113019c

the shriveled face I once loved

dodging your long arms

and striking a match

113019b

The tradition of roasting elves for Christmas dinner was widely thought to have been started by the turkeys. In reality, a renegade tribe of reindeer was responsible.

113019

The old year dies
Dies neither with bang nor whimper
But with the rising scream
Of a rapidly approaching train

112919c

Why doth the worm cast out its work
Upon the cold wet ground
The castles builded from its bricks
Could make such clever mounds
From miles around the ants would flock
And never make a sound

112219

Dr. Klein

How do you keep it all inside?
The juices rushing, whole river systems
To your primordial seas?

How is it that,
No matter how hard they try,
No one gets in,
No one gets out?

Why all these questions,
You didn't say,
So self-contained,
A universe unto yourself?

But what of love?
Can woman or man break in?
There are none of the usual openings
In your hard shell
There is no shell at all.

Is there a you, Dr. Klein?
Answer me now,
I want to know you.
Don't keep it bottled up.

112919b

rosemary
blooms in the brown garden
honeybee makes its rounds

112919

To read this blog
You might think Thanksgiving didn't exist
I didn't really have the day off:
Overeating is hard work
Just kidding
The Invaders kept me busy
Didn't even share a crumb
Said an American should understand
I said my ancestors weren't even here
Ah, they said
You humans are all the same

112719c

The cyborg ship plunged into the sun, an apparent suicide. Actually, it was a murder-suicide. The brains got to arguing about which should be in charge, the canid or the felid. Well, one thing led to another, as humans used to say.

112719b

The sandworms of Dune couldn't move
And physics suffices to prove
The muscles they need
To keep up their speed
Outweigh any worm they could move

112719

Too late, we discovered

That the Loculans proudly display

Their larvae on silver trays in public rooms

We met them for the first time

At a formal dinner

The Terran Ambassador's stomach

Had to be pumped

112619c

Rosemary's Houseplant


new leaf
on the stick
it's aliiiiiive!

112619b

We all know that the Great Pumpkin
Is a tool of the Bear
What we don't know
Is what's really on the pee tape
And why the American right wing
Thinks that's cool

112619

Bryozoan holdfast engulfing another bryozoan fragment at the boundary between lime mudstone (below) and packstone (above) adjacent to a small rugose coral reef. Bangor Limestone, Mississippian, Blount County, Alabama. Thin section photomicrograph, image 2.5 mm wide.

112519d

ETTT 35: Hard SF--Responding to submissions as I go along, some accepted, some held for further consideration, some rejected. Room for more--keep 'em coming! https://eyetothetelescope.com/

112519c

Catch

They’re out fishing after midnight, Halloween night. Neither one catching a blamed thing.

Why they call this Virgin Lake, Earl?

Ever’body knows that. It’s the girl.

What girl?

The one that drowned. In her car. You remember.

Well, seem like maybe I do. A party, right?

Yep. Halloween night. That’s why we come here tonight. They say she shows herself. Anniversary of her death, an' all.

I don’t wanna see no ghost. I wanna catch fish!

Come to think of it, guess that’s why they ain’t bitin’. Skeered.

Shit, Earl, we gotta go!

You ain’t skeered of no ghost like some dumb fish, are ya, Bobby?

Heck, no. Course I ain't. But the fish ain’t bitin’ nohow.

Huh. You remind me of her.

You knew her?

Took her to that party. She drove, cos my truck needed some work. Pretty little thing.

What’s that noise, Earl?

Frog. Yeah, pretty as she wanna be. But she did me dirt that night. She-- what?

That ain’t no frog.

Well, then it was a fish jumping. Anyway, I just wanted to take her out back. You know. What did she think we were there for, anyway? It sure as hell wasn't cookies and conversation. But she wouldn't give me even a kiss. When I saw how it was, I called her a cold bitch. If she had slapped me I was going to give it back in spades. But she stomped back out the front door. Before I knew it she had taken off with my damn ride.

There it is again. And that ain't no fish, no frog neither.

