Teed Off

27-11-2006

Golf in space? That's sooooo 1970's we thought. Until the other day when a Russian astronaut on the International Space Station tried out hisstratospheric swing. Turns out it was a stunt to promote a Canadian golf ball, leavingThe Stirrer's resident poet Brendan Hawthorne distinctly tee'd off.

Planet Earth's orbital routes

are littered with the structural debris

that made our heroes

The lanes are peppered with technology

and communication relays

to feed the touch button world

with instant news fixes and

gossip opportunities

But now the cash-starved

space programme has

succumbed to product placement

We've already had pizzas delivered

to space stations and soda-float

drinks cans sent spinning outside

space-lab base camps

micro-chips put into our hands

and non-stick fibres

woven into the suits of certain politicians

And now just when we needed

a chance to send out

a meaningful global message

carrying the weight of the world

on its shoulders

we miss the window

Instead we reveal to the universe that

all of these advancements

have gone towards making

a better golf club and

and just to prove its validity

a man in a bulky suit can tee off

a super-lightweight ball over an hour late

two hundred miles above the Paciffic

in the weightlessness of space

kiss the logo and send it a million miles

before it swerves and hits

the big blue obstacle in a fiery nano-second

some time in the next two or three days

And future generations will be reminded

that the first extra-terrestrial adverts

didn't advocate the need

for world peace or

highlight the needs of

the fragile human race

but merely demonstrated how far

it has come in denial, gastronomic taste

and knocking balls into holes

How humble we are

For more details about poetry readings in the West Midlands contact www.poetrywednesbury.co.uk