The Purpose of Reality: Lunar by Steve Simpson

 

Release date: September 6, 2022

Subgenre: Poetry collection

 

About The Purpose of Reality: Lunar:

 

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.

 

Excerpt:

 

The Rewound World

Oh Deija, if you ever were,

if you ever were right now,

would my words mean anything?

I cannot speak your mother tongue:

the language of the undimensioned realms,

your modality of erasure, from a place

where words are silent.

 

Once, nearby, and long before, there were corners

where the dust met beams of light,

years when thoughts were more than ululations,

when the winds blew gently through the forests,

and sunroads ran ahead in charms and spangles.

Reductio ad Absurdum

The demolition of the earth,

it came and went,

and I found employment

as a landscape gardener,

painting scissors purple

and planting them in furrows—

consolation for the homesick Martians.

 

Soon enough, the capricious blue invaders

lost interest in our planet,

decided Venus might be worth a go.

 

Now I travel through the future’s barrens,

where even the horizon’s shimmer

can’t remember water, and where

the wind-torn atmosphere,

spinning free through nights and days,

no longer cares for planetary rotation.

 

Although there’s no unlearning

what’s held close against the inner ether,

I don’t remember how I came to be here.

 

Ruled meaning has petered out,

and all that’s left is advertorial aphorisms,

and the knowledge that I’m a failure

of my own imagination.

 

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About Steve Simpson: 

Steve Simpson lives in Sydney, and he’s never been able to work out exactly what he does, although he would probably feed the cat if he had one. His poetry and short stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, and in the visual arts, works created with his image evolution software have been shown at several exhibitions. In the sciences, he’s published over 200 research papers, most recently in clinical neurology, where he’s developed a unique system for visualising mental states via EEG. Awards include the Peter Doherty Innovation Prize, for technology to make vehicles safer. 

 

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