The Three Flights of a Love Less-Used
By Liam Murray, illustrated by Ruby Moore
Natural body forces babe, we’ve got them by the bucket,
Love’s an astrally projecting inter-planetary rocket,
We’ve got tall tails and circle like two orbitary commets
No-one said we’d take to flight, but Lord, I think we’ve got it
Like gravity, it was all a lie
The moon, a hole upon the sky
The Earth a flat
The Sun a sharp
Pluto, a major planet
Unaccounted solar systems seem to offer nothing
But exploring new forms of life was never our short-coming.
The dark side of the Earth still prays that moon-men land upon it.
The bright side of the universe is calling, so we’re on it
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We then launch into a shadow puppet display
To audiences here and the depths of outer space
Our well-rehearsed, rib-tickling send-up
Has turned the moon into a great, big orbiting donut,
Making the juvenile stars snigger with glee,
As the waves lap with tears upon the shore.
Morosely, our lunar friend rises to the stage,
In a solemn satire of a naked Sun shorn of all its rays.
Doubtless, he’ll see the bright side.
But the Earth is busy riling,
As the wind draws the curtain,
And we depart the theatre with grace
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We are here
No transmissions
And no sound contact
Could be want of our will, if only
Just calculations
And no communication
With base.
It started with a light
But look at us now.
Painfully still,
In the darkest phase of our flight.
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Liam Murray is a translator, editor and haunter of coffee shops who is happy as long as he doesn't have to leave the Beyoğlu district for too long.
Ruby Moore is an artist who lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. In 2014, she founded Creatives-Sofia, an international creative collective and is co-founder of Artist Tree Sofia, a community art studio creating work in the city.
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