051721

 

slow day

in Metropolis

Superman catches a thermal

111720b

 

Rocket Snail!

spreading ichor on getaway

cars everywhere

052220

Jumping sharks, Batman, Robin exclaimed, in the last episode.

111619c

Jellyfish Man tried to help in the War, but after the seas boiled away he wasn't much good for anything.

110419c

Photon Man
faster than a speeding
anything

051219

Superheroes

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.

042219c

Water Bear Boy

1.
 Looms like an alien war machine,
slow as a sloth,
bullets won't stop him.
Betty was his mom's BFF;
she won't let her daughter Hillary
(named for the president) go out with him,
but the way Hillary trailed her bare
hand along his armored flank
gave him a subsonic shock:
instant diarrhea for everyone within 30 feet,
except Hillary, perhaps because she was so close,
his face a burning brick, she laughs
“Did you see that bitch Lorna? OMG!“

2.
 Hillary plans to major in biology
“I don't think I'll get to go to college“ he whispers
“What, why? You tell those bastards--“
but a siren cuts across her outrage.
Love, he tells himself,
lumbering towards the First Mid-Am Bank
where a Cadillac idles by the curb;
masked men come running out,
sacks and handguns clutched,
the latter aimed back inside,
“Water Bear Boy!“ one shouts,
and they all go Bang! Bang! Bang!
He puts his forefeet on the trunk
as they all dive through the open doors,
claws sink thru asphalt and grip,
rubber squeals like a stuck pig, burns.
Soon enough, Sheriff Dan
takes the corner on two smokin' wheels;
“I've got it from here,“ he says. 

3.
 WBB has a tutor, he
doesn't ft thru the doors at R. W. Johnson H.S,
freaks are not welcome anyway,
so says almost everyone.
His tutor, Mrs Crabb, never smiles,
left her smile in her other suit, Dad says,
but “she's the only one who would help you.“
Hillary would, WBB thinks,
but her mom's a you-know-what
and won't allow it. 

4. 
They meet on White's farm, abandoned long ago,
house burned, barn sagging, rusty red tractor
out standing in its feld, weeds up to here.
Water bears, formally tardigrades,
are arthropods, Hillary says,
they can survive in pure alcohol, even liquid nitrogen
(“Holy freakin' cow,“ he says, though he googled this years ago).
Turns out Hillary has a thing for arthropods,
has an ant farm, pins Lepidoptera,
studied horseshoe crabs for a
6th-grade science project (“2nd at State“),
so WBB's exoskeleton (hard, shiny,
covered with sensory hairs) doesn't freak her out;
his cock, a standard human appendage,
will do just fne, too, it seems. 

5.
 “Wonder if you're fertile,“ Hillary muses,
lying back in the grass, hands behind her head.
Now she's freaking him out:
he's never even touched a baby,
never had a job and, and ... “shh,“ she says,
“You're a hero."


From Metastable Systems, Ebook $2.99
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/760901  

121618c

Oh yeah, THAT chicken

“Get off the counter!” The chicken fluttered onto the dining-room table. I shooed it toward the outside door, but it flew back to the pass-thru. It pecked at the formica. Then it looked at me.

“These pastel boomerangs are so 50′s.”

“Shut up!” I pulled the cleaver off the magnet bar beside the sink. Me and the chicken, we had a history.

“Are you pondering what I’m pondering?” it asked.

“I think so,” I replied, “but you need two witnesses for a legal will, and we’re alone here.”

An echidna wearing a magenta cape leaped from behind the fridge. “That’s where you’re wrong!” it shrieked.

I jumped. I hadn’t expected the echidna. But then, nobody does. I advanced on the chicken, keeping one eye on the echidna, which made menacing gestures with its forepaws. The wind was picking up, and there was a lot of trash in the air. Wind? Indoors? The anteater laughed crazily.

