091221

I saw the end, the vagrant
said, hat in hand and cheeks
bristly gray, I dreamed it
lying yellow and hot
across the city.

Gave him a dollar, satisfied
with my charity, made good
money trading, slept till I woke
in this day's saffron dawn.

050321

 

On Mars we found only extinct microbes

Enceladus, same deal

Even on the moon, in its frozen ocean

Far below the surface, we found remains 

Now Earth is joining this club

Thanks to us

What will the aliens think of us

When they follow our transmissions to the source?

050121b

 

growing wild

Earth found the lost colony 

posthuman

mantis game preserve

skulls of men on display

042721

 

the saucers

came for the cats of course 

dogs stayed to the end

042621

 

The physics professor, despondent after her divorce, sent a micro black hole back in time: most elaborate form of attempted suicide known. Miscalculated the adjustment for the movement of Earth through space in the 12th decimal place. Sorry about Neptune.

041421c

 

the last were up to

two-thirds microplastic

trashed world

032021b

 

 Armageddon at the Pearly Gates

A flash, a bang,

line stretching 

all the way back to Earth,

Served today: 7.4 billion

(including unbelievers)*

*Universalist administration at just the wrong time

012821c

 

Select 100% terran tuna, certified vat-grown on the home world before the Incident, and cryoshipped directly to the Capital ahead of the wavefront.

011821b

 

 

I Didn’t Bring You A T-shirt

We live fast,

our top speed:

tens of thousands of km per second;

not much for a photon,

but our bodies are a drag, spaceship, too;

it’ll take many millennia, your reference frame,

to crawl to the galactic core

and back again.

No one will be here

to oo and ahh over our gorgeous snaps

of the myriads of proximate suns,

the clouds of swirling incandescent gas,

and the great big nothing in the center,

‘cept maybe some hyperevolved insects,

but to them we’re not friends,

or enemies,

or even dinner;

but objects of study:

anatomy, physiology, behavior, etc.

Then,

           of course,

                             dinner.

 

011821

 

zombie

Friday nights

dialing for delivery

but every number I know

goes straight to voicemail

if I only had a brain

 

011721b

 

What the aliens called humor humans had a different name for. But the aliens wrote the histories.

011621b

 

The Blighted Land

The warren extends for miles,

it's home to tens of thousands

of displaced persons, exiles from the light,

and it is just a network of holes

in the ground.

Teenagers being what they are,

Ilona and Stefan want to get out

anyway they can,

nothing ever changes here,

and there's nothing new to see.

It is cold, so cold,

colder than they have ever known,

their lungs heave in the thin air,

it’s so bright they can scarcely see;

tears flow from their eyes,

and the wind flays flesh from their bones.

Mud and rock, sparse lichen,

as far as the eye can see;

they are standing on clay,

fissured by cracks

deeper than they are tall.

Why did the old ones

ever want to live here in the first place?

The tunnels are comforting,

like a mother's breast and arms,

and they go on forever.

 

011421e

 

Remains of the 21st Century

 

Crawling through the drive recovered from the dig site, the bot catalogued millions of spam messages, and little else.

010520e

 

how many species

burned their worlds to the ground

one, for sure

122420d

 

And In the Post-Human World
 

Somebody cried out

deep in the word

and fell silent

the forest was on the move

the sun rose

on a savanna

large animals browsed

others grazed

there were no dwellings

only the termite mounds

organic towers

and burrow systems

dug by sloths, beavers

small rodents

and innumerable invertebrates

121520d

 

A. I. Banks 

paints the town each night

all must go by dusk

murals seen by squirrel and fox

city critters aren't impressed

121520b

 Both ants were stalking him now, scissoring jaws agleam. A feint to left, roll to the right, and the last man on earth wondered...why bother?

121520

 

red sunrise over 

the faux planet's hills of ice

lichen blinks awake

121420b

 

After the primates wiped out both themselves and the dinosaurs (finally!) the job was up for grabs. Except the bacteria had really been in charge all along. 

121020b

wood-drenched hills forgot

rats whisper legends 

of easy pickings