Wednesday 31 August 2022

 



‘THE ACCEPTED CONVENTIONS 
 OF SPACE, TIME & REALITY’ 
(with thanks to Ian Lee) 



the scatter-winds of February 
redistribute last week’s garbage 
from there to here in a cascade 
of a hundred yesterdays, until 
I no longer know if JF Kennedy, Buddy Holly 
and Monica Lewinsky are history or myth, 
there are reality shows where Thai girls endure 
 cosmetic surgery to become Shakira, or Barbi dolls, 
there are political theorists to explain how Watergate 
was perpetrated by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, 
ethical issues have become a Freeview gameshow with 
trick questions to catch out the unwary, such as whether 
HG Wells made the first moon landing or if it was a CBS 
telecast, contestants get a five second countdown to decide, 
Martin Amis puts characters called Martin Amis 
in his novels, but swears they’re not him, 
I no longer know if Jupiter is really the size we 
see it in data from the James Webb Space Telescope 
or if fortune is simply a poem by another name
 

Featured online at: 
‘IT: INTERNATIONAL TIMES’ (12 March 2022) 



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