It’s dark where you are. We’ve just travelled five tunnels,

the best I can manage, poor simulation.

We waved to each other in the window:

see you better, she laughed, then the light comes fast;

bridges are only little darks,

barely time to hear your heart flutter.

 

The one at Play Planet is circular yellow,

as bright as e-numbers and leads to the zigzag,

a thing like a mangle and manholes

the adults all struggle to squeeze through.  

If You’re Gonna Travel Far played

an hour and a quarter, there ought to be

some kind of law. She pissed two pair of pants

and a table bounced on her bonce just before Great Malvern.

 

She howled and cried and stamped her feet;

I practised my distraction technique -

thought of all the dead men

and the dead time they spent

inserting dark into the Malvern Hills

and all of this earth you’re sleeping down under.