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

120120b

 

I have belatedly realized that there is a portal for indie bookstores. This book of fantasy/horror flash fiction can be purchased that way:

https://bookshop.org/books/gods-and-monsters-9781519729446/9781519729446  

022920

What Kind of God Would Allow This To Happen?


How inconvenient!
The Creator allowed us to invent time units,
based on a perfectly sensible diurnal cycle,
that leave leftover bits
at year's end:
WKOGWATTH?

So every 4 years,
we just make up a day,
out of nothing, out of desperation,
'cept every 100,
'cept every 400,
and it just goes on,
by a process of successive approximations:
WKOG etc?

Plus,
and furthermore,
a mere billion years ago,
nearly 500 days per yea,r
and in the beginning, a spinning top,
a whirling dervish:
is there no constant in this world?
W etc!

So, does anyone really know what time it is?
Does anyone even really care?

022120

Quite an Impression

The body of some unknown god

Plummeted from the sky,

impaled itself on the stoplight

In the center of town,

Head crushing the drugstore

(Woulda killed Mr. Snyder

if the store had been open),

Right knee clipping the front of the Pure station,

And, I guess,

Smashing the storage tank

Under the pump,

Cos now the whole town smells of gas.

Not much left of the 7-11 either,

But the five and dime next door was no big loss;

It closed years ago,

Only thing is, can’t get through the intersection at all,

And now we have to detour 40 miles

To get to the Walmart

Across the county line.

Meanwhile,

This thing shows no sign of decaying,

And we've got no equipment

That could move it,

So its name is Mud

Far as I'm concerned,

And it's just too bad

That I don't even know

If this is my god,

And He's dead,

Like Nietzsche said,

Or if this is some other dude,

Who didn't create my universe,

And I still have to go to church on Sunday,

Even though now the drive

Is 20-some miles longer,

Which is costing me a lot of gas money,

And what kind of God

Could allow this to happen,

If He isn't dead?

021020b

he rolls the dice
for another universe
snake eyes again

020420

In retrospect it seems inevitable that Bacchus would manifest after so long an absence at a frat party. Where else would drunks try so hard to reenact the traditional rituals? The party went on for a week. The University finally shut it down because of the loud singing, in Greek, that continued through Sunday morning. The basement was strewn with the inebriated, but the only remaining alcohol was in the bottom of a ceramic jar. All the students said about that was "He had the best wine," but analysis proved the residue to be a perfectly ordinary red.

010420e

This poor cosmos:

only three spatial dimensions

and no intelligence at all

010220d

we called them shoggoths, naturally

giant slugs, oozing through

the ruins of this civilization

how could we know

some dead god lay sleeping

in the foundations of it all

090119c

Divine Intervention

I regret that I have delivered

only this headless God,

striding across the Downs,

and, erratically,

occasionally waving its arms,

creating things that, frankly,

look a bit odd/useless,

(the God not being able to see its handiwork and all),

in any case,

I trust it will affright your enemies,

at least as much as your friends,

and do not much more harm

than you have been doing to yourselves anyway.

So, thanks for your request;

this is all I can do for you at this time,

and in the future,

please regard a fatted calf,

as the least you can do,

if you expect a helpful response.

090119

God Weather

It begins with the small stuff:

Cupid, demigods, dryads & hamadryads;

Then Hermes, Athena, Aphrodite,

Or some of their ilk,

Hail down brutally into Earth's bread basket.

Even a cherub can leave a mark

(The crater that was Chicago

Was probably made by Thor

Or some other heavy hitter).

But who was it hit the Yucatan 65 mya

And sterilized a good bit of N. Am.?

What rough pantheon

Shuffled off this mortal coil

When our ancestors still looked like

Poorly designed rats?

081519b

Career Path

I could have been a god,

rolling out worlds

so smooth and fine,

patting them and shaping them,

spheroidal as you please,

baking them to perfection

in the celestial oven, seeding them

with water and organic goodness, but

BAM!

My suns kept exploding,

every … single ... time,

and after I'd burned up

three top-dollar test kitchens

I was expelled.

That's why I'm shoveling neutrons

on this collapsar for a living,

and pawing through second-hand

comets and asteroids,

looking for bargains.