I'll tell you what I don't think it is. A ghost. You want to hear the rest of story, or not?

So then what?

Plenty of girls there. I found one would do what I wanted. She gave me a ride home afterwards. Next morning we found out what happened. The car in the lake. Girl's body wasn't inside. They dove for her, but they never found anything. I don't know why she did it. Wasn't drunk. Hadn't had a drop to drink. I’d tried to give her some. Thought it would loosen her up.

Damn waste of a fine body. Waste of a fine car, too. '57 Chevy, two-tone, tiptop condition. Well, I guess she ain't gonna show. Let's — holy shit, Bobby! There she is, rising up right behind you! Reaching for you!

Ha ha. The way you screamed and jumped. I had you going. Bet you crapped your pants. You know you did. Get up now and start rowing. Loser rows. Come on. Bobby? Bobby?

112519b

A year ago today
My daughter was visiting
Same as now
Good food eaten
Same as now
Slowly healing from a serious injury
Guess what!

Is time passing at all?
Well
Every winter shorter
All the birds rarer
Everyone else looks older
And crazy talk from everywhere
Even crazier
The more things stay the same
The more they change.

112519

Ostracode filled with pelletal cement followed by calcite cement, later partly silicified. Calcite red, silica white, dolomite dark gray. Lower part of a small mound, Bangor Limestone, Mississippian, Haletown Tennessee. Silica is bright white, calcite is red, dolomite is dull dark gray. Thin section photomicrograph, stained with alizarin red S, image 2.5 mm wide.

112419d

they believed in an afterlife

and that they lived it

we soon put a stop to that!

112419c

accelerating, fast as we could go,
our ramscoop reaching 0.99999999999 C,
still not quite fast enough
to catch the oldest galaxies,
still less our cosmos' rim,
before protons pop,
and even black holes sublimate.

112419b

the poem my cat wrote
couldn't be pronounced
rhymed as well as this one
though

112419

Crinoid stem ossicle, partially silicified, in the partially dolomitized basal part of a small mound, Bangor Limestone, Mississippian, Haletown Tennessee. Silica is bright white and gray, calcite is red, dolomite is dull dark gray. Thin section photomicrograph, stained with alizarin red S, crossed polarizers, image 2.5 mm wide.

112319c

These huge bones,

arching from dune to dune,

mappable from space,

this pitiless waste's only shade.

Paleontologists disinter flippers

meters long, billennia old,

their bones curiously like those of Earth,

when last was there a Martian sea?

112319b

Poem by me in A Poet Explores the Stars, ed. by J. Alan Erwine.(ISBN 9781697141443). Also includes work by Lisa Timpf, Juleigh Howard-Hobson, Mike Morgan, & many more.

112319

Two fenestrate bryozoans in bryozoan bafflestone (partly dolomitized) forming the uppermost part of a small mound near Haletown Tennessee, Mississippian Bangor Limestone, thin section photomicrograph, image 2.5 mm wide.

112219d

On the front step a hamper, filled with goodies. Sort of an apology, I guess, for the changeling deposited in the cradle 18 years ago. I suppose that, coming from fairies, the sweets will turn to ashes in our mouths, or something nasty like that. Certainly how the changeling turned out.

112219c

Intraclasts. Particles ripped loose from the seafloor or wherever they might be, and redeposited in essentially the same unit where they first formed.

Mixed particle grainstone, dominated by crinoid debris, bryozoan fragments, intraclasts, and mud. It is not clear whether the mud was deposited after the particles were already in place, consists almost entirely of parts of intraclasts, and/or may have been deposited under the influence of microbes. Thin-section photomicrograph, 2.5 mm wide.

Same field of view, with three arrows pointing to three intraclasts. One intraclasts contains a large crinoid columnal and the other two contain other kinds of particles. It could be that the one pointed to by the white arrow is itself part of a larger and younger intraclast containing many fossil fragments.

Tropical shallow-marine platform environment. Relatively slow deposition and rapid lithification on the seafloor produced abundant intraclasts. Mississippian Bangor Limestone, Blount County, Alabama.

