“Monkey Creates”, a poem by Nick Beaumont.

Monkey Creates

The universe is an omelette.
An omelette, or maybe a quiche…
well anyway, the important thing is
it all started with an egg.

An egg with a bloody great crack
down the middle that fizzles
with dark energy. One day, it splinters
open from one too many bangs

on the celestial frying pan,
spattering globules of sticky blackness
across time and space.
The shell pirouettes away, leaving

a yolk that would have fallen if it wasn’t
for the lack of gravity, but instead
hangs in the gaping silence,
a black, undulating mass of chaos.

The mass is snoring.
But it doesn’t snore for long. Monkey wakes
and scratches his furry arse.
It’s pretty close in here he thinks,

so he lifts up his Monkey paws,
and pushes away the squishy black space yolk.
Above him he creates the great
celestial jungle, and below the waters

of the celestial rapids. He swipes
whole paw-fulls of oozing jelly
and skilfully fashions the
banana tree galaxy, the climbing frame

solar system, even the delicate
patterns of the tree vine constellations.
Exhausted, Monkey rests
on the great primordial rubber tyre,

ideally flicking fleas into the cosmos,
where they explode in soft plumes
of orange and purple, becoming
spiralling galaxies and unexplored nebulas.

By Nick Beaumont (alumnus 2010-2011).