The Purpose of Reality: Lunar

By Steve Simpson

Steve Simpson's remarkable collection of poetry and illustrations is dream-like, playful and wildly inventive. Here is a selection of the beings within:The detective, who carelessly morphs into birds and insects, and cannot choose between brooding and moping, until a stylish grayscale client with retrolescent highlights appears.Proteus, Homo Sapiens Beta, who discovered fire and put it out, who created a rudimentary encyclopedia that he pedaled across Gondwanaland on weekends.Millie, the intrepid librarian, unperturbed by the Dark Solarian or the fearsome kilowasp, who insists that her underlings pay for bibliotactical losses.The adorable Deija Vitro, Martian Princess of Glass, whose fans line the streets waving Windex spray. Wollongong will never be the same, because her armies have razed it to the ground. “No one will miss it,” she reassured an infatuated follower.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Meerkat Press
• Release date: Sep 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781946154736

Book preview

PerfectAlunar_cover-rgb.pngThe Purpose of Reality: Lunar

THE PURPOSE OF REALITY: LUNAR. Copyright © 2022 by Steve Simpson.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For information, contact Meerkat Press at [e-mail].

ISBN-13 978-1-946154-71-2 (Cloth)

ISBN-13 978-1-946154-72-9 (Paperback)

ISBN-13 978-1-946154-73-6 (eBook)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Cover art by Steve Simpson

llustrations by Steve Simpson

Book design by Tricia Reeks

Printed in the United States of America

Published in the United States of America by

Meerkat Press, LLC, Asheville, North Carolina

www.meerkatpress.com

To the memory of the Australian Poet Michael Dransfield (1948–1973), whose achievements in his tragically short life were a luminous inspiration.

Contents

Anachrônia

The Rest of Me

Sereia

The Detective

The Return of Doctor Petal

The Egg in White

When We’re Real

The Perfidy of Memory

Requiem for the Toaster

Homo Sapiens, Beta Release

When will the mowing be done?

Solar Disenchantment

Time and Air

Deija Vitro

The Martian Stereomart

The End of the First Inter-Apocalyptic Era

Omégaville

Minimum Safe Distance

The Rewound World

The Cat

Paperback Rider

About the Author

Index of Illustrations

Simpson’s visual evolution engine was used in the creation of the illustrations.

Anachrônia: The background was generated from a 7-minute recording of Simpson’s EEG (T7 and T8 electrodes).

Sereia: The textures were created with Vegemite™. No fish were harmed in the making of this artwork.

Nameless Peccadilloes: Some elements were generated from 32-second signatures of Simpson’s EEG.

Anachrônia

Sereia

The Crystal City

In Wonderland

Divergent Evolution

Butterfly Plans

Buds of Nascent Universes

The Rewound World

Nameless Peccadilloes

That is Who We Are

Anachrônia

Once the sun was planetary,

with the earth, its moon.

Once mornings began in auroral mysteries,

and gravity’s rule was lighter than air.

Now the earth falls round the sun

and the moon around the earth,

but while our memories echo with violets

and fragrance, fragments of volition,

come with me, my friend.

Self-pity is a shoreline one

must not walk a cappella.

Come with me,

and we’ll face our lives with living.

The tide of days never carried us,

its melody washes over us.

No sanctuary, no purity,

our shields and swords lie rusted

in the byways of the city’s neon.

Yet every chance encounter

led us here, and on will lead us

in the final dance.

Through the night, a DJ’s mellowed metal,

by the lyre, madrigals,

and in the sepia light of yesterdays,

we’ll admire dewy cobwebs

on statues in a garden,

raise rattling breakfast cups

to those who’ve flown afar,

and do the crossword, two across:

a crossroads

a crossing

to cross.

We’ve always known our ending waits

cretaceous on a chalky beach,

where the slate-gray skies

write white-horse lessons

on the blackboard sea—

the final class before our graduation.

But in these mortal moments,

when time is birdsong,

and the weather rests beneath a branch,

when distant evanescence hides in dreams,

come with me.

The Rest of Me

At the Café Économique,

they serve one class of patron,

one strength of resteamed coffee grounds,

a minor bird is hopping on a plastic olive branch,

and a mangy city cat is watching.

I’m seated at a graceless table

reading faded scrawls on a communal

paper napkin.

Some nights are filled with poison

and the morning has no tourniquet,

it seeps into the day.

I gaze across the unforgiving sea

at sunrise. My nets are in a tangle,

and I sail in fishless circles.

Some nights belong to the Marias—

Maresia and Maré. They command

the silvery fish to shine in spiral arms,

to cluster in the corners of my cabin.

I turn the napkin over.

So cold, their fallen light.

My schemes, my plans, my cravings

are Rorschach ink in their osmotic sky,

and yet they make the mornings honey sweet,

dress the winter sun in gaily colored knits,

in camouflaged ambivalence.

The rest has faded into coffee stains

and lipstick imprints, but angled in one corner,

two final words:

Goodbye, Renato¹

~/~

In the square outside, the march of busyness

arrives, departs, commutes, in buses, taxis,

and machines that I don’t recognize.

A wild wind is swelling, and grimy raindrops streak the café windows.

Von Kármán vortex streets are trailing through the crowds,

that run or huddle or comment on the weather

—its unexpected forcefulness—

and one by one they’re taken, swept aloft,

and gone.

~/~

Time passes, stays a while, I refill my coffee cup,

and notice there’s a change outside:

while the groundlings rise and vanish in the clouds,

another group descends.

A few land in the traffic and cause a snarl,

others come to the Économique

for coffee and a chat.

They cannot pay, they have no cash or cards

or clothes, but they open lines of credit.

A newcomer nods and seats herself nearby.

I make causal conversation

about our napkin and the weather,

about the curious cycle of events outside,

about living.

Could she possibly help me understand?

She does and I do.

She reconstructs the nightly sea:

its poisons and its sweets,

the fishing fleet and the two Marias,

Maresia and Maré,

the moon and her subservient stars.

Time’s a two-way street,

I’ve reached the future,

the mysteries of the present

are all behind me now.

In a while, I’ll notice the mobile phone

that’s pressed against her ear,

and wonder if I’m merely listening in,

irrelevant