Apollo in Exile
by and published in Edition Eight of Pomegranate
He looked just a bit like the Smoking Man
who pops up now and again in the X-files,
propped up on a wet pint and smothered in brown
leather trousers, with a matching jacket,
a matching tie. He spoke in my direction
and though I hate to make conversation
he made me listen; it was nothing if not
astonishing. He grinned, cocked his head, asked:
“Got a lighter? My old fire weighs dry, seems
to be soaked in a monsoon of bad news…
No? Never mind, but do me a favor- just go
and come closer. I’m sorry that it’s so dark.
Switch on a light bulb, just to the left of
(and slightly below) the water behind
my heart. Before I began this, I was
a Nietzschean Halogen hurling “I am”
past vacuums that would act as ether and whole.
I roared the soul of photon sound at all
empty caves that could have harbored a life,
and walked as a light-staff through the mountain
that gave rest to the night of the city
while people walked to commerce, unafraid.
I bloomed life anywhere that would have me,
from salads of mould in forgotten fruit-piles
to the tip of ferocity in an ancient
Jurassic tooth- I have been there. Beneath
the brain of the ape that raised a high rock
to smash his rivals jaw, and the blackboard
that split the atom- I was always there
Now I strut the valleys as a one who
lives upon the river, and crawl toward
the comfort of water, away from the sunshine, down, deep
inside the mountain. Fish fill the gullet that once
had swallowed stars, while wet stone feels the feet
that had danced the infinite and pulled a sun.
Now, my cigarettes are occasional and
all intoxication bores me, though they
brim my blood back upwards to springs inside
the wilderness of this human mess of neurones,
this accident of cells, evolutionary sample
of what may be on its way in divine
postboxes, we interesting talking points for
the conferences of drastic gods. Bastards.
Light- let there be this in me electric fire
to break the wooden bowl that bends such salt
against the lips of the sun god. I will
rivet this prison to anti-matter and black
oblivion, I shall shine beyond biosphere
and the silicon walls of heaven.
It begins.
But…one last Superking before I split, now go
light me up, please. What was your name, again?”
Alastair White
Alastair White lives in Edinburgh and is 21 years old. He likes writing poems and playing the piano in his band ‘White Heath’. He is currently graduating from an English Literature degree and hopes to one day become a rock star with a big beard.