Joel Ephraims: ‘Your Receipt, Madame!’

Your Receipt, Madame!

I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals.
—Roland Barthes, Mythologies

The Ferrari’s presence is hot razors
star shooting
the nebulous ice cream streets.
In its pristine, multi-directional mirrors
we are background rivers
in an AM frequency radio show.
It rests in a sleek, solid contrast
to the gelatinous spirits of history,
which, followed by animals
they can’t dissuade,
have stopped to turn back
to look at me,
sugar-saturated,
dressed in sugar-crusted copies
of my superpoet clothes
with countless copies
of my current blank look,
the same but shadow swarmed
by unlabellable, labelling birds.
It’s the mirage of a dream cat
having had concrete poured in
and metal poured over
at star-comparable temperatures,
panels of dark sky inserted
before a generous sunset cooling.
First stretched, then rectangled
and patted masterfully down
to be reminiscent
of an angled, mountain-jutting home,
a three-quarters open,
horizontal cat-eye
that sleep-peering out
of the mountain’s flank
looks as natural
to it as grass and rocks,
as natural as a Jack, Queen or King
proffered from a suave gambler’s hand,
sleeve open,
rim flickering in sea wind—
Hey look!
A bundle of birds has flown down
onto its bonnet!
Its quasi-sermon has begun!
“It’s a sure example
of the crisp, universal,
exemplary form,
ever-plussed on our booming swell.
Encompassing but retractable,
head-rest screened,
more than fully wifi compatible,
glass algorithm populated,
hibernation and action coiled,
its potential awesome speed
underscoring a dependable and
sustaining repeatability,
like that we go hyperbolic
to the movies for.
We know we can be assured
of our stalactite sleep
in laser bubble snow.
The red saucers it shoots off
are inexhaustible,
rattling our single-mould tea cups,
light speed clock-faced
without obsolete features,
breathing imperceptibly,
knocking our hungry socks
down dirigible flights of stairs.
Our past, present and future
millenniums of lives,
our subplots and story boards
comic book and live action,
are amphitheatred in the speck-less,
safe deep space of its tinting
even as it snakes and ladders
these flash-acrobat streets,
its two cool slant-eyes
rolling and scooping us nicely.
An anchor, an angel brain,
dear brethren,
for a stable dimensionality
between the upheave
of tectonic planes.”

*

I have been informed
of the possibility of there being
alien megastructures
orbiting the star KIC 8462852
which lies between
the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.
They might serve the
purpose of harvesting energy
from an alien civilisation’s sun,
a civilisation without
the need for rubies, TV,
money or pets perhaps.

Let’s fly there.

Our ship is built from shade
and moves sporadically
like Slavoj Zizek’s hands mid-lecture.
The spirits and birds
turn into flashed streaks of blue light.
The Ferrari clanks against us
through some mysterious force of magnetisation,
then falls away.

We reach our destination.

As our eyes adjust
to the light of a new civilisation
we look back to Earth
like Ra to his forgotten childhood mittens,
zooming in to what to naked sight
would only be an asterisk’s flickering ghost
and see huge corporations
and banks
stopping distracted in the street
one by one by one
to quickly inspect
what looks like a giant burnt and mangled leaf,
bent like a discerning eyebrow.

Joel Ephraims