On the ‘Red Planet’
fourth planet from the Sun
there is a lonely jukebox
dusty red with oxide.
How it got there nobody knows.
Perhaps a lonely astronaut visiting
will play
Lionel Ritchie for the wife he misses
or Bon Jovi?
Whitney Houston?
For the girl of his dreams.
Is it possible to live without nostalgia?
Now in the Autumn of my years
when memories feel like dried up leaves
all crumpled and with a broken spine
won’t see the winter out,
my strong emotions are in the basement
of the museum.
My tired watery eyes drip like a faulty tap
and my bones creak like a wooden ratchet
that turn the sails of a windmill,
as Leonard sang “I ache in the places where I
used to play”
But like a fairground ride I can for a shilling
be switched on,
activated.
The Mars jukebox will take my coins and dust
down a tune or two.
A song for love and one for sadness.
Tunes drifting in space like multi-coloured odd
Socks.
A clown’s techno coloured costume.
A lover’s luminous poem.
A sad man’s gaze down into a river.
‘Waterloo Sunset’
‘Wild Thing’
‘Favourite Things’
‘Foxy Lady’
‘Dancing Queen’
On Mars the jukebox is silent
waiting for a coin.
Happy in the knowledge that nostalgia
never dies…
Like matter it can only be converted into
something new
there on Mars
.
Malcolm Paul
,