013122

You hit the nail on the head,
She’s hot enough to melt asphalt,
But don’t touch that dial.
Don’t you recognize her?
That’s P. Mantis,
Deadliest divorce lawyer in town;
Tread carefully,
Or she’ll eat you alive.

042920c

Lazarus bugs
trilobites acrawl miles down
in the Mariana

102319b

We killed the grubs
when we found them
if we had known what the mature form was like
we'd have been more thorough
if any of us
survive the winter
we will move towards the poles
hoping for a climate zone
where these things do not thrive

090419

I Married a Monster

My mother warned me that

marrying outside my species

would lead to trouble.

Well, I ignored all the racists,

all the “eww”-ers,

and never looked back.

Married life at first was bliss:

me stroking her abdomen for hours,

she smearing royal jelly all over my body,

daintily sucking it off;

we watched sunsets together,

fed one another the choicest grubs,

read love poems aloud

under the cloud-wracked moons.

But last night we fought,

about something stupid, unimportant.

I was angry, so angry,

I said things I can't take back:

I sounded like my family!

Her clutch-mates are looking for me now,

All 380 of them; I'm on the run

From their shining claws,

Their adamantine jaws.

080919c

Klutz Millipede drew fast and shot himself from the hip, hip, hip.

042219c

Water Bear Boy

1.
 Looms like an alien war machine,
slow as a sloth,
bullets won't stop him.
Betty was his mom's BFF;
she won't let her daughter Hillary
(named for the president) go out with him,
but the way Hillary trailed her bare
hand along his armored flank
gave him a subsonic shock:
instant diarrhea for everyone within 30 feet,
except Hillary, perhaps because she was so close,
his face a burning brick, she laughs
“Did you see that bitch Lorna? OMG!“

2.
 Hillary plans to major in biology
“I don't think I'll get to go to college“ he whispers
“What, why? You tell those bastards--“
but a siren cuts across her outrage.
Love, he tells himself,
lumbering towards the First Mid-Am Bank
where a Cadillac idles by the curb;
masked men come running out,
sacks and handguns clutched,
the latter aimed back inside,
“Water Bear Boy!“ one shouts,
and they all go Bang! Bang! Bang!
He puts his forefeet on the trunk
as they all dive through the open doors,
claws sink thru asphalt and grip,
rubber squeals like a stuck pig, burns.
Soon enough, Sheriff Dan
takes the corner on two smokin' wheels;
“I've got it from here,“ he says. 

3.
 WBB has a tutor, he
doesn't ft thru the doors at R. W. Johnson H.S,
freaks are not welcome anyway,
so says almost everyone.
His tutor, Mrs Crabb, never smiles,
left her smile in her other suit, Dad says,
but “she's the only one who would help you.“
Hillary would, WBB thinks,
but her mom's a you-know-what
and won't allow it. 

4. 
They meet on White's farm, abandoned long ago,
house burned, barn sagging, rusty red tractor
out standing in its feld, weeds up to here.
Water bears, formally tardigrades,
are arthropods, Hillary says,
they can survive in pure alcohol, even liquid nitrogen
(“Holy freakin' cow,“ he says, though he googled this years ago).
Turns out Hillary has a thing for arthropods,
has an ant farm, pins Lepidoptera,
studied horseshoe crabs for a
6th-grade science project (“2nd at State“),
so WBB's exoskeleton (hard, shiny,
covered with sensory hairs) doesn't freak her out;
his cock, a standard human appendage,
will do just fne, too, it seems. 

5.
 “Wonder if you're fertile,“ Hillary muses,
lying back in the grass, hands behind her head.
Now she's freaking him out:
he's never even touched a baby,
never had a job and, and ... “shh,“ she says,
“You're a hero."


From Metastable Systems, Ebook $2.99
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/760901  

090418d

antennae, jaws, hands, feet
all modified from the basic plan
the warriors' claws
on scholars and doctors
so delicate and fine
but we never saw the queen caste
till the war was over
turns out she had a taste
for endoskeletal canapes

071718b

let the pumpkin try


Grandfather pparadox
simply identifying the last common ancestor
of all vertebrates was difficult
wiping out only that species
aand its close relatives
using 21st-century
targeted phage insertion
was not difficult
returning to the new future
a shock of more than
biblical proportions
tthe president sported a
flashy orange exoskeleton
but was otherwise unchanged

032218d

chrysalis day
is a time for celebration
parents are joyfully consumed

122316

GM Steed

Centipede, the 40-legged horse, raced up the cliff. Jones, white-knuckled, squinted into the wind. They were topside in moments. The Count raised his … Centipede’s vorpel mandibles snicker-snacked; blood and a mustachioed head arced. Jones wiped his face.

“Dammit, Centipede, I needed to talk to him!”

“Sssorry.”