I still really like this one

Superheroes

Strange Horizons, 21 October 2002

You have to jump,
and it's a long one,
but you make the leap.
Far below, a few cars are moving,
their lights illuminating
the fog from within,
its swirls and eddies the internal organs of
Ghosts.
You stumble and catch yourself
on the next roof with the fingertips
of your right hand on the gelid
Tar. You wiggle your fingers to
obscure any possible prints and
stroll over to the skylight.
She is waiting, alone in her bed.

There are so many ways to get through a skylight,
here are just a few:

* plunge feet first (closing eyes)
* rip it right out of its frame and toss it aside
* melt it with infrared eyebeams
* teleportation
* Slip through the crack where the water gets in.

But this skylight is open, and so you
simply jump down to the floor.

The girl smiles sleepily and opens herself.
You cover Brenda,
or whatever her name is,
while the CD changer shuffles through
some psychedelic rock.
It's good, very good, and lasts a long time,
superhuman stamina being what it is.

Afterwards, you trace the line of her jaw with a finger
that can poke through solid concrete.
She catches your finger and bites it playfully.
You slap her, not hard, and suddenly you are
wrestling.
No, you are fighting,
and it's taking all your strength
and art to keep your head from smashing
big holes in the floor and walls.
"Why Brenda," you say, "I had no idea."
She sinks her fangs into your neck.
You moan in terrible ecstasy,
your powerful limbs suddenly flaccid.
"Brenda, you suck," you whisper from
withered superhuman lips.

She picks you up and throws you into the
laundry chute. You slide down headfirst and land on
A pile of bodies. Somebody's thumb is in your eye.
"Fuck me, she caught another one," groans a faint voice.
It's Spiderman.
"Superman?" asks a thread-like whisper.
"He's not coming, Batman," Spidey retorts,
"he ain't that stupid."
"Anyway," replies Green Lantern,
"he's got Lois to wax his board."
"Well I only came because you did," Batman retorts angrily.
You won't die here, evidently,
But if these assholes don't shut up,
You may wish you did.

My poem at Strange Horizons

It went live a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot to tell you.

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2011/20111017/merkel-p.shtml

Strange Horizons logo competition

http://strangehorizons.com/2011/20111024/logo-e.shtml

Earn more than $200 and have your logo on the masthead of one of the most important science fiction e-zines out there.

Strange Horizons

http://www.strangehorizons.com/fund_drives/2011/prizes.shtml

That's the link to the Strange Horizons fund drive prize page. Yes, you get prizes for donating. Please do that today. SH is one of the most important online venues for SF & fantasy. They've been publishing great stuff for years, & I hope you'll help me make sure that continues.

http://strangehorizons.com/fund_drives/2011/main.shtml

This is the main page, where you can donate.

You can always read the online archive gratis, including a couple of dozen of my best poems.

Brushfires on Smashwords

My latest book of poetry, "Brushfires," is now available as an e-book from Smashwords, at the price of $2.25. Here is the link:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/54253

Brushfires includes a lot of new poetry never published anywhere else, as well as poems covering the last couple of decades of my work. And it has a cover by the incomparable Richard Fay.

If you want some examples of the kind of poems I write, check out the archives of www.strangehorizons.com

reprint from 2001

An Open Letter To Our Astronauts


First published www.strangehorizons.com, 31 December 2001, reprinted 2003 chapbook _shoggoths_, Sam's Dot


I wonder about them, those brave explorers,
Cocooned in their antiseptic habitats,
Sexually and temperamentally paired to a nicety,
With all the amenities the late 21st C has to offer.
When they return, eyes blazing with alien worlds
(The cities, the domed necropoli, wheeled plants and
Mile-long insects, weird new minerals and
Precisely measured constants),
When they return from their far adventuring,
What will they think, poking through the pestilential ash
Of our last and truly final war,
In which even the bones of the slain were devoured
In jig time by the worst the late 21st had to deploy?
And I write them notes, preserved in a wide variety of media,
And hide them in obscure places on several continents.
I try to tell them: don't grieve, don't feel guilt,
Turn away from this stupid dead thing and go back to the stars,
So that our suicide will not quite have been in vain.


end

collaboration at Strange Horizons

My latest poem online http://www.strangehorizons.com/2009/20090727/merkel-p.shtml

hot off the electrons

My latest poem at Strange Horizons http://www.strangehorizons.com/2009/20090518/merkel-p.shtml