I sit out here in No Man’s Land
where humans are an alien race
whose minds I cannot understand.
My zigzag brain cannot keep pace
with all these transdimensional words
you spray across my helpless face,
that drone like fifty hummingbirds
from your anaesthetic pipe
and turn my brain to lemon curd.
All I can hear is “Overripe
encryption standard implements
of catalytic prototype
for viable equivalents
of upward-trending demographic
low-cost programmed increments
of calibrated antistatic,
why aren’t you listening to me?
What’s wrong with you, you dozy spastic?”
Perhaps, my friend, I just don’t see
your world as some inspiring empire
of work and cash and liberty.
Perhaps, for me, this world’s a tripwire
behind which soldiers of the dull
rattle off their jargoned shellfire.
The years bring an emotional cull
and every woman now seems bland.
Their otherness bores through my skull.
I sit out here in No Man’s Land
where humans are an alien race
whose lives I cannot understand.
I cannot sense the tiniest trace
of the secret people won’t reveal,
that builds and welds a deep embrace.
I cannot see or hear or feel
whichever force it is that drives
two hearts into a bond of steel.
No matter how my spirit strives,
I cannot grasp the fruit-clumped branch
on which the rest of humanity thrives.
Perhaps an enigmatic bunch
of spirits wait beyond death’s fence
for me to spread my arms and launch.
Perhaps they wait in cold suspense
out on the plains of purgatory
for me to seize a newfound sense.
Perhaps this life’s a nursery
and gardener-gods watch how we thrash
out pain from their observatory.
In the back garden squirrels dash
from elm to elm, transporting shards
of chocolate to their moss-rimmed cache.
I envy how they leap for yards
around their world, so bold and grand,
and play no civilised charades.
I sit out here in No Man’s Land
where humans are an alien race
whose joys I cannot understand.
