102119

Fellow Traveler

We none of us go swimming anymore,

Some swear they met an unknown woman there;

She bade them join her, but some ghastly fear

Made each one hesitate, and back away.

We’ve fewer than one hundred on the ship,

There are no strangers after all this time,

And yet two members of our crew have gone;

Their clothes discarded, scattered by the pool.

Last night a lake of water blocked the hall,

Too wide to jump, but I forbore to wade

Across; I turned to leave and felt a hand

Upon my ankle; wrenching free, I ran.

Today one more of us had disappeared.

How long before we all are dead and drowned?

072319

Dibs

A young man stood there when we left the ship,

His half a smile proclaimed “I got here first.”

You’re welcome to my world, he said, and bowed,

Just sign these papers, here and also here,

Now, to the matter of the landing fee,

Your payment must be made in local coin,

Alas, I can’t accept your IOU,

Your ship will stand in for your surety.

We wondered if he was a native wight,

And how he’d learned the English tongue, if so,

Seattle’s where I hail from, near enough,

I came here when the crowding got too bad,

See, this whole world’s my homestead, every bit,

Your ship’s impounded, true, but you’re in luck

You work the land, you’ll get it back some day.

070519c

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.

062319

Captain’s Log

There is a thing that we have all forgot,

I’ve dogged the hatch and stumbled to the helm,

My head, it spins, some thing has gotten in,

The crew sound off, it’s long past time to go,

I count ‘em twice and ev’ryone’s aboard,

We jump, and stars transform, we jump again,

The cosmos crystallizes from what if,

There’s something still I think we have forgot.

Her empty seat reminds me of her breath,

Which boiled out from her crimsoned lungs; her eyes

Are milk; her frozen body knocks against

The hull, drifts past the ports, stares in at us,

We never leave a member of our crew,

There’s something that I wish I could forget.

071318

The Wrong Foot

The biochemists said the native fruit

Weren’t poisonous, and they were healthy too

They tasted better than we’d ever had

We finished off the last of them before

Some aliens with woven baskets came

They looked upon denuded trees, then us

Juice quickly wiped from dripping chins and hands
The looks we got before they slipped away!

We headed for our ship; we saw black smoke

Ran then, and found our landing craft aflame

And nothing we could salvage from the fire

Before the mother ship could rescue us

A flight of spears flew from beneath the trees

Please tell my husband that I love--

071218d

The Worm Ouroboros

We live and love, but rising underneath

The Word that ends it all is uttered soft

It tears the world apart and chaos yawns

As space and time like tissue paper rent

Are whelmed by nothingness and then are gone

Another Word engendered everything

Contained annihilation’s deadly seed

A toxic portion of Creation’s plan.

Now gone are empires, stars, and planets too

The pain of life and death we bid farewell

But when all matter, energy have passed

And nothing anywhere exists at all

Just wait (though time its tocking breath holds in)

The board’s re-set; it’s time to move again.

010618b

The Icing On The Hut

She skims the cookies from the morning pool,

The chocolate syrup dripping from the net,

She lays them out to dry so carefully,

There’s chocolate chip and chocolate raisin too,

She fells the mighty marzipan and saws

It into disks; for roofing, almond bark,

Spun sugar gathered from sweet spiders’ webs

Becomes white curtains woven through the night.

It’s worth the time and risk of ant attack,

Those monstrous hexapods that stalk the Wood,

If she can lure plump children to her door,

She doesn’t want to eat them; heavens no!

She’ll have apprentices by hook or crook,

And drink their sweetened ichor when they’re ripe.

101017e

Links

I’ve always gone for patties, but them eggs,

They’re fried, not raw, not scrambled, poached or boiled,

And grits! Could write a paean just to grits,

But this just ain’t that pome; this one’s for links,

No not the links where there’s a hole in one,

The links of which hot dogs are but a shade,

The grease of them would kill you now for sure,

You’d better give them to the dog this time.

Gee willikers, there was a time long past,

The links were ev’rything to clear-eyed you,

Aw, yoghurt now for breakfast if at all,

The whole-wheat toast with jam on special days,

And wouldn’t 10-year you have said just kill

Me now, I never want to live like that.

A blank-verse sonnet.

052816

Weakly

The creatures tried to raise their heads, but failed,
So feeble they could scarcely move or breathe,
We pitied them; inferior of race,
Despite their handsome shiny metal home,
We hungered, so we ate them where they lay,
Their screams and gabbles hurtful to the ear,
Their layered garb was dry and tough to chew,
The metal bits we saved to give the kids.

The children played excitedly with them,

They pulled and pushed them as they're wont to do,
A sharp report and smoke; a shout and screams,
My child fell bleeding from a tiny wound,
My dying son was perforated through,
And there was nothing I could do for him.


A blank-verse sonnet.