Adapted from Philip K. Dick’s Clans of the Alphane Moon.
Who knows what’s living down the hall —
it just might float, it just might crawl;
now, everyone here, do the math,
is here because they are riffraff;
down on their luck, visa denied,
or lose their home when stars collide;
perhaps their jobs don’t pay that much,
with friends and fam’ly out of touch;
they come from solar systems where
they don’t have food stamps or welfare;
some have a temper’mental flaw
and others live outside the law.
My next door neighbor, the slime mold,
heads up a Ganymede household;
or, hibernating in 3C
lives some sub-molten entity;
a Martian wiz-bird’s over there,
you might find her perched in midair;
and, floor below, from Callisto,
a greebsloth that I barely know;
it’s possible you’ll come across
some folks who are Venusian moss;
this is a low-rent residence —
punctilios you might dispense.
But sometimes when the stars align
and someone breaks out non-T wine,
you’ll find there is some good rapport
with aliens who live next door;
who passed out that Titan snuffbox
and fired up Neptune moon rocks?
I swear that everybody here
got caritas on Io beer;
and even molds from Ganymede
appreciate Uranus weed;
just leave us be, Terran police,
and we’ll have universal peace.
Text, narration & production © 2020 C. Kurtz.