we are without energy to expend,
But swear we’ll spin again. No doubt.
For now:
Let me out