062219

Face is the clouds
A hand reaching down to me
Inauspicious start
To the last day

061119

Sold an SF poetry book ms to Diminuendo.Includes poems about gods, but none about demons.

052719c

Marsh Dreams

The bog god sleeps a while and dreams;

A drownéd king whose eyes are blind;

He sighs, and pulls his blanket up the streams.

Aquatic creatures are his slumb'ring mind,

Reeds his beard, the mere his empty eyes,

And in his bowels all the waters wind.

And should this god whose dreams are lilies,

and the tiny fish that grow to paint the parent sea,

Wake, and stretch his mossy limbs,

The tossing willow and the cypress tree,

Up the river valleys swift will run,

And all the waters of the ocean come to him.

Don't rouse the ancient spirit of the marsh and mere,

For our fields and houses would forget the sun,

And pitcher plants and crayfish settle here.

Foundation for a citadel of orchids and of vine,

The factories and car lots would become,

Parks and fields would riot and would drown,

To dream about lost days of man,

And woman, and forgotten life of towns,

Where now the bittern nests and dryads come.

123018b

Sparked by a Jane Yolen poem.



God gave us free will
He'd have thrown in
free wisdom, too
but that was just too hard
like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle
which says
you can't know all you want to
about any particle
observation changes things
Creation may as well
the quality of imparted wisdom
limits free will

and vice versa?

121518b

Making Divinity

The Cabbage-Patch God

The Dolls' Crusade

A Natural Attraction

A Remarkable Reaction

Bradley the Magnificent

The Cabbage-Patch God

Quantum gods appeared and disappeared in Kayla's wake like soap bubbles. No god can survive long without worshipers, and Kayla's attention span cut off many a deity before it shook off the mists of its own making. As time went by, her attention and memory improved, and the average lifespan of her creations lengthened from moments to hours. The Easter Bunny God born when she was three lasted long enough to smite a few peeps and raise an entire bag of jelly beans from the dead. The beans were consumed in short order by Kayla and two of her friends.

For her fifth birthday Kayla received a venerable cabbage-patch doll from Marlys, who was going to college, and didn't want the trappings of childhood cramping her style in the Big Show. The doll had seen better days. Some of her hair was gone, and what was left contained its share of gum and other household residue. Someone (could it have been Marlys when she was young?) had used a black sharpie to enhance the doll's eyebrows. The dress she came with was long gone, and the one she was wearing was 10 sizes too big. But the doll had two things going for her that overrode all other considerations. First, she had belonged to Marlys, who occupied the place in Kayla's life that Marlys herself had reserved for Christina Aguilera, back in the day. Second, the doll had belonged to Marlys.

For about three weeks after she received the doll, Kayla lavished on her all the adoration any deity could want. That first night, the doll blinked Her eyes. She stretched a mighty stretch, feeling Her back pop. "Only I," she thought "can appreciate this sensation the way it should be appreciated." In commemoration of the event, the doll bestowed speech on all of the other toys. Speech that only toys could hear.

"Bow down to me," the doll commanded, but the other toys did not move. The doll had forgotten to give them the power. "Silly me," She thought, "it might take a while to master this miracle thing." So She practiced, carefully undoing all but one of Her experiments. Fortunately, Kayla's mother had her eyes shut when the old blue horse, now translucent and trailing sparks, emerged from her bathroom mirror and disappeared through the opposite wall.

That day, Kayla loved the doll with all her heart, and that night, every toy on the Two Shelves paid the Cabbage-Patch God all the obeisance it was due. Celestial music emanated from the doll's fingertips and the toys lifted up their voices in song.

The end

The Dolls' Crusade

After Kayla's adoration elevated the cabbage-patch doll to godhood, the spontaneous creation of new deities ceased. Kayla ate with the doll, slept with Her (although the God arose and engaged in divine activities while Her creator slept), even put the doll on the bathroom counter when Mother gave Kayla her bath.

For the first week or so the Cabbage-Patch God consolidated Her power over the other toys and commanded them to seek out new worshippers beyond the playroom. This was not particularly successful. Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy formed a colorful team, but they were easily swayed from the one true path. They had to be recommitted to the faith every night. On the third night the African mask over the fireplace convinced them to sacrifice the glass candy bowl to it and they were confined to the playroom henceforth. The Buddha by the front door persuaded a squad of plastic soldiers to renounce violence. They founded a monastery under the dragon's-foot credenza. Several stuffed animals embarked on a pilgrimage to the den to liberate the 10-point buck, but were unable to remove it from the wall.