112219b

As I was writing
The day's first poem
I thought "Damn, this is good,"
So I kept it for myself,
To send someplace fancy,
Not just stick it here.
So, sad to say,
This is what you get,
Something from the cut-out bin,
Sorry.

But you may see the other sometime,
Some place,
Shining like the sun.

112119e

 Closeup of a bryozoan.

 Fossil hash, with crinoids, bryozoans, etc.

Fenestrate bryozoan holding up the world.

Thin section photomicrographs of fossils in the Mississippian Bangor Limestone, Blount County, Alabama. Fields of view 2.5 mm wide. I got a million of them.

112119d

One of the problems with pet rocks is that if you want more you have to go out and capture them. They don't breed successfully in captivity.

112119c

not a ghost story
this world did not die
prokaryotes are everywhere
and, in time, something else
may try again

112119b

A research project that started in 2016 has led to this paper being accepted by the Journal of Paleontology:

David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Douglas W. Haywick, and Richard Keyes, in press, A new mound-building biota from the lower Carboniferous of Alabama

We are already well into the next phase of the study.

A previous related publication:
.

Haywick, D.W., Kopaska-Merkel, D.C., and Keyes, R., 2016, Petrographic and faunal characteristics of Monteagle and Hartselle-equivalent strata in northeast Alabama, Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies Trans. 66, p. 211-229.

112119

The aliens aren't bad neighbors
in fact, new plants are popping up
outside the fence
bright red berries
look delicious
like bee-stung lips

too late the bee
observed the fangs

apivores move out
from the Reservation
colonizing
what's next
Venus rat trap?

112019d

Pricked by a redwood tree
she became a tree when the moon was full
immobile, she couldn't make a kill
stood right there for a thousand years
at last, she fell in a great wind
crushing several campers
and was freed
only to feel the years
fall upon her in an instant
her last

112019c

Judgement Day somehow got onto the Celestial Calendar a day early, and when the Host realized this, it was too late to change. The Event was understaffed, and there is no telling how many souls were misdirected. I guess humanity was made in God's image.

112019b

Vote Hermaphrodite!
the rallying cry
Lumbricus won in a mudslide

112019

pink sorrel
opens every morning
Alabama winter

111919b

"Don't eat the daisies," the sign said,
Johnny did and dropped down dead,
when he'd safely been interred,
we thought that was the dernier word,
in the spring a daisy tree,
grew from the plot where John was laid,
I guess his juices have been made,
into this thing that all can see,
downwind of us its seeds will go,
and Johnny with them? I don't know.

111919

Another brisk morning
on Mercury
lead doesn't even boil

111819b

Titan
home to the cows
who didn't jump
quite high enough

111819

The Werewolf Earns a Living


By day, she teaches five-year-olds
by night, she knits or dances
unless the moon is full – then she hunts
but only outside the school district

111719c

The Timid Particles

Scooting back on the shelf,

The book in faded brown boards

Imagines itself a mote of dust;

Disrobed, it scurries through the stacks

Isolated pages slither into the rears

Of proper books, which jump and squeak;

Some pages folded into airplanes

Launch themselves panspermatically

Across the aisles,

Dripping punctuation.

111719b

When the Sun's in the sky
or it isn't
the Moon too
some folks turn into werewolves
the kind who cage children
gun down or starve their neighbors
think rape and thievery
are perfectly OK if you're in their group
pretend to belong to a religion
whose commandments they don't believe in
and do it every day
not once a month

111719

The Quanta of Time

The quanta of time slip by, a profusion of solitudes,

Their legendary brevity challenging would-be observers.

Deniers outnumber believers in this mixed-up world,

Where gremlins skip through gaps in time,

Souring milk, stealing socks, and spoiling meat.

They're building a sock golem bigger than T. rex,

It's lumbering toward Bethlehem, “Live”

Sewn into its corduroy brow,

Each step a tock between the ticks we know,

Each in-drawn breath an entropic wind,

Peeling paint off galactic hearts,

Each exhalation a disintegrating blast,

Burning subatomic bonds

In an unrelenting flame.

