Yeah This Will Work – Phil Dyer
This is the plan
I take a bowl of spiny crabs
Their scraping sounds like teeth on vertebrae
Calcareous and jagged
And as I slowly make a fist
Reflect
Then get to punching
Really just, you know
Go to town
And see the crusted shells explode
The briny pulp erupt from splintered shards
Under the unmarked skin of my knuckles
That done, I drain the soup, lick lips
And smash the bowl across my face
(Which could hurt, if performed incorrectly
By someone else)
Then study, like the fall of straws
The entrails of a ram
The stars,
These fragments as they spray, describing
Secret knowledge in their arcs
I’ll form new principles
And laugh to think I ever thought
That laziness and time
Could heal.
There is no problem here that can’t be solved by force
And by that point I think I’ll know
Exactly where I’m going wrong
And which heroic effort
Feat of strength
Or secret trick
Will stop it hurting
For five minutes.
Here we go.
Phil Dyer works as a scientist in Liverpool and tweets @ez_ozel.