The failure of Cabbage Patchism to spread wasn't for lack of miracles. The Cabbage-Patch God parted the shag on the carpet in front of the loveseat. On the west side of the room the threads leaned west and on the east side they leaned east.

"The vacuum can do that," the African mask said, "should we worship it?"

The God rotated all the pictures on the wall 5° clockwise. She used the shag carpet to make crop circles. She commanded all of the windows to stick shut, and the next day to refuse to stay shut. She caused the telephone answering machine to leap off the end table and crawl under the couch. Everything in the house (except the obtuse humans) recognized the Cabbage-Patch God's divine power. The dearth of converts did not result from a failure of belief. The problem seemed to be that many household objects just did not get the concept of worship. (Unlike toys, which were apparently anthropomorphic enough to share this trait with humans.)

The Cabbage-Patch God had a sinking feeling that, as worshippers, toys didn't quite count. Kayla was Her only human worshipper, and her long-term loyalty was in doubt. Gods hear everything their worshippers say about them, and that morning Kayla told Mother that the Cabbage-Patch God's dress was "ugly." Something would have to be done.

The end

A Natural Attraction

The Cabbage-Patch God decided to extend Her dominion over humans in order to protect Her future. Gods only exist as long as they have worshipers, and She was afraid that Her plush and painted congregation on the toy shelves didn't count. Her only human worshiper was Kayla, Her creator. Friday night two of Kayla's friends were sleeping over. This was a perfect opportunity to win the adoration of Britney and Whitney.

When the doorbell rang, Kayla ran down the stairs, shrieking with delight. She did not carry the Cabbage-Patch God with her, as she had done constantly for the past two weeks. The God felt a pang of worry. It might already be too late.

The three girls burst into the room, clattering past the Cabbage-Patch God where she lay slumped against the wall at the foot of the bed. The girls huddled in front of the desk, and the God could not see what they were looking at.

"He's SO cute!" Whitney exclaimed, almost dancing in place. There was a faint click.

Britney giggled. "Look at this one! I love his floppy little ears." More clicks.

Kayla squealed and leaned forward, pointing at something. "This is the cutest puppy ever! I love it SO much!"

The God suddenly felt nauseated and a pulse of weakness passed through Her. She squeezed Her eyes shut and gestured. Giant snowflakes in pastel pink and blue materialized above the girls and began to fall silently. The girls continued to laugh and talk excitedly. They didn't notice the colored snowflakes because the flakes, which formed just below the ceiling, popped out of existence a few inches above the girls' heads. The flurry's intensity diminished. The flakes faded to white, shrank, and finally ceased altogether.

The God rubbed Her eyes vigorously. She needed to do better than that. The Cabbage-Patch God clenched Her fists, gathering Her powers. Let the girls ignore a full-size pink elephant! The wall beside Kayla's bed acquired a pinkish hue. An irregular bulge suggested tusks, a trunk, and a broad forehead. Kayla's mother called from downstairs.

"Girls! Lunch time."

The wall snapped back to vertical and returned to a color that Sherwin-Williams had called "Ivory."

"I'm starved!" Whitney shouted, and all three ran laughing from the room.

Kayla's room was silent. The computer monitor on the desk showed a photograph of a dog, which wagged its tail and almost looked ready to jump right out of the screen. Elsewhere in the room, nothing moved.

The end

A Remarkable Reaction

Since she was a small child, Kayla had created gods. In fact, anything she worshipped became a God (if it wasn't already). For example, for three weeks when Kayla was 5 years old a newly raised Cabbage-Patch God had commanded the fealty of all other denizens of the toy shelves. Kayla had since learned to control her adoration, because it quickly became inconvenient to be trailed by a cloud of transitory deities. As a freshman in high school, Kayla seemed cool, sophisticated, maybe a little stuck up. Supernatural powers will do that to a young girl, no matter how sensible she is.

