Simon Sellars: Sleepy Brain Archives

by Brett Hale

image by Vasilios Billy Mavreas

WARNING:
The tamper-proof grog-doggerel has no new master,
but a stronger, longer leash

So they’re out there after all,
imperious impersonators aside
(Elvis being responsible for more
than just Rock ‘n’ Roll);
the alien life forms are in positions
to influence and sustain
the Military-Industrial complex.

Careerists,
they have no plans to take over,
only the theatre of war allows them
to violate what we hold sacred
to our doppelgangered heart.

Permission to assume
pseudo-humanity’s wrath?

Granted, although the wont of some is to pretend
that General Mike Jackson was
never a black-and-white minstrel
of super four stars;
only the Balkans have
that much to answer for.

The body of evidence is overwhelming
in the stench of its burnt-out flesh,
yet lasers aren’t supposed to leave a trace
of one’s former misdemeanours.

Identity is evidently something
to be exploded,
while abduction as a past-time shifts
the onus onto conspiratorial theories,
conjuring tricks to conceal the frightening truth:
the phantom menace doesn’t require
an elibun princess to rescue
a flagging career, as Fisher Price is right
to bid on equal terms with exponents
of trade mark warfare.
You can Ja Ja Gabore me the banks on that.

Oh, and what a drag for poor
ol’ space Ace,
reconciled with his glamorous fate
(once past),
to stumble across the stage pyrotechnically
until the last sweaty greenback has been
wrung from the army’s fan base.

As media-driven encounters go,
it’s too close for comfort
from the teleport of reason alone;
when the next Ice Age will see to it
that we terrestrials freeze and fail
to finally phone our meteor-prone home.