Little Green Men

For years man has been obsessed with the idea that we are being visited by beings from another planet.  The bookshelves are replete with testimonies of people who claim to have been abducted by aliens, and that they have been subjected to "experiments".  Personally I don't believe a word of it.  However, if there were to be such visitors, I've come up with a far more mundane explanation for why they might bother to visit planet Earth.

My Lips Are Sealed

I’ll tell you a tale to make your blood curdle,

From when I went for a walk in the wood.

I saw lights flashing in the night-time sky,

And I knew somebody was up to no good. 

I walked through the trees to a clearing,

Where I saw a very strange sight.

I could see a flying-saucer had landed:

There were aliens there in the night. 

Little green men were all walking about,

Investigating the things on the ground.

There were scorch-marks in the grass and the trees,

As the ship emitted a deep throbbing sound.

I wondered what I should be doing now,

This throbbing was making me deaf.

Should I be telling the MoD,

Or even calling in the RAF? 

But my musings were interrupted.

I’d no time for more thought.

One of them had crept up behind me:

The creatures had now got me caught. 

I was frog-marched into their ship,

And I feared there’d be an abduction.

They’d experiment on my body,

And to my feeble brain - apply suction! 

I was afraid of this close encounter,

Of their alien experimentation.

I felt it would lead to great suffering,

To pain, and my final elimination. 

But the leader, the greenest one of all,

Regarded me with his single blood-shot eye.

His mandibles touched me with interest.

Then he spoke to me all friendly and said “Hi!” 

Amazed that he spoke English, I asked him:

“Have you come from a galaxy far away?

Is your planet collapsing around you?

Do you need Earth for somewhere new to stay? 

Have you travelled for vast distances?

From the far side of the Universe?

Are you escaping a world that’s in melt-down?

Are you running away from some cosmic curse?” 

“Earthling,” he said in a rich and deep voice,

“Our technology is better than yours,

Your understanding is quite puny,

And we don’t do inter-galactic tours.

We don’t want to take your planet’s resources.

We come here just to keep ourselves sane.

We don’t need your interfering.

Nor are we interested in your feeble brain. 

We come here to enjoy the peace and quiet,

To get away from our elders and betters,

To have a drink and to take drugs,

And escape from parental fetters. 

We can ride our saucers as fast as we like,

And make the weirdest shapes in your sky.

We know that you can’t explain it all,

And we leave you wondering why. 

We can’t answer all of your questions,

Nor explain our latest escapades.

You’ll just have to take it from me,

We’ve been visiting Wiltshire for decades. 

But, you see, we’d like to keep it that way.

We don’t want our secrets revealed.

You can’t tell anyone what you’ve witnessed.

I’m afraid your lips must remain sealed.” 

I don’t remember much after that,

It’s hazy, or so it would seem.

Had I seen those little green men?

Or had it all been just a terrible dream?

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2012