Plum Spang in the Heart of a Distant Galaxy

There are some words and phrases

to which I would happily take a hammer

…no, wait…

an imposing (or is it ‘impressive’?)

ornamental axe.

 

Plum spang?

I hadn’t realised just how

utterly detestable I find

the yoking of these two words,

 

until I found myself awake at 4-something

in the morning,

for the fifth day in a row.

And there it was,

taunting me with its ugly weirdness.

 

Even on the page,

it has an American accent.

 

I see it written

in a humming, pink neon tube,

and I set about its axey destruction.

 

The shattered remnants,

lying scattered at my feet,

reconnect to one another

 

as if they are an immortal android

from a high-budget science-fiction film,

and the phrase blinks into life again,

the hum and the glare

more menacing than before.

 

The neon does not yield

to a second axe-attack.

Seemingly like a Borg,

its exposure to one form of weaponry

apparently leads to immunity from a second attack,

and I have to shoot it up

with a bullet-spitting automatic gun.

 

History repeats itself,

and I begin to suspect

that the phrase is indestructible.

 

With my arsenal of mind weapons,

I melt, explode, vaporise,

and finally launch it into outer space

at several time the speed of light

until it ends up:

 

plum spang in the heart of a distant galaxy.