Happy Alien Day! An Ode to Aliens Deleted Scenes

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 World 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.

 

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