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A poem from about 15 years ago...

Year Three of the Drought

Outside my window,

forked water courses splay across the plains

like the spoor of giant birds.

The tree-toed trails are stalking big game:

maybe the Snake River

is their prey,

or the shrunken farm ponds,

fallen on desiccated times,

forgotten spawn of a dead aquarian god.

A diminished reservoir sprawls,

gator-like, in the sandy wallow,

its delta tail submerged in emerald grass

in this, the third year of the drought.

Our Lord has breathed his fiery breath into the sky—

The sacrifices begged to be spared—their hot young wine

watered our dusty throats in challenge

to the rain that does not come.

Farther west,

the lakes wear hot halos of yellow sand,

trees don’t line the watercourses here:

only sand where cacti cannot grow.

Roads coil, sidewindery,

through fields of desolation.

Each town huddles around its dam,

its lake, its theft from downstream neighbors.

Misers of water—drink deep,

the collector is coming.

Mud women settled here,

built schools and theatres,

now the land bares its bones to the sky,

and small creatures hide from the sun.

Nested lines of dusty olive

are shorelines of a subterranean kind,

the aquifers are sinking out of mind,

leaving behind the mummies of springs.

Once, we stood and could not see the distant shore.

Now, withered grasses shake their fingers at the sun.

Weeds tumble in this,

the third year of the drought.

First published: Mythic Delirium 5, 2001; reprinted in Brushfires: http://store.albanlake.com/product/brushfires-by-david-c-kopaska-merkel/

I was flying across the arid SW US, and saw the most beautiful landscape out the window. I scribbled the first draft in a notebook in the sky.

Brushfires on sale at Smashwords

My SF/fantasy/horror poetry collection, "Brushfires," is on sale this week at:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/54253

Regular price $2.99, on sale 50% off

coupon code: LF69G

Sale ends March 2nd

Sample poem from "Brushfires"

Salad Days


Drop out of space-time,
Brushing fragments of your last relationship
From your back and arms
Divergent echoes of her
Spilling from your weary trail
Exhausted, yes, but
You're going to try again.

The intrinsic knot of nine
Microscopic dimensions:
Therein lies the key
The grooves that record reality
The underbelly of existence --
In one sense vanishingly thin
But with so many dimensions to play with
You can assign six of them to time
And still move in any direction you can perceive.

So take stock: what happened this time?
Everything was going so well
You aced every test
Graduated second place from the Academy
(wouldn't do to be too conspicuous)
And hooked up with the Vegephiles
Just as you planned.

But then things started to go wrong
Charlene was no pansy;
She was all tongue, and
For a while that seemed to be a plus.
She introduced you to new modes
Of stimulation – intellectual and sensual,
Of which you had not conceived.
Not since the Venus flytrap incident had you learned
So much from a woman or a plant.

But then you blew it,
I mean your paper about temporal interleaving
Laid it all out.  She confronted you,
She understood poly-dimensional re-threading
Like no vegetation ever had
"I'm not your first!" (blades quivering
With suppressed rage, thinking of all those
You had put down roots with;
It didn't matter they had all had her name.)
"Baby, you are always the first!"
You pleaded with her to stay,
But you weren't watering any beds
With that line.

Then things really got tense.
She sicked Passionflower on you
Her unfurling tendrils racing you to the door.
Barely had you got free of the greenhouse when
Ivy burst through the sidewalk
Coiled around your ankles and
Crushed you in her toxic embrace
Bamboo palisades didn't just
Impale your flitter,
They hoisted it 50 meters in the air,
Ripped it apart..
The toad lily barked at you
When you got home and you almost
Didn't get in the door, the carpet needed a shave
And when you looked at your face in the mirror
It looked decidedly greenish.
In the end you had to call in the Goat Squad
And retreat from the world to try again.


The end


Another & where to order

http://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/2011/10/poem-reprinted-from-brushfires.html

Poem reprinted from Brushfires

Brushfires is my most recent solo poetry book.


UNDER MARS


Life goes on - following the residual heat
on its terminal Journey to the Center.
Cities the size of countries,
abandoned millennia ago,
desiccated and compressed,
conceal deeper and far greater metropoli
whose inhabitants have forgotten surface
and sun in their pursuit of the
dwindling warmth about which
revolves their world.

The arts glorify conduction, thrift, adaptation,
or bemoan the vampiric seduction of heat by the
cold, dry regions
from which the People have been inexorably
driven.
Legends never speak of sky, stars, open spaces,
but tell only of a time when the tunnels throve -
heat was plentiful,
water ubiquitous,
and gravity strong,

Once, an expedition was sent to the high regions -
to seek out the ancestral tunnels wherein the People had been born.
Through the miles of desiccated necropoli the seekers climbed,
struggling with ever-increasing weight, collapsed tunnels, cold, and drought.
The survivors turned back after a 1,000-mile trek into
the frigid immensities of abandoned graveyards,
still untold miles from their unrecognized goal.

