111219

Out of my price range


Nice boot,
I say,
what’s it made of?

Raptor’s tongue flicks out, in
my wife’s uncle,
he says,
very high quality.



If you like this poem, check out my recent collection, Metastable Systems. This and many other recent SF, fantasy, & horror poems are found therein.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/760901

111119c

at Kuiper station
summers get so hot even
Oxygen melts

111119b

My latest pub, a poem: "Wind Walker." Based on the Wendigo legend, retold by Algernon Blackwood, in highly modified form by Brian Lumley, and, I'm sure, by others. This poem is based on the Blackwood story, "The Wendigo," a masterful old-school (pub. 1910) weird fiction short story.

http://www.polutexni.com/

111119

Backwater


Off the trails
blazed by Dreamers
who slept in ancient days,
weedy paths meander toward
long-forgotten cities
buried in lexicons of thought,
afloat in dream mirages,
reveries of near-forgotten years,
unvisited, scarce real,
translucent, unmoored.

Sometimes we've heard,
round embrous fires, glowing
neath the stars who peer
at camps of dreamers in the waste,
or lonely on a dream-dark sea,
the doubtful names of cities
dreamt of once upon a night.

Hypersiphia, where youths may yet disport
and gorge on dreamfruit:
creamcherries, pureed, clotted,
and spread on cakes--
they prolong Dream,
mayhap forever;
maryapples, bearing the faces of women
of the waking world;
it's said that eating these apples
brings nightmares to those
whose countenances they bear;
hoogfruit, repellent of aspect
and of odor,
rarely safe to eat;
the chefs of Weltumn knew the trick,
tis said,
but they've all died, save one;
and she'll not cook again.

But move on, move on I say,
press aside the weeds of
time, seek out the wreck
of yesteryear and go.

Farther down the track,
scarcely a track at all,
merely a thinness in the weeds,
other citadels once stood,
rude stones, tumbled, blurred, and cracked,
faint earthworks furred with forest,
are all that remains,
unless furtive hunters trace
their ancestry to cooks, blacksmiths, and lords
of undreamed nights.

Beyond, this track is done,
and broken heights agnarl
with twisted trees of types unknown,
or unwholesome spawn
of oak, hickory, or elm, parentage
hinted by their raddled leaves
glare hungrily at dusk;
noisome fogs mask much;
something calls out like a frighted child,
another croaks words one fears to know,
even the weeds grow wrong.

No shy hunters walk these woods
but something furtive blinks
sulfur in the gloom;
its leavings: gnawed bones of doubtful aspect,
crabbed footprints, and other sign, whisper
“Stay not here!“ to those who
pass into the trackless lands.

Dreamers, only, venture here;
those who linger do not wake.




If you like this poem, check out my recent collection, Metastable Systems. This and many other recent SF, fantasy, & horror poems are found therein.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/760901

111019d

By Hali's Shore




The surface of the lake reflects her still,
The balcony is ruinous and slick,
The King bestirs himself and trails his hand,
Just where his daughter-consort took her life,
She stares up from the aromatic deep,
Betimes she serenades him voicelessly,
She's dead a year and now they come to wed,
Out on the restive lake he throws her ring.
Reflected in the livid light of Moon
They waltz, while on the shattered balcony,
He consummates their love on look-alikes,
Who gratefully receive the royal seed;
Before their terms he strangles them as gifts
To she who lingers in the rattling reeds.



If you like this poem, check out my recent collection, Metastable Systems. This, and many other SF, fantasy, & horror poems are found therein.
 
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/760901

111019c

black walnuts fall
and lemon thyme leafs out
southern winter

111019b

nothing special
about Lost in Space
getting found's what's hard