A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

by Craig Rane

I love this poem! Its hillarious. My comment in brackets-not part of the poem!

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings

[ William Caxton invented printing press, so here ‘birds with many wings’ is actually books-when books are perched on your hands, each side on each palm it resembles birds-especially when you were young and you’d draw birds and a broad wide ‘V’-well I did anyway, not all of us are gifted artists! Lol. ]

they cause the eyes to melt [Books make you cry]
or the body to shriek without pain. [Books make you laugh]

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making clothes darker.

[ Simply put: when it rains you go inside and look out of your window-window becomes tv screen. Rain can makes clothes darker, even the world outside, even your mood! Makes me feel down-but i like that ‘down’ as opposed to the ‘down’ you feel when someone dies/ after a messy break…not that I would know. lol. ]

Model T is a room with the lock inside-

a key is turned to free the world

[ Here, evidenlty Model T is a car and when you turn the key the whole world passes you by.]

for movement so quick there is a film

to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist

or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

[ Hillarious! Talking about watches on the wrist, I like the idea of time in a box, almost as if we have control over it and it doesn't control us]

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,

that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it

to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet they wake it up

deliberately, by tickling it with a finger.

[Telephone! You pick it up to stop its 'snoring' and yet we 'wake it up deliberately' when we want to make a call]

Only the young are allowed to suffer

openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.

They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt

and everyone's pain has a different smell.

[You're never too old for childish toilet humour are you! lol. The punishment room is the toilet, and implicit social norms prevent adults suffering openly. And yes...smell...]

At night, when all the colours die,

they hide in pairs

and read about themselves-

in colour, with their eyelids shut.

[When you go to bed, sometimes you dream- so you're reading about yourself in colour!]

Nice poem isn't it? Fantastic-especailly for little children. I strongly recommend it. Always manages to cheer me up.