“Kinda slow on the uptake,” the chicken remarked. “Your housekeeping leaves a lot to be desired,” it added. “And your leap was more a stumble” it said to the echidna. At this point paper was knee deep on the kitchen floor and I couldn’t get into the dining room. I backed out into the hall and went around the other way. However, the dining room doorway was stuffed to the top with shredded paper. I could hear the chicken ranting about clashing paint colors and crooked paintings.

I went outside to call 911.

Darrell Crosby answered. We went to high school together. He married Melissa Echols, a girl I’d had a crush on for years. But I didn’t hold it against him. Not considering how things turned out. I mean, I knew she was an animal lover, but that girl went way too far. There should’ve been a law. Heck, there used to be a law. Bottom line, I knew Darrell would be on my side.

“I’d love to help you, Ted. You know how I feel about them. But my hands are tied as long as they don’t hurt anyone. They didn’t hurt you, did they,” he asked hopefully.

“Couple paper cuts. But they’re occupying my house! At least my dining room. Am I supposed to eat standing up?”

“What part of ‘I can’t freaking arrest them’ don’t you get?”

“You won’t do anything.”

“Can’t.” He hung up.

I hate these stupid animal superheroes, but I hate Critical Chicken the most.

123017b

Cheese

Something was different. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but a subtle change had come over my office just now, while I had my nose buried in the Global Insurance file. I looked out the window, but I didn’t see anything out there that drew my attention. I pushed back my chair, or rather, I tried to, but it wouldn’t go. I looked down. The floor was made of Swiss cheese. This was unusual to say the least. I knew someone who had a house made of gingerbread, but my floor had been carpet when I walked in an hour before. I stood and gingerly made my way to the door. I sank into the cheese several inches, but something underneath must be supporting it, for I didn’t fall through. The door jamb, and the wall, were also cheese. I took a nibble—it was Monterey jack. “Oh no,” I thought, “it’s that stupid superhero. I knew I shouldn’t have rented space in a building owned by a sleazy tobacco company.”

Just then, an ululating cry of disgust echoed down the hall. My secretary hated cheese. I slogged my way to her desk. Jolene Andrews was a bit fastidious for my taste, and married, but a guy can look, can’t he? OK, I admit it, several other candidates were better qualified, but Jolene has the kind of legs people write songs about. I put the moves on her right after I hired her, but she straightened me out. Now I just look. Her head seemed to be stuck to the wall next to the photocopier.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, squelching my way over there.

“My hair,” she wailed, “it’s stuck in this horrid stuff.” She pulled her head a few inches away from the wall to show me that half the hair on the left side was embedded in something that looked a lot like partially melted Velveeta.

“Can’t leave you alone for a minute,” I said, “didn’t your mother tell you not to play with your food.”

“Mr. Loggins,” she replied, “this is not a time for your dumb jokes. This really hurts a lot.” I felt like the heel so many women have told me I am, and I patted her clean shoulder.

“The photocopier,” I said, “it puts out a lot of heat. Hold still a minute.” I reached around her head and helped her pull her hair out of the wall. The stench of overheated cheese overpowered her perfume. It didn’t do much for her straw-blonde tresses either. She was going to have to just about shave her head. Then I thought of something. “The weather forecast,” I said. She gasped. I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the door. “It’s supposed to top 90 by noon.” The time? 11:15. My office is on the 27^th floor.

The elevator shaft was empty. A couple of people from the law office across the hall were looking down it. I guess the cables just ripped out of the cheesy ceiling. We would have to take the stairs.

I never want to go through something like that again. There must have been 200 people in the stairwell, which had been entirely turned to cheese. The stairwells are not air conditioned, and it was at least 100 in there already. Our feet sank deeper and deeper until they were poking right through the softening steps. We had to scoot the last 4 floors on our asses so we wouldn’t plunge right through. Ruined my second-best suit. And the smell! I thought it had been bad in my office. Here, it was almost overpowering. I tell you one thing, I will never eat pizza again! When we got outside, we found a huge crowd being held back by police.