For a while, Kayla worried that any expression of animosity on her part might create demons, or at the very least destroy the people who angered her. It did not take long for her to realize she could hate anyone she liked: nothing would happen. This was a liberating discovery for a teenager. Life is good when you're young, and imbued with a power most cannot even dream of. Even if you don't use it. However, there comes a time in the life of every young person when he or she meets someone whose existence becomes as important as life itself.

The marriage of perfect form with flawless function that was Bradley Jones hit Kayla like a ton of bricks. It would be useless to describe his warm green eyes, his exquisite shell-like ears, or his curly auburn locks that Kayla longed to comb with her fingers. His broad shoulders, flat and creamy stomach, his straight and symmetrical nose; these too can be named, but to no purpose. We cannot truly appreciate the effect Bradly had on Kayla unless we remember the heat that caused our hands to tremble on that day long ago when we glanced at someone and realized for the first time that Beauty had come to earth.

--

"Bradley," Kayla murmured as he leaned casually against the wall. Her heard pounded so hard dust particles danced with each pulse.

He raised an eyebrow and turned away.

Kayla would do anything for Bradley. Anything. But lest you fear that she created a monster with the power of a god and the self-control of a 17-year-old boy, let me allay your fears. Kayla loved Bradley with all her heart. She worshipped the very ground he walked on.

end

Bradley the Magnificent

Brad felt good, really good, as he got out of his red Mustang coupe. Why Officer Kelly hadn’t given him a speeding ticket he had no idea. He would’ve bet on Kelly ticketing God Himself for going 90 in a 45 zone. My mojo kicks ass, he thought. His grin faltered as he stumbled over the weirdly cracked and rippled pavement in the middle of the school parking lot. The pavement that, he told himself firmly, had NOT spontaneously shaken itself last week into an uncanny semblance of his own face. He scowled in concentration all the way up the front steps. Behind him, the parking lot smoothed out like the still surface of a pond.

When Brad walked into school at 8:04, Assistant Principal Goodwin was waiting in front of the office, arms folded.

“Bradley Jones,” she said, shaking her head as though looking at something disgusting left by a puppy,

“I told you yesterday …”

“I am not tardy,” Brad said.

“…that you are right on time. Keep up the good work, young man.” She wheeled around and marched into the office, the door swinging shut behind her.

Wow, it worked on Goodwin, too. Somehow he’d acquired supernatural powers overnight. Brad’s grin was back. As he strolled toward Mr. Datta’s math class he wondered, did a God need algebra? Did He even need high school?

At lunch, that stupid freshman Kayla whatshername stared at him with an intensity that was truly unnerving. He could feel her gaze from three tables away. “Seriously creepy,” he muttered. She had become obsessed with him lately, and no matter how rude he was it made no difference. “I wish she wasn’t interested in me at all,” he thought. There was a noiseless thump, and Kayla looked away. Good! But he was momentarily nauseated, and so dizzy he had to grip the edge of the table till the room stopped whirling.

“You alright?” Chuck asked, “Brad?”

Brad waved him away and stood up quickly, but all afternoon he felt odd.

Driving home as fast as the Mustang would go, Brad found Officer Kelly waiting for him. This would be no problem. But Kelly hit the lights and pulled him over. No matter what Brad said, thought, or did, Kelly took out his ticket book and wrote a $238 ticket, which Mom would not pay for.

end

101918b

God
diced
for the
universe
and lost, which is why
it seems an evil idiot
has been running the place for the past few thousand years

082918b

late summer sun
bakes even the weeds
we thank God for AC

060118d

A Big Sleep

Feeling a pang,

God looked down at His body:

tiny creatures,

His own creations!

were carrying off bits of Him

to sequester in their burrows,

to consume,

thereby partaking of His godhood,

to exalt and worship,

to rub against their bodies,

perhaps to use in other ways.

Millions of them,

for countless mayfly generations,

had plundered Him as He slept;

He saw His endoskeleton,

nakedly exposed,

shining;

His organs of alimentation,

of pleasure,

had been partially removed.

Trying to stand,

He realized He could not,

and now perceiving an industrious column,

entering one organ of audition,

leaving via another,

He felt His thoughts mixing,

slipping away;

the last running like water

from a pitcher:

I was, I am ... what?

050918c

office vine

drinks in  the summer sun
aa new leaf every few days

thank God this isn't kudzu