By Land, By Air and By Sea
by Patrick Johnston
Hawking Radiation
They gene sequenced a meteorite
Just to show you could do it, I guess
Aeons of generations out there
In the big empty
Mating via random collisions in the Kiuper Belt
All those missed opportunities
Missed by hours
By days
By light years
Orbiting each other
Like black holes
Black holes aren’t empty you know
Orbiting each other
Like you and me
Around this black hole
The information leaks back
Encoded as radiation
Love encoded as missed opportunities
The Hominids from Atlantis
There was a continent hidden in plain sight,
like Denisovan DNA in our own nucleotides.
It’s mostly under the sea,
like fabled Atlantis—
rediscovered by sonar
and microscope.
Maybe Denisovans were the original Atlanteans,
with their spaceships,
their telepathy,
their planet-killing rockets.
They had flying cars
in the rain,
and huge
holographic billboards,
in the rain,
and music by Vangelis—
now hidden teardrops
in the rain.
For forty days and nights.
Until all you got left
is Utnapishtim.
A Rutter
On 9th August, 1968, The Captain saw fit to post as follows in his journal:
It may be the case that in
the Sargasso Sea the eel
goes to mate in its hidden places,
And for many years the Sargasso see was awash
With mystery
but this is not the Sargasso Sea,
and I am not the eel.
The eel, when it goes from its slimy Sargasso union,
navigates, by means unknown,
back to the very stream where it was spawned,
in defiance of the laws of man—
perhaps attuned to the unique
taste of the chemical composition, chalk and clay,
duckweed and fish shit,
of those very waters,
seeking the coastline until—
until the memory is triggered:
This.
This is the place.
And Keld chalk streams
And clay streams like Foston Beck
Where we caught them
In clay pot pipes where the sluice gate runs fast curved past the weir
But I am not the eel,
and this is not the Sargasso Sea.
This is not the place
In clear turquoise waters over powder-white sands have I basked.
Also
where spangled fishes dart and play
amongst corals, where brown-skinned
boys and girls hold their pearl breath
to harvest their oyster prizes,
and the sea was warm and like a friend—
And the small fish asked their small fish questions
not like here.
These are not those warm southern, friendly seas.
I lived, for a while, on an island.
It seemed to me, at least,
the kind of place a man might live
that were neither here nor there.
And there were palm trees on the beach with hulk root
And coconuts fell hazardous fruits
that sent messages to other islands
This is not the place.
This is not a Sargasso Sea,
or a southern friend sea,
or an island half-sea.
No.
The colors here roil black,
and grey-brown-green,
and cold—
so cold—
and by tug of the moon,
or anomalies of microgravity,
the surface depth might change by fifty-odd fathoms
And creatures
Grey white looming creatures below and skirting the surface
With their cold blood and cold warm blood
And cold cold eyes
This is the place.
And the loneliness here is oceanic.
The Wiltshire Coast
Beneath the white chalk cliffs below the Henge,
beneath the coastal path
that wends the sea-worn promontories,
where giant smoothed chalk pebbles
with Swiss-cheese holes
offer sanctuary to crablike crawlers —
giant skipping pebbles
for the giants that once sat at the Henge.
And they weren’t even Druids.
It was long before that
that they hauled their Sarcens countless miles,
and set their placement,
and lit their fires,
and we looked out across the storm-lit seas
of the Wiltshire Coast.
And now in stone-walled gardens
of cliff-top pubs
we drink local ciders
at wooden benches
and eat ploughman’s lunches
and wonder where all the years have gone.
There used to be fields
as far as you could see,
and forests before that, maybe.
Art by Non-Native English Speakers
I will carve my words from
Solid granite sarcen stones
To suite my henge face
I will let word rain tears
Do their sturdy work
Gentle and ineffable
My word leaves will whistle
Sprout, live, die
And rustle in the gutters
My word flows will spring eternal
Tinkling brooks, rivers flowing
Neandering, prehuman
My word copses and forests
Will wend and wind and pulse
And grow and move and die
All my animal words will cast theirs
To the winds and empty air
Animal voices, animal words, animal worlds
I will have city words and street words
Friend words and arguments
In cafes and beer gardens
My anger words and my quite words
And my words of sweet bitterness
And my love gone wrong words
Will all go wrong
I have had so many words, but now
It’s only time for industrial waste-words —
and henge faces.
Something Didn’t Happen
13:42 CST — Avenue A & 24th Street
A certain Mrs. Abercrombie omitted to chide her husband for the imperfect execution of a minor household chore,
and he in turn neglected to chunter his discontent.
And thus, the Great Isochronic Calm of 1957, focused upon Kearney, Nebraska, commenced
Stretching 27 miles in all directions
And lasting for 27 hours
In the school yards
And classrooms
And sales rooms
And Markets
And factories
And farmyards
Salons and saloons
And surgeries
There was no violence to be witnessed
Nor was a word spoken in anger or discontent.
Nor was a face wrinkled in angry demeanor.
Nor a bodily posture suited to imply aggressive intent.
On the killing floor
Of the slaughter house
The cattle went to their deaths
In gentle grace
Yet if one were to ask the residents
of that very town, the following day,
what reports they might have
of the preceding twenty-four hours,
it is almost certain they would recall it
to be simply the most ordinary of days.
And yet it was the greatest lacuna of violence
In the whole of human history
Since Cain enAbeled the whole business
And ended when Marshall McIntosh a kicked his dog
In a fit of pique relating to a tripping incident
On the way to the root cellar
BIO: Patrick Johnston is an Anglo-Australian writer of poetry and hybrid prose based in Southeast Asia. A former professor of psychology and neuroscience, his work explores intersections between myth, cognition, and loss. His writing has appeared in Love and Literature, Blood & Honey, and The Louisville Review, among others.