Poet:
All that summer there had been a nagging, fretting wind
so that, even on the clearest days, visitors on the beach had huddled behind wind breaks
left early because of the fine sand
rasped and scarified bare burnt skin.
While the anxious surf sucked and sighed
In a tumbling tin shed in the corner of a field above the dunes,
Beneath the crackling humming pylons
Buried behind barbed wire and brambles
Beset by gulls by day and owls by night
Eamon Porktraddle wrestles with a bigger problem
Driven mad by the broken ring pull on his last can of Special Brew
Driven mad by the electricity in the air and the corrugated banging in the wind
Driven into darkness by the pictures he is seeing in his head
Driven into darkness by the visions he seeing on the screen in front of him
Dreams of life and death
And everything in between
Something just out of reach
Like the Special Brew inside its can
Something is fundamentally worng
Porktraddle:
Bloody bastards, bloody can.
Bloody Gulls and bloody owls,
Bloody sheets and bloody towels
Bloody spades and bloody trowels
Newton Einstein Heisenberg Heineken
Newton Heineken Heisenberg Einstein
Heineken Heisenberg Einstein Newton
Heinekin Brexit Trump and Putin
Poet:
This is the planet Kyarra where the voices of the mermaids sing to him when he can’t sleep
Mermaids:
Papa November, papa November, Papa November
Poet:
From this distant place he looks down on the whole of the universe and spies the tiny glow of the third planet circling an insignificant star in the remotest galaxy.
He watches horrified by the seven and a quarter billion that inhabit that place
Porktraddle:
I can see you. I can see what you’re up to.
Poet:
Even from up here a foetid stink fills his nostrils making him gag and retch.
He cannot decide whether it is him or them. The owls, the gulls or the stinky billions
Is it Jeyes fluid and pine mountain fresh lavatory cleaner
Or the warm pustulence of his crawling underarm lice pits.
Porktraddle:
I smell.
Poet:
He smells Fear filling the air with its rank stench.
Fear crackles and sparks with an unearthly blue glow.
Fear of failure, fear of stuff, fear of washing machines, and fridges and Breville sandwich makers.
Fear of Dyson vacuum cleaners.
He hears people crying. They fear death with no-one at their bedside.
They fear fire and thought and hope and dreams.
They fear the darkness at night and the sunlight at dawn.
They fear themselves and they fear other people.
They fear inadequacy and knowledge.
They fear the past and their trivial misdemeanours, misjudgements and debts that might catch up with them one day.
They fear the future with its tumbling into chaos
They fear now because it is neither the future not the past
And they are giddy with the nowness
They fear knowledge.
They fear truth.
They fear reality.
They fear the blame that is accruing to them for their inadequacies.
Most of all they fear emptiness.
They are terrified of silence, of loss.
He listens to the seven odd stinky billion that inhabit the planet.
Porktraddle:
I can hear you.
And the 7 and a quarter billion said:
We’re a short time living and a long time dead
Poet:
“Are we living in a membrane, or dancing on the end of a piece of string? A multiverse or an omniverse or a metaverse or a xenoverse?
The seven odd billion:
Give us this day our daily bread
We’re a short time living and a long time dead
Poet:
And where in this crazy stinking shifting expanding, contracting, living dying, FaceBook, tweeting, Googling, Flickering, Fucking Universe do we go for an answer?
Is it out there. Somewhere? Anywhere?
The seven odd billion:
When we were at school we were all mislead
We’re a short time living and a long time dead
Seven and a quarter billion:
We were told in school
To believe in Newton
And The whole of infinite universe of time and space will be predictable
We can live our life on rails
And sigh with pleasure at the end
A job well done.
But chaos theory, string theory, membranes
Throw up walls, gates, barbed wire entanglements
We are in the control of forces entirely outside our comprehension.
The equations no longer make any sense and nobody know what we’re meant to do about it.
The seven odd billion:
When we were at school we were all mislead
We’re a short time living and a long time dead
Poet:
Truth is now an elastic membrane that stretches and reforms”
Porktraddle extends his finger and aims at the people one by one.
Porktraddle:
“They cried to me in their hour of need and I did not answer them.” She took all the money and the kids. She took the house, left me on the skids. Listen to me: There are no owls. There are no owls
Porktraddle:
I’ll put you all out of your misery. I ought to. That would be kindest.
Poet:
The world he knows is slipping away from its inhabitants.
There is one last assay to be carried out. One last test of himself and the Universe. One more sacrifice
Porktraddle:
If only I could think what it is
Poet:
If only he could drown out the voices of the mermaids.
Mermaids:
Papa November, Papa November, Papa November
(Continue underneath to the end of this section)
The age of Reason is over. Truth is stretched as tight as a drum.
Drum drumming war
Drumming hate
Drumming fear.
The pylons over head crackle with blue light
The voices of the mermaids howl in the wires.
Thunder blazes.
Beneath the paper thin taut surface
He can see the pullulating mass of rottenness
That promises to burst through at any moment
Porktraddle retches and gags
And at last he finds a screwdriver to open the can and he can sleep soundly.
Porktraddle:
Oh fuck. It’s gone all over me.
Life and Death and Everything in Between 
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