Aliens: Poems celebrating the deleted scenes in James Cameron’s 1986 Alien sequel
Resident poet and writer Nigel Parkin follows up his Shocking Sonnets about Alien (see them here) with a Alien Day timed ode to James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens…
Aliens: A meditation on imagination, memory and deleted scenes
By Nigel Parkin
I – Burke
You die too quickly. We want more. We hate you.
You left Ripley and Newt to the face huggers
And switched off the screens to delete the scene.
Your own demise should be stretched out for us,
Not swiftly swept offstage in a rapid
Theatrical cut. Surely you’re cocooned
In the corner of an editing room.
Yes, there you are, grabbing Ripley, saying
You can feel the creature moving inside.
How typical of you to lie like this.
She, unmoved, puts a grenade in your hand.
We know you won’t use it. We’re satisfied.
We can hear the coward’s future screams as
The face hugger emerges from the egg.
II – Newt
There’s a moment when we first meet you, wild,
Wary creature that you are, and a look
Fixes itself onto your face. It says,
‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.’
An extraordinary look for a child.
What a weight of terror and loss yet still
Burning in those eyes a trace of some sort
Of hope. What scenes have you tried to delete
In that blasted mind? What are you daring
To imagine? Escape? A family?
The world around you seethes and steams, a hell
Of monsters and machines but you’re the heart
That beats within, the human. This is your
Story – survivor, soul, spirit, seer.
