Tuesday 26 November 2013


NEEDS MUST

I took my love for you and drowned it like a kitten
But I will still talk to you now and then.
As the body rots inside, only the soft fur is left.
But I remember that look from those eyes;
The irretrievable flicker of life is remembered
But lost in the tight mouth and eyes of death.

Can we expect civility when cymbals crash in mind?
Why split open the wound sewn so tight?
When might a relaxed air rest between us?
How long can the anguish crush each move?
When are the embers too cold to be rekindled?

Who can resurrect my pretty soft drowned kitten love?


Colin Morgan  

Monday 18 November 2013



IT’S EASY

Welcome, sundry Humans, to spaceship Enlightenment.
Your journey will take approximately two of your Earth minutes.
Please sit and relax a moment.

Now, look out forwards through the window at the space station centre point marker.
Close your eyes.
Imagine the length of the distance you have just seen, as you have been taught.
Now shrink yourself inside your head until you are a black dot.
Feel that you are weightless, tiny, out of space and time.

Now remember the distance to the marker and think of each one of your ten fingers.
Increase the distance in your head by ten times.
Hold it.

Think of your ten fingers and increase it again.
Hold this distance – the baseline of about ten kilometres is achieved
Imagine and increase again by ten.
Now imagine your line of ten in a cube of one thousand – ten by ten by ten.
Pull them in your mind and string them out row after row.
See the thousand and multiply your distance by this factor.
Hold the distance.

Think of the thousand dots in a cube again, line them up and multiply the distance again.
See the length of the line.
The distance you can see is the distance from your Sun to the Earth.
See the thousand and extend the line.
See 500 and extend the line.  Add ten more.
Good.
Hold it.

Now take your mind point and ‘step’ across to the other end.
Hold it.

Feel that you are complete.
Hold it.
If anyone is lost at the moment, please hold up your hand. Good.

Now you are ready - let go of the line from your head – feel the snap.
Good - open your eyes.

We have arrived in your solar system, your shuttle craft will be leaving shortly for Earth.
Please check your calendar has adjusted correctly:  Today is November 17th 2113.
Please take all your belongings with you as you leave the spacecraft.
Virgin Hops thanks you for your custom.
We look forward to seeing you again soon.


Colin Morgan  

Tuesday 12 November 2013


HELLO FROM 2040

I am the first baby Martian,
My parents as familiar in metal suits as dressing gowns,
My world a hemisphere of tech.

My head is light, my limbs slender - I am their Space Monkey.
I would bound around like a lemur, but there isn’t the space.

Oh, and your Earth is a star.
I can find you in the sky - a blue point of light against the cosmic pin pricks.
So many stories I have heard – open air, China, Pitcairn Island, camels, London, dragons. Oceans, flowers, rain. 
And people.

Should you ever fall out among yourselves and stop sending our cargo here
we will watch your silent star in the night,
until our eyes close too.


Colin Morgan  

Tuesday 5 November 2013


500 Words on the Inside of a Ping Pong Ball

This is a space not often contemplated
but moved violently at our whim and to the rules of flight.
As I look, I can imagine the space in there where organic molecules fly,
Looking for a way out from a serious continuity.

Is it dark inside? During the day I think not.
There is a smooth light, whitened, dull as toothache.
It hovers.
At night there is a black stone within, powder soft.
It listens.

Travel round with me now on the inside, that eggshell curve so unnatural to a bird - nothing points the way.
Tap and try to escape, from our holy white blankness,
Into the roaring, jagged, fierceness of fractal space.
We are dimensionless in here
and bound as if by a forgotten treaty.
We are glum
and do not even nod to each other across the space within.

Wait.
There is a ridge, an equator.
We are of two halves,
sealed like lips of the grim.

This line, this circle of orientation, holds promise and fuels our fantasies
of outside glamorous disasters,
of luck, and of an end to anything.
We that are without end, salute you that are without.

This is harder than I thought.
There is a tiny space to describe.
It dwarfs an ant – an ant being its opposite;
all tiny edges, limbs, decisions, and work to carry a future.

The inside of the ball lacks a voice, like an extinct race.
The inside surface would offer resistance but cannot be accessed, just out of sight.
The inside is there now, but for all time?
No, it can and will be violated.

A stamping foot crushes a demon’s smile into the roundness.
A sharp probe penetrates into the space like a death seen from the inside.
The atmosphere of the ball so punctured becomes mingled with our crowded air.  Shouts and alarms reach the interior unbridled.

There is a new dawn with no separation.
This unnatural object has a manufactured odour.
An aromatic pong, acrid and alarming,
emanates from within a punctured ball.

There has been no escape since its capture
at the very moment of moulding
in that lightest of factories
in some unimagined distant land.

The world over, there are these little spaces, like in our hearts; so quiet.
Lying in drawers, out on tables, or somewhere and out of sight.
They are waiting to be taken and bounced around at our whim.
We need not be careful, there are plenty to go round:  We are in control.

In the course of time, the inside smoothness might give way to a coarse hairiness.  This would be so inappropriate.
It would make the ball heavier, darker, unreasonable, prone to violence, not to be trusted.
It will not happen.

There are no corners.
There is nowhere to hide.
I am running out of ideas and, looking in for inspiration, I find a small blank space behind my eyes.
I blink and we are done.


Colin Morgan