*****

On the surface, colonists from the third planet
huddle under domes, tailor lichens, marvel at red stony vistas.
There are no ruins -
the tenuous atmosphere has obliterated them.
The two races can never meet, never suspect each others' presence
one on, and one within, the cooling corpse of the red planet.




Where to get Brushfires

http://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/2011/04/where-to-get-my-books.html

On "Brushfires"

"I particularly liked "Recipe for Science Fiction," and "Salad Days." The underlying concepts and the imagery in both are terrific." -M. Ganzglass

http://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/2011/04/brushfires-on-smashwords.html

New poetry from "Brushfires"

Sample poem from "Brushfires," my latest book:



Wild Gods


The bellowing of the ox
chant of the dedicants
shuffling round the fire
two by two, under the ash poles

like follows like,
as above, so below
thus reads the Book

but the stars
those damnable leering stars
and the tossing of trees
across the vale
the wail, low at first
growing louder, higher
these don't meet expectations

the worshipers falter
turn away from the sacrifice
face into the gale
What wild god comes now?


The end

Brushfires on Smashwords

My latest book of poetry, "Brushfires," is now available as an e-book from Smashwords, at the price of $2.25. Here is the link:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/54253

Brushfires includes a lot of new poetry never published anywhere else, as well as poems covering the last couple of decades of my work. And it has a cover by the incomparable Richard Fay.

If you want some examples of the kind of poems I write, check out the archives of www.strangehorizons.com

Brushfires cover

This is the handsome Richard Fay cover for my new poetry book out just last month from Sam's Dot. The book's available from The Genre Mall for $7 and change. Want a signed copy? I can handle that for the same price.

Brushfires is about 1/2 reprints (mostly older ones) and 1/2 new poetry.

Brushfires ready for orders

$7.50, postpaid, signed, paypal to jopnquog@gmail.com, where you should also inquire with any questions.

Amazon women and the avocado of doom in "Brushfires" -- available now

Amazon Women and the Avocado of Doom


This poem, originally published in Wilde Times in 2005, is reprinted in Brushfires, my new book of poetry.


In the comic book, they had impossibly long legs,
very large antigravitational breasts (one each),
and eyes as big as their breasts should have been.
Young boys turned past pages advertising
inexpensive microscopes and books that explained
how to date girls, looking for more panels featuring
callipygian Greeks.

In reality, they hurried over the bumpy
olive-green surface, darting quick glances
over their muscular shoulders. The terrain was slippery
where there were bad spots in the fruit. They had to steady
themselves with their hands, but didn’t fall, and kept arrows
at the ready.

In the comic book, they got into the sort of trouble
from which only a handsome man could extricate them.
Inexplicably, the most beautiful of the Amazons
would fall for their dashing savior. In the next issue
she is single once more and ready to be rescued
all over again.

In reality, there were no rescuers, and they had to do
all the saving for themselves. In this summer,
it was 100° in the shade, and there was no shade.
The avocado got pretty ripe, I can tell you, along
about mid-July.

In the comic book, trees grew and flocks of goats roamed
on the golf-turf-like surface of the giant fruit.
A handsome man wearing tight spandex
in bold colors and possessing peculiar powers
flew in from another comic book to save the day….
Again.

In reality, the weather in August was unseasonably hot
and the flesh of the fruit darkened and softened.
In the comic book, they all lived to fight another day
(remember that it was all written for small boys).

They sank beneath the surface, thrashing in futility,
mud flowing into their open mouths,
choking soundless screams.

They slogged through hip-deep mud and
barely made it to a waiting Blackhawk helicopter.
piloted by Captain America’s good-looking brother.


End


Signed copies of the book will be available from me in about a week. Pristine copies are already available at GenreMall.com for $5.90 plus two dollars shipping and handling (listed under "new items").

dreams and nightmares and new poetry book

All subscribers and contributors should definitely have Dreams and Nightmares 87 in hand. If you don't have it, and you think you should, please let me know.

Yesterday I heard from Tyree Campbell at Sam's Dot publishing that my new poetry book, "Brushfires," is on its way to me now. I should get it within a week. Because the publisher already has it I imagine you can already order it (through the Genre Mall).

new poetry book

My book of poetry, which encapsulates the best of what I've done for the last couple of decades, as well as a lot of never before seen new stuff from the last couple of years, is at the printer now. "Brushfires" will be published by Sam's Dot, just in time for the holiday season. A great gift for all the dark poets in your life.

"Brushfires" is a corporate buzzword from a couple of decades ago. It refers to things that some people think are urgent and important and that other people think are pointless and irrelevant. When you're hassled by life's manufactured urgencies, or even real emergencies, read some poetry and drink a glass of wine. The book, "brushfires," may be just the ticket for stress relief. Writing the poems certainly did that for me and I hope reading them will do the same for you.

Signed copies will be available at the same price as nonsigned. Look for details in a few weeks when the book is in my hands.

The very best from me,
David