If a creator made this thing, this world,

What the hell was s/he thinking?!

111619d

The Prodigious Returns

The body of an unidentified

elderly male human,

nude, about 3,000 km long,

floated through the system

at 2,400 km/sec.

Through, that is,

until encountering Cleveland,

at an appreciable fraction of C.




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

111619c

Jellyfish Man tried to help in the War, but after the seas boiled away he wasn't much good for anything.

111619b

the cats
prowl the sere garden
shrews hold still

111619

mending the world
one stitch at a time
any color thread

111519d

the perfect gift
for someone else's kids
earworm

111519c

from my wheelchair
I can't reach the fossils
nothing in my hands

111519b

A rhinoceros-sized wombat roamed Pleistocene Australia. Meanwhile, a man-baby balloon is stabbed to death in Alabama. What's next, a satanic toupee looming over the nation?

111519

daily cartoon
not enough
in these troubled times

111419d

Ancient finger bone

How much of me
comes from this ancient human species,
denisovan granddad, about whom we know so little,
how much from the Neanderthal,
or that other relative so unknown
no one has yet given it a name.
we already knew our genes
were about 90% bacteria and viruses,
of the little bit that's left,
how much of this chimera
is, strictly speaking, me?

Well all, of course:
get used to being a jigsaw puzzle,
you're hardly a "thing" at all,
explains a lot, doesn't it.

111419c

Floating reefs in Jupiter's thousand-mile-deep seas, hundreds of miles long and millions of years old, home to more species of organisms than have ever lived on earth. And this is where the kid wants to go for his 13th birthday. Why not someplace normal, like Disney World Ganymede?

111419b

if you slept all day
why's the garbage on the floor
bad dog

111419

Rip van Winkle on Mars



I'd dreamed a Martian tundra:
tussocks, tiny flowers--
I guess I overslept
Dome open to the thin cold sky,
rooms agape, no thing left behind,
a burn mark where the lander crouched
is their goodbye
out back a midden: wrappers, boxes;
hunkering, I see a bit of gray-green mold
inside a plastic wrap,
company is good, but for companionship
I'll need to wait a few billion years.
I could use a nap.



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

111319c

We look back on the 21st century, when more than a billion people had to relocate to high ground. I know I speak for all of you who are left when I say that I fervently wish we could go back to those halcyon days.

111319b

today we give thanks
that the heater works
Arctic blob

111319

His Caviar Mama


Innsmouth boys, roughnecks, staring dockside youth,
trash-talking at Gilpin’s Bait Shop,
with its mounted beauties on the walls,
its rustic sushi-syle buffet;
Field & Stream is kid stuff now,
midnight catch-and-release out by the reef
in Dad’s “borrowed“ boat,
sneaking into Piscine’s for the adults-only show
where half-breeds take it all off for you.
Wilfred’s got a rattle-trap Ford and a
paid-up membership in the Dunwich Aquarium,
state-of-the-art tanks and big big fish;
he can bring a friend and they all want it,
stand there for hours, hands deep in their pockets,
watching the sleek back-and-forth, back-and-forth,
of scaled and iridescent perfection.
“See that one?“ he smirks, pointing to a gravid sturgeon
gliding through the Rivers of Asia tank,
five feet of mouthwatering piscine motherhood,
“That one?!“ his friend gasps, half belief, all envy.
“and the hammerhead in the big tank.“
“You’re lying!“ his friend hisses, “they’re animals!“
“Plenty of guys want a ride down here,“ Wilfred warns,
and the kid backs off; he doesn’t want to miss the Big Show,
but he’s thinking, that hammerhead broad would tear you up!



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

111219c

As she leaned over the fire, a louse fell from Grace and into the burning pit.

111219b

something about
being warm when it's freezing out
thank God for tech

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

111019

The Only Time Machine

We upload your consciousness,

it runs in a simulated 1960s Lagos,

the quaint elder city;

but it's totally cool!

OK, it runs slowly,

and it's grainy (a few details are lacking),

but the Uploaded never notice; they lack detail too.

