Jigsaw Panda Series

From my book Jigsaw Panda Prays to Mushroom Death God and Other Adventures. A Surrealist response to the last few years through the eyes of Jigsaw Panda

The lobster pot of time

It will stroke you with its pincers,
caress you in its grip,
lull you into lethargy,
lest you want a nasty nip.
As you sink into a torpor, acquiesce without a cause,
as oblivion engulfs you still cradled in its claws.

Do you suffocate in silence, or blow away the smoke?
If you peep behind the misty veil
can you bear the cosmic joke?
You’ll see you’re going nowhere.
There’s no reason.
There’s no rhyme.
Just circular momentum
in a lobster-pot of time.

Jigsaw Panda Prays To Mushroom Death God

A stranger in a wasteland, a twisted warp-drive view.
The landscape looks familiar,
it’s the scenery that’s new.

You feel like you’re an alien,
a psychonaut in space,
with pulsating paranoia
at the fear you need to face.

Ensorcelled in a web of words,
you’re nudged, cajoled and led
by dystopic dialectic
from a disembodied head.

Have you just read too much sci-fi?
Or simply lost the plot?
Is there time to travel backwards
to the land that time forgot?

Having come back from the future,
you don’t like what you’ve seen.
The system’s set to self-destruct.
There’s a ghost in the machine.

The warning lights are flashing red.
Put pressure on the brake.
Control-delete, abort, eject.
Now scream yourself awake.

Scream Yourself Awake

Influences for this series

Salvador Dali’s Lobster Telephone
Dystopian sci-fi novels
Theme Tune: Heathaze track from Genesis’s Duke album (1980)