Poem: 'THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE OF THE MOON BUTCHERS'

THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE 

OF THE MOON BUTCHERS / 

THE MOONCALF PASTURES 

“so we poor terrestrial castaways, 

lost in that wild-growing moon jungle, 

 crawled in terror before the sounds 

that had come upon us… ”

 (‘THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON’ 

by H.G. Wells - 1901) 

pteradons glide my room
each morning before dawn,
I taste the audible smile
of their scales
through the hooks
beneath my flesh

I know such yearnings

my hands become claws as
fluid dissolves in soft curves
through the silence
of hall and landing,
I know the instinct to simpler forms
in the low cellular echoes
aching down the spinal staircase
towards phantom primeval suns

my room submerges, liquid,
ebbing memories of primal slime,
flakes of time float loose
leaving salt reptile aftertaste,
in such moments the urge
to devolve becomes real

through the barbs
beneath the cortex
I share their stillness

I pace slow,
leave web tracks
in the warm mud
across the rug
while lizards
slither & coil
in the moist stink
of rich decay,
beneath all that’s
rational and cold,
moving slow, pared down
to guiltless indolence,
they’re millennia-deep,
glimpsed in sharp echoes
at the pit of my eyes,
I remember the mindless reptile purity
that’s now resurfacing…

and all the while,
beyond the pteradon’s glide,
through the casement,
the silver ribs of mud-flats
leak away without end,
achingly soft
towards
extinction



Published in:
‘SF SPECTRUM no.7’ (UK - October 1985)
‘ONOMA no.5’ (Belgium - September 1988)
‘PURPLE PATCH no.44’ (UK - November 1990)
In anthologies:
‘RHYSLING ANTHOLOGY / BEST SF POETRY OF 1985’
(USA - September 1986)
‘POLY: NEW SPECULATIVE WRITING’
anthology Ocean View Books - June 1989 - USA
(this poem singled out for review and extensively quoted by
Steve Rasnic Tem in ‘BLOOMSBURY REVIEW’ Sept/Oct 1987)
‘DREAMERS ON THE SEA OF FATE:
AN ANTHOLOGY OF SF POETRY’
Sol Publications - edit Steve Sneyd (UK - Aug 1999)
And in personal collection:
‘EUROSHIMA MON AMOUR’ Hilltop Press
(UK- Oct 2000)