Your body is destroyed in the process,

but it's immortality; don't worry,

we keep you backed up,

we have uninterruptible power supplies,

backups on our backups,

real-time monitoring of conditions on the drive,

and if you do get corrupted,

you never know it!

It's the perfect existence,

and the only way to go back in time.

Yes, Lagos-60s™ is the best and only,

although I hear someone is about to launch

a goth sim called Bombardment 1851,

which is supposed to really rock,

if you're into that sort of thing;

but, for a small fee,

we can make a copy of you for that platform,

to upload when they go live.

110919d

Alabama, LSU, and football


two teams
aim to crush each other's skulls
with their heads
both teams always lose
yet it remains a popular sport

110919c

puzzle pieces
cover the big table
suppertime

110919b

It feels so dirty when you're in your fur, even though we married long before that wolf bit you.

110919

how you howled

when the full moon rose

such big teeth you have

110819b

The hollow earth
is a wild place
so many satellites
some moon is always full
somewhere

110819

the Great Pumpkin
rises over Bama
Mount Doom burns

110719c

we share our home
with a host of squatters
most too small to see

110719b

Rain tows the cold weather behind it,
or the front pushes the rain ahead,
either way,
like Mr. Horse,
I don't like it.

110719

Yesterday (Nov. 6), the house painter, who has done nothing for five weeks and almost nothing for two months, called and wanted to finish the job this morning. And get the last part of his fee. I had just two days ago lined up somebody else to do the last part of the work, but I will tell him never mind if the original contractor, a guy named Fredrick Micken, actually does finish. I have serious doubts, but however this turns out I will definitely let you know.

Update: The job was started in late July, and finished in Nov. 27, 3 weeks after his last promise to do it right away. 4 months to paint a house and build a ramp. They probably spent one month on the actual work.

110619c

Werechicken

once a month I wake up

chicken poop splashed everywhere

taste of bugs in my mouth

110619b

On the planet of the Celery People, cannibalism is virtually unknown. Come on, no one likes to eat celery.

110619

Serving root beer at the reception
for the delegation from Vegetaria
a natural misunderstanding
a blunder of interstellar proportions

during the resulting war
terrestrial forests
concealed the advance guard
of the invasion force
until it was far too late

110519c

a
fib
not a
longer form
fibonnaci-no
ku or anything cool like that

110519b

only the main door
is wheelchair accessible
modern hotel

110519

leather moth
alights in her hair
unknown species

110419d

Spectral Fish

Caught bare-handed

at midnight,

full moon so bright

they roast in its light;

sweet taste of rivers

that perished long ago,

when this land was green,

when birdsong echoed from the frees;

such fish ran those streams!

This one swallowed a golden ring,

its spirit shivers down my spine.

Invisible,

I cast my line

reel in fish after fish.

At sunrise I wake

on a grassy bank,

around me birds

are calling:

they are singing,

what’s this here?

110419c

Photon Man
faster than a speeding
anything

110419b

winter
so warm in here
my scarf comes off

110419

teachers' painted feet
and so many door prizes
sci ed happens

110319d

housefly nannies
frazzled to the breaking point
last-resort swatter
in emergency--break glass

110319c

the last fire-ant hill
of the season pounded flat
Queen waits for spring

110319b

I have a poem in "Trouble Among the Stars 4," which is stories and poems about humanity's misfortunes (many self-inflicted)...in space. Good stuff. Depressing, but well crafted.

110319

Ecdysiasts

the

bug

femmes are

all strippers

males too, come to that

it’s a tease: they take it all off

look exactly the same underneath, only bigger

110219b

lethal dose consumed

before the pangs began

the spuds had eyes

110219

the suffering
what you experience
when someone comes to your door to talk
about the suffering
if you let them in

110119d

cute little ghost
candy falls right thru her bag
at every house

110119c

October moon
witches and goblins skip
thru its beams

110119b

Jack Sprat was found clutching an empty tub of lard. His death was ruled a suicide.

110119

The Death of Halloween


all the candy
to the first trick-or-treater
none and none