WHUMP! A glob of cheese the size of a dumpster hit the sidewalk.

“I’ve been fondued,” Jolene screamed. She was covered head-to-toe. I’d been a little farther away, and had only received a good spattering on my right side. I peeled some cheese away from my eyes and looked up. The building was already starting to come apart. I could see Transmutation Man up there buzzing around, and a couple of media copters shooting 5 o’clock footage. I tried to run for the other side of the street, but it was slow going in my sticky orange galoshes. I looked for Jolene—she was in the arms of a policeman, being carried to the barricade.

I don’t remember much after that until I woke up in the ICU at Memorial Hospital. I guess that’s about when the whole top 5 floors of the building let go. I wasn’t hit by the cheese at all—I was brained by my own desk chair. If the cheese hadn’t slowed its fall I would have been a goner. As for Transmutation Man, it was in all the papers. Apparently the backwash from one of the copters knocked him into the collapsing building and his transmuter went off by accident. Anyone want a life-size Camembert statue of the world’s cheesiest superhero?

122316b

Super Slug
sodium chloride
his only weakness

Amoeba Girl as Teen

Amoeba Girl as Teen

She used to think she should have been a guy.

Amoeba Boy would’ve been a terror on a date,

Many hands making light work

When it was time to put the moves on a girl.

But then again, her talent came in handy.

Locked your keys in the car?

It isn’t only the Law that has long arms.

Need to spill a drink on someone across the room,

Or spy on your boyfriend?

A.G. is there to help.

Pie-eating contests?

Lay your bets, boys: she’s all over that.

But that was high school.

When she got her consciousness raised in college

The sh*t really hit the vacuole.

She learned about the glass ceiling,

Force feeding of suffragettes,

The sexual imbalance on death row,

And the surprising prevalence of

Unreported domestic violence.

That’s how Amoeba Girl became the Amorphous Avenger,

But that’s another story.

The end

Prev. published in a different form

The Egg Show (chapbook, 2005)

072716c

Amoeba Girl as Teen

She used to think she should have been a guy.

Amoeba Boy would’ve been a terror on a date,

Many hands making light work

When it was time to put the moves on a girl.

But then again, her talent came in handy.

Locked your keys in the car?

It isn’t only the Law that has long arms.

Need to spill a drink on someone across the room,

Or spy on your boyfriend?

A.G. is there to help.

Pie-eating contests?

Lay your bets, boys: she’s all over that.

But that was high school.

When she got her consciousness raised in college

The sh*t really hit the vacuole.

She learned about the glass ceiling,

Force feeding of suffragettes,

The sexual imbalance on death row,

And the surprising prevalence of

Unreported domestic violence.

That’s how Amoeba Girl became the Amorphous Avenger,

But that’s another story.

The end

Prev. published in a different form

The Egg Show (chapbook, 2005)

041616

Sky Frog to the rescue

interleg webbing lets her glide
anywhere she's needed,
it's bulletproof; particle-beam resistant,
mutant eyes see from infrared to ultraviolet,
her tongue is stronger than steel,
if your problem's mutant Diptera,
she's your batrachian,
unless, of course, the flies develop
nuclear weapons...
she is only a frog

Reprint sale

I sold a short story (Captain Marshmallow) to the anthology THE MUSEUM OF ALL THINGS AWESOME AND THAT GO BOOM, due out next year from Upper Rubber Boot.

041314

Daddy Longlegs
was a better superhero
than Stiltboy a villain
low-slung chassis
laser vermilion eyes
each mighty leg terminating in an
adamantium claw
break the law? You're algae
(all he eats)
transmute anything to green slime
if he has to

Comics and poems

http://www.minorarcanapress.com/drawn-to-marvel-contributors/

Drawn to Marvel, poems from the comic books, is out, with one by me.

120413

crunch time in Metropolis
Superman looks at his watch
is there time to save Leshawn?
the repairman said "by noon"
and he's out of clean suits