SATELLITE
A dark Christmas beat poem
By
Eddie White
It was a town built on tacky souvenirs,
Christmas sneers.
Imported knick-knacks deported from countries that wouldn’t, didn’t, couldn’t believe in naked, bearded messiahs.
Hacksaws, stalagmites and a stalleg-might just fall and impale you.
An old lady slips on the sleet laminated street,
Like a fat little bird flapping her arms.
Frostbite.
Frozen garbage.
Burnt chestnuts.
Rats threw themselves in front of subways in hope of being re-incarnated as something other than… rats.
Tonsillitis choirs that coughed like off-key greeting cards.
Spray-on snow that caused lung cancer.
Synthetic striped candy canes that contained sinister colouring agents.
On a city rooftop, perched like a suicidal angel on a xmas treetop,
A drunken, dyslexic hobo is dressed as Snata Cluas.
Thinks he can fly.
With no sleigh
No sled.
No magic. Just madness.
Snowflakes flutter to the ground like crystalised, hypnotized, dying white butterflies.
The vagrant jumps…
…. And hits the ground like a scarlet sack of shit and stale xmas hams.
His head, an egg. Cracked, spilled, embarrassing.
A turkey.
Stuffing all loose.
Cranberry halo.
Father listless.
Rushed to the hospital… Well, not rushed, but taken.
Metal plate inserted.
A cheaper model. Factory 3rd. Sewn up. Spat back out the door.
Robo-Hobo.
Still dyslexic and poor.
A wired jaw.
Unable to sing or swallow or cheer a ho-ho-ho.
Wandering the street, anaesthetised, pickled…
… In a jar of his own post-operative confusion.
Do not operate heavy machinery.
His cotton wool beard, smeared with a hemorrhage red
Stitches and staples, bulldog clips biting down to stop the bleeding.
He can hear things. Songs and sounds.
Not of this world, but that one. Up there, out there.
Past a TV store.
They fizz and fuzz and turn to alien broadcasts beamed via his aluminum scalp.
Vivid images far, from beyond tinsel and Styrofoam stars
He, a human conductor of intergalactic cable TV.
Passing car adios crackle and babble a language foreign to the most foreign of foreigners,
In some higher pitch, some lower octave, some middle ear.
Cats scream, dogs whine, car alarms convulse.
In the houses, screens are scrambled. images appear. It’s not a holiday up there.
People stare into their boxes at the unfamiliar faces on unfamiliar heads.
With familiar pupils.
News broadcasters, presenters, salesman from an orb beyond the sun.
They forget jolly bearded men owned by soda pop corporations,
They forget overworked and underpaid elf workers of the inhospitable Arctic
And horned quadrupeds with unconfirmed flying abilities.
They forget fake idols in their likenesses made of snow, with irrelevant hats and vegetarian noses. Shepherds and stars and mangers and births, deaths and re-births.
As they look into the eyes of another life form, unable to blink or think.
They feel miniature, microscopic. Amoebas in clothes roaming the earth.
Shopping, eating, drinking. Smoking. Snoring. Ignoring.
For the first time since there was light in life there is no light
… but the squares of images locking the world’s gazes
Invasions cease. Religions are mute. Mankind is a baby.
Staring, wide-eyed at the cosmic mobile that hangs above.
The walking antenna dribbles across the street in a daze.
His brain awash with static and noise and volume.
Banging the side of his head with his hand like some sort of jammed toaster.
The World, caught in the blissful moment before a sneeze…
-Whack!
Smack! Crack!
Slap!
Flat on his back.
Head off vertical hold.
A truck screams and halts. No Traffic lights.
Just that moony thing and those starry things.
The Broadcast from Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn?
A bizarre iridescent test pattern.
Technical Difficulties.
White Fuzz
White fluff
Blood.
Closed.
Black.
Zuuump!
The city’s power defibrillated.
TV’s return to their normal programming.
Humanity returns to its normal programming
Traffic lights blink awake from their momentary paralysis.
Xmas lights and neon brights return to their regular epileptic rhythms.
The World rotates again, hearts thicken, The Earth turning, cooking itself like a rotisserie chicken.
The satellite lies sprawled on the road. Paused. Like a Pollock painting. As Xmas proceeds untainted around his empty head.
THE END
