032218c

come spring
Butterville was swarmed by insects
any who escaped
to neighboring Ice Cream County
received a chilly reception

020618d

the first-instar warriors
massed ventrally on the leaf
probosci at the ready

the vegetation had no chance

120117b

arthropods love
these warm short winters
me too

082717c

2 poems in Aug. print Scifaikuest. DN 107 due out momentarily (no poems by me, but great stuff by others). Cicada exuviae clinging to trees, weeds, flower stalks.

bright red pepper
and blue bindweed blooms
August garden

041717

Dateline San Diego

We chordates,
furry, scaly,
endoskeletal all,
are we extinct?
Marooned by a cheap
imported switch,

time-machine buggering

plastic crap
that I fear
cannot be duplicated here.
This world, hotter,
a place of insects,
strange societies,
gossamer buildings
patinaed in shimmer
sand refraction,
grand vistas from
the top of this tower
swaying in the Santa Ana:
after sundown
a myriad dim glows
flying, mating,
spelling out incantations
in an alphabet of arthropods.
My chemical greeting
delivered,
but what now to say?

First publ. in Big Pulp

082416

mug has two sticky spots
I remember
how to hold it
or not

081616b

Capt. inchworm

your voyage on my vessel
incomprehensibly fast and far.
Has taken you to a land
where no plants grow
you will never see greenery again
and die alone

Fossil insect trackway

A small fossil insect trackway from the Minkin site in central Alabama. This is the ventral side of the slab, so footprints have positive relief. On the left, you see a shallow undertrack on a layer close to the original sediment surface. On the right, you see a deeper layer, on which the trackway was more shallowly impressed. Same trackway, same insect, but preserved slightly differently on different layers.

Want to know more about this kind of stuff? Here is a new book:

https://www.amazon.com/Footprints-Stone-Fossil-Coal-Age-Tetrapods/dp/0817358447/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1469797628&sr=1-1&keywords=%22footprints+in+stone%22

Signed copies are in the Barnes and Noble in Tuscaloosa. Order a signed copy from me for $43 postpaid.

And you can learn a lot on this website:

http://alabamapaleo.org/Alabama_Paleontological_Society.html

Alabama Paleontological Society

The APS (link below) is an amateur organization of fossil enthusiasts based in Birmingham, Alabama. They have monthly meetings in field trips. They also discovered the Steven C Minkin Paleozoic Footprint site, the most important trace fossil site of its age in the world, and made sure that it was preserved for posterity. Without their work, my new book about the site (co-authored with Ron Buta) could not have existed.

Fossils at the site are abundant and diverse, but one of the best things about it is that you can visit the site, with the APS, and keep most or all of the wonderful fossils that you find

http://alabamapaleo.org/Alabama_Paleontological_Society.html

061416

centimeter worms

sleeker and more fuel efficient

inchworms didn't have a prayer

Steven C Minkin Paleozoic footprint site update

Ron Buta has restored his interactive website, which includes thousands of photographs of Pennsylvanian trace fossils from the Minkin site:

http://bama.ua.edu/~rbuta/scm/

Users of this site can propose tentative IDs for the fossils in the photographs, and can estimate or measure other characteristics of the fossils based on examination of the photographs. All of your comments are recorded and you can see comments previously made by other people. So many specimens have been collected from this site, that many of them have not yet been studied in any detail, or even at all.

If you don't want to record your observations, that's fine. You can still look at the amazing pictures of this astoundingly diverse trace fossil fauna from more than 300 million years ago.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I had nothing to do with putting the website together, but Ron and I have a book about the site, due out in a couple of weeks. It is possible to preorder the book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Footprints-Stone-Fossil-Coal-Age-Tetrapods/dp/0817358447/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460989262&sr=1-1&keywords=%22footprints+in+stone%22

101114

A very short haibun


No one liked the cockroach vampires, but they were appreciated.


on the third I rise
skitter after the fluids of the living
when the great light rises

062913

stink bug
you can't suck much
from my window

big bugs

imagine playing
table tennis with two arms
roach wins again

no home internet

tech sux. but that's why no posts last weekend.

the blank page
on my knee caught a leaf
ant steps onto white

Daily Cabal

new flash Not for the xenophobic http://www.dailycabal.com/2010/06/reduction-in-force/

another flash from me with deities

gods, bugs, and everyday life -- http://www.dailycabal.com/2010/04/fly-away-now/

who goes next?

Kalpa of the Hexapod



Iron bugs pose, stern,

eclipsing each day with

shadow sweeps children

bouncing balls and scooping jacks

as airfish rise, their

iridescent nebulosity

facing, blown back by

an iron breeze

zeppelin gliding in from the

west, its self-important name

tribute to something

but the children, jacks scattered

hands clapping

legs jump jump jumping

wing cases clattering

aunties are home



end

really bugs me

little Rob joined the
Cult of the Hemiptera
they suck