stone acoustics

from a collection entitled "Let's Get Killed" by Gary Knapton

 

In our flats, at the foot of the atrium, there's a pebble garden

And at the corner of each of my weekends I like to find time to play Stone Acoustics

Dropping a coin from the sixth floor directly down onto it makes a sound like cash tills

(the old type) but no patterns

Once, I dispatched my copy of Gullivers' Travels

Besides making a hole in the pebbles the shape of Chile I got the sound of a flying kick from Paul in Tekken 2

Then, last Friday, I found a clothes horse by the chute

Introducing variables I both dropped it and later threw it up ten feet leading into the fall

The Red Sea as it approaches the Gulf of Aden smiled up at me

Though that's water, not a land mass

Does it count more or less?

But with more impact I got India from Hyderabad down to the Maldives, minus Sri Lanka

The sounds were similar on both occasions

A lively assortment of pebble-based cracks and my neighbours yelling

The energy of the human protest complemented the physics

Poetry, like science, is motion

Einstein said gravity informs mass, though in my case, a little longer and my informants would have been altogether less inanimate

This week I aim to invest in a better globe and have a think about more height

I fancy a stab at something wooden at terminal velocity

It's important to think big. 

Think continental.

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