Just to let you know that I’ll be publishing a new sequence of poems for Halloween daily from 17-31 October. Entitled Aldilà, the Italian word for heaven and much else besides, the poems are based on the 1928 discovery of a Saxon grave on the Downs at the edge of Brighton. Be ready for feelings of uncanny weirdness, goose pimples and shivers down the spine… 👻😱
The Big Picture
I’m staring at my Coke
as bubbles appear from
nowhere. Is there a frogman
in my drink? A frog?
Unlikely in cola.
The bubbles follow
each other in a squadron
then weave to dodge an obstacle.
An exclamation mark
balloons above my head.
Oh! I say. Deep within me
empty spaces form
that you can’t see.
Hunger pains?
Indigestion?
Anxiety more like—
about what’s in my drink!
My colon groans again.
Curdling, wordling, burbling,
borborygmi rise.
I can’t stop imagining
what’s going on inside,
these hidden things I feel.
Rumblebelly. Collywobbler.
Christ, I’m scared.
If what’s inside
keeps seeping out
slowly through our lives,
seen in the cinema of the universe,
do we just go pop?
