022521b

 

Radishes soon joined the strike, demanding higher wages, time off, and overtime pay. They produced only tough spindly roots and threatened to keep it up as long as needed.

010320e

 
The cabbages were the last to go, not because they weren't delicious, but because they were more heavily armed than anything else in the vegetable drawer.

121120b

 

Cheeseworld was a good home, until the cracker plant opened. Then it all went to canapes.

111020d

 
Each nut had another nut inside it, bigger than the last. Eventually, we found one big enough to live in, cut a door in the side, and moved in. Same way you got stuck here, I suppose.

070620

low clouds

push their way in

set another place, Ma!

060420c

flying elbows

the cedar windbreak stops most

the rest we feed to the hogs

100619e

One of the circling chestnuts darted in and gashed Toby's ankle. He screamed and hopped away, but the coppery smell of blood seemed to drive the rest of them mad. When the sheriff caught up with them, it was far too late for Toby. As he bagged the nuts the Sheriff snarled "You'll roast for this!" But in the end they got of with a light warming, as it was their first offense.

100619d

shoveling neurons

in the cerebellum

brain afire

091919

Woke up in a strange place
My hands around someone's neck
It's face turning a beautiful cerulean
All of its eyes
Entwined with my own
But something was wrong
It was trying to speak
Then I realized
It was myself
And I could not say a word

090619d

Sure, the pickles seemed harmless, until the potatoes armed them.

011518c

his fried-okra eyes
smiling eels flip-flopping
on a greenback bed

070517

