God’s Prototypes.

The ribcage is a paladin’s breastplate holding together a combustion engine.
The hair is spun from Chinese silkworms and dyed with larkspur.
The eyes are penny telescopes looking out over the Cote D’Azur.
The skull is a divers helmet.

The spine is a coiled spring from Nikolai Tesla’s electromagnetic experiments.
The lungs are accordions of dead drunk shantymen.
The mouth is a plughole the water washes down anti-clockwise.
The heart is a dynamo from Budapest.

The tongue is that of the bull Granadino
that killed the matador Ignacio Sánchez Mejías.
The arms are lightning conductors.
The ears are French Horns.
The throat is a whiskey dispenser.

The torso is a cello.
The pupils are tiny gyroscopes.
The mouth is a mattress sliced open
by Vichy police
out of which pours ten-franc pieces.

To alleviate his boredom,
God assembled prototype man and woman
from everything that could ever be,
using all of time as a scrapyard.

He looked at them with his artist’s eye.
Couldn’t judge, been looking at them too long.
Slept on it and awoke
to find he hated them venomously and hid them away
in some viaduct beneath time.
With haste and frustration
he then doodled into existence
the human race one languid weekend
from soil and stars.

A brain with more electrical impulses
than all the world's telephones.
A body with enough brimstone to make 2000 matches.
Enough blood vessels to stretch
right round the earth not once but twice,
over mountain ranges, rivers, fields
tied in a knot somewhere
deep in the Amazon.

Copyright Darran Anderson 2006