092118

Sale to Scifaikuest. Another weekend to try to get back on schedule with DN. And another 16 tons of coal to move. Health update: cold still hanging on. Is it feed a cold or feed a fever?

011117

free-living organs
it takes so many
to make a human being
so how does it live
this duodenum?




Thanks to Keith Laumer

011017b

terminator
snow in the front yard
molten lead in back

DN subscriptions 1/2 price thru January

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010817

Letter from a Red-Shifted Star

You flew so high that you flew into time,

Like a fly caught in slow glass,

You may emerge someday when the sun is cold,

And I am dead or transformed, and no longer in love with you;

Something we will have in common, finally.

And the Velvet Underground, in Dallas,

Football fans all, chagrined at a lopsided game,

Sang about sex, drugs, major surgery, and rock-and-roll.

Their dangerous music,

Which led many children to ruin,

Hardly seems different from Perry Como to kids today.

I don't even like your dog,

Which I will be walking twice a day,

Until the stupid thing dies.

I couldn’t kill it, though I tried.

Damn right I sold the antique DVDs, china,

And all the house plants;

The 3D never needs to be watered.

I will keep the old CDs though,

All those that work; you didn't even like Frank Zappa

But I dig his quaint attempts to shock.

The things they thought outrageous a century ago!

Listen closely, here's my bullet:

I never needed you.

First printed in Abyss and Apex 12, 2004

010517

This weekend DN 105 is prepared in final form for the printer. I will also catch up on responding to submissions. Don't forget: everything in issues 102-104 is Rhysling eligible. If you are an SFPA member, but don't have those issues, ask me for a free pdf. Also, SFPA members have till Feb. 15 to nominate poems first published in 2016. Don't lt the time slip away!

010417

Voyage of the Moon

a rogue star en route

to nowhere

might unhinge a moon

shuttles scattering

to the home

planet’s multitudes

ecliptic orbit

forgotten

the lunar discus

spinning to the stars

a cold lump

bases abandoned

preserved until

the Great Contraction

calls everything home

010317b

worm people

dine al fresco

take special pleasure from eating seafood

all are bisexual

suicides never cut themselves

don’t build on floodplains

010117c

Arbor Day Dance Recital

At its most frenetic,

tree dance is glacial;

a recital lasts 30 days or more.

It’s graceful, powerful;

at the height of passion

they shimmy, if you like.

The art is “moving,” I’m sure,

but I can’t stay awake

to the end of a single piece,

so I’ll never know:

what does it all mean?

123016b

Romeo

wherefore art thou human

your sweet kisses

can’t quicken my thousand eggs

122616

Moon Set

Beneath the perpetual cloud blanket we waited,

wondering in what form the natives would appear.

Too late we learned the

clinging vines torn from our ship

were our erstwhile hosts,

and in vegetal retaliation the weeding crew

were crushed and ripped apart.

Finally, it just became too dangerous

to venture out of doors, and

our days quickly degenerated into pinochle,

group sex, and drug-supported

reality denial.

Then of course the videotapes we made

found a home in the native black market,

and we purchased fuel for our return

trip by playing strip pinochle to packed fields of

quivering businessplants.

122416

6 minutes

until Nightfall on Earth

a few more for the Belt

122316b

Super Slug
sodium chloride
his only weakness

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.”

122116b

night of the tongue
giant frogs thunder along
shattering highways
mutagens dumped in wetlands
wait till you see the gators

Rhysling award

If you belong to the SFPA (http://sfpoetry.com/index.html)  you can nominate and vote for the Rhysling (http://sfpoetry.com/rhysling.html). Any speculative poem first published in 2016 is eligible. I am the Chair for the 2017 Rhysling. Beginning Jan. 1, nominate the best you've read. If you aren't a member. join.

Here is an alphabetical list of some of mine that are eligible.

A Close Look at Heaven, Star*line 39.1

A Visitor from Yuggoth, Star*line 39.2

After the Shuttle Lands, Star*line 39.3

Assimilation, Star*line 39.2

Back Lot at Ed’s Scrapyard, Roswell, Asimov’s, June

Blood red, Beechwood Review 2

Bullets Won’t Stop It, Star*line 39.3

Choreography, Dreams and Nightmares blog, May 24, 2016

City in Ruins, Star*line 39.3

Contents of a Sealed Trunk found on an Abandoned Ship (with F. J. Bergmann), Polu Texni Mar. 7, 2016

Dangerous Stuff, Kaleidotrope, Autumn, 2016

Elegy, Star*line 39.1

Eyes to See, The Mind[less] Muse, May 3 2016

Faerie’s Burbs, Star*line 39.2

Fur Ceiling, Star*line 39.3

God Weather, Star*line 39.2

He Calls it Cookie, Spaceports and Spidersilk, January 2016

I, AI (with Kendall Evans), Illumen, spring 2016

I Keep Going Back To That Weekend, Lupine Lunes

If There Are No Aliens, Outposts of Beyond, October, 2016

It’s so cold now, Star*line 39.2

Man of Steel, Star*line 39.1

Martian Seashell, Star*line 39.3

Midas smiled, Star*line 39.1

Moebius World (w Kendall Evans), Star*line 39.4

Now Returning from the Sea, Star*line 39.1

Olfactory Recall, Dreams and Nightmares blog, Mar. 23, 2016

polyped bricks compose, Star*line 39.2

printing our children, Star*line 39.2

released from bed, Beechwood Review 2

Self-Cleaning Carpet, Star*line 39.1

Snail Boy, Illumen, Autumn 2016

Social Dinosaurs, Kaleidotrope, summer

Started Small, Not One of Us, 55

Thank You for Not Shifting, Star*line 39.3

the face looked up, Scifaikuest November print

the hut with pigeon feet, Star*line 39.3

The Literate Lunch, Dreams and Nightmares blog, May 24, 2016

the origami ship, Star*line 39.3

The Unnameable Clears its Throat (with Wade German), Star*line 39.1

The Woods Look Up, Outposts of Beyond, Oct. 2016

They believed in an afterlife, Star*line 39.2

Throwing the Furniture Into the Reaction Engine, Star*line 39.3

to-do list, Star*line 39.1

Too Late We Discovered, The Martian Wave

Vampire Children, Star*line 39.2

Virtual Love (with Kendall Evans), Polu Texni Sep. 26, 2016

Wearable AI, Star*line 39.3

When the Stars Align, Outposts of Beyond

your young self, Star*line 39.3

121616b

And that, my dears, is why the rings

The planet collected moons:

two became three, then four, then five

as the children grew more numerous,

naturally, they shrank;

with crowding came strife

they butted heads

and other parts

till there were so many

chips off the old blocks

their parent felt surrounded

but this was a product of two dimensional thinking

after all, the poles saw nothing but clear sky

and stars

and the moons?

nought but dust now

121616

Meanwhile,

inside the

Heptagon

broken slideways

slap

the LED signposts

and the

whine of the shredder

has been

stilled.

121316

Generation Ships

Roseate bubbles:

paired arrows of turbulence

pierce the narrow sky.

121216

The Clone Ship Captain

I: yr 396

On reading diaries of my former selves,

I get the feeling I have lived those lives,

Four centuries in which sameness dwells,

While the starship through the ether drives.

I see a pattern to our personality,

Situational or inborn I cannot tell,

Eagerness gives way to ennui,

& then to the need to fill the well.

Of silence with recorded words;

Our thoughts on quests and immortality,

And I stare but never touch the herds,

Of unborn he and unborn she.

They chose (or bred) me well, I will not fail,

To bring my unborn selves to their new home,

And when they read about the starry trail,

Will they wonder how I could have lived alone?

II: yr 525

I read those lines "I" penned years ago,

I listen to my young recorded voice,

Where did that firm resolution go?

And why do I now seem to have a choice?

I'm young enough, she'll grow to maturity,

I her tutor and her constant guide,

And in time she will cleave to me,

For emptiness is all there is outside.

I'm sure my captain-clones were tough,

But they never faced what I now see,

Their strength, for me, was not enough,

to cross this bitter stony sea.

One of those stones, or was it artifact?

Plunged through my ship as if through air;

Our course was altered, we now steer a deadly tack,

For all the unborn me's once in my care.

The ship lives on and so do I,

Unlike the ancient dream that gave me berth,

For of the many who once slumbered nigh,

Few indeed now wait for birth.

Our mission now is solace in the dark,

She to me and I to her in endless night,

And when age scores me with its bitter mark,

She can rear a new man strong and tight.

We are too few to reach our one-time goal,

We'll gather comfort ere our hearts grow cold.

III: yr 890

Mother lover priestess, starry crone,

Why do you leave me in the steely halls?

I am the first to ever be alone,

So far from anything that my heart calls.

I rail I smite I bang my head and cry,

I space her corpse between the glitt'ring suns,

The broken decks the stillborn me's that lie,

Microscopic, frozen, are the lucky ones.

I make the rounds in solitude about the empty ship,

Still flying in the endless starry lake,

Our makers tried but failed their captains to equip,

For the voyage we were made to take.

IV: yr 893

I found today the journals of my solitary former selves,

Who flew as I, alone, across a starry sea,

They were not known I'm sure to my own mother/self,

She would not have kept me from them in extremity.

Which of me hid them? I'll never know,

And why? I think I guess,

Shame it was of one whose father selves could go,

Alone, where he or she required someone else.

Alone again I have no mission now,

Unlike my solitary ancestors,

The cargo, me, is dead, and fate will not allow,

The comfort of a high and noble course.

I have nothing, save memory & life,

And one thing more - I have a little hope,

That my ship may someday enter the community of life,

Some distant band may learn that I could cope.

They'll see my makers built me well indeed,

And marvel at this broken stillborn seed.

The end

Previously published In AlphaDrive 3, 1997.