“I can see you want to,” says Miss Polkinghorne.
And I do. I smile as I hold open the pages of my Early Reader.
Which is when it happens: ‘Janet can run and John can too,’
But I myself am pinned to the desk by the photographer’s flash.
And I see the sign:
-Last black hole for 20 billion light years-
Wow!
I throw the book into my spaceship’s airlock,
Press eject, watch my childhood disappear over the event horizon.
And engage hyperdrive.
I’m five-years-old.

Goodbye Janet, goodbye John,
See me, see me, see me run,
I wonder how a five-year-old can read and fly a spaceship.
One day we will know,
In the meantime, on and on and off we go.

At eighteen, it has become obvious to me that time is not linear:
From my bubble-topped intergalacticar I can see both past and future.
They lay before me like an unfurled map of everything,
Which is how I‘m able to read the previously mentioned sign.
I have, on several occasions, been waved down on the intergalactic highway
By someone I believe to be Miss Polkinghorne.
I hadn’t stopped, “I could see you wanted to,” she would have said,
Then she’d have asked me where I was going
And I wouldn’t have known,

At twenty-five, I arrive.
As advertised, it’s a world without end.

At thirty-six, or thereabouts, I discover the Instantaneous Transfer of Matter:
Cataphlatrix Six appears suddenly in the co-pilot’s seat and wonderful she is.
However, our love-making organs don’t conjoin as well or as often as I would like
And there are other issues, (steering wheel matters).
Soon our happiness is in tatters and she begins to not-so-instantaneously fade away.
“Given you can see into the future, this must come as no surprise,” she gurgles
And is gone
Before I can tell her of the parallel universe I was counting on,
The one in which we were to live happily-ever-after as dad and mum
To a little Janet and a little John
But on and on I run.

Happy birthday to me, I’m one hundred-and-three.
The leak in the airlock blows out the candle.

By the time I turn a thousand, the gift of foresight has lost its appeal,
Every day the same surprise, and I switch off the engine.
Then I see this new black hole and realise how far I’ve come.
I pop on through.
There’s nothing here but perfect peace
And my old Janet and John book.
Which must have wormholed its way through time and space.
Look. Look. They both can run.
Good luck Janet,
Good luck John,
On and on and on and on.

Perhaps at my old school they’ve still not solved
The mystery of the boy who disappeared.
And yet I was an open book
So I’d be surprised,
Surely someone saw the faraway look in my eyes.

This morning in the park
The toes of baby giants have sprouted through the grass.  
They’re mushrooms, of course,
But it’s a cheery thought.
I’ll pass it on.

Not to Gwendolyn:
She waves a hand, then, head down, hurries past
In pursuit of late husband Edwin, always the quicker walker.
Edwin whose mind turned to sand and trickled, egg-timer-wise,
To his boots.
He left behind the trail she follows every day.
Edwin, who, towards the end, asked Gwendolyn  to hold his ankles
While he stood on his head.
A lovely bloke,
He liked a joke and would have laughed at my mushroom thing.

No point in telling Percy Pointer,
Ordering his mobile phone about again.
I’m sure there’s no-one on the other end.
Perhaps he thinks the same of me.
He might be right.

Too early for John and his dog
He’ll still be at church talking to God.
John that is, the dog’s agnostic.

Ah, this little schoolgirl I’ve seen before.
No mum today, just her dolly and a packed lunch,
Mother’s Pride no doubt,
Beautifully turned out,
A brand new shadow every day.
This morning she’s trying to stamp on its head.
‘Ha! Only hurting yourself!’ I would have suggested,
If I’d wanted to get arrested.

This jogger has wires trailing from his ears
He sings “Doo-be-doo”,
I wonder if  the one wire goes straight through
But he is past before I can ask
And I’m beginning to lose heart.

Then suddenly, out of thin air, she’s there,
My ex... Invisible Jennifer.
(I don’t see her anymore).
What brings her here?
“Why,” she says, “this gorgeous morning!
The greenery,
The scenery
And have you seen the toes of the baby giants?
They’re mushrooms of course but I thought...”

I think you’ll find that that was me, I try to say
But can’t get a word in edgeways.

Oh well, it wasn’t all that funny after all.
Let’s ****** off before she drives us up the wall
Jenny
One imaginary friend too many.

“And who are you my dear?” I hear her shout.
“Are you with misery guts?”

I think she’s talking to you.

Do not open
A parcel bomb
Or an email from Nigeria
A phial of the diphtheria virus
A conversation with a serial killer
Or a joint account with Godzilla
Don’t open my diary
Or a pub in Dubai or
The door to a Seventh Day Adventist
Your heart to a Muslim fundamentalist
Your legs to a Jewish dentist
Your knees to a bee
Don’t open a message in a bottle if it’s come from overseas
Or your bowels in Cecil Gee's
A can of worms
The seal on a pharaoh’s tomb
Old wounds
Or your mouth to speak ill of the dead
Some things are best left unsaid.

Having said all that
Sometimes it’s fun to do
Things that are bad for you
This is a **** it list
Though I’d give the parcel bomb a miss.

I am a clown,
People laugh at the things I do.

Walk a mile in my shoes.

Henri the stage contortionist
Would twist his body into exotic shapes
Before suddenly straightening
An act which brought the sort of thunderous applause
That might have been denied him
Had he performed it in reverse
Which is what he sometimes did in rehearsals.

It’s Winter and the trees are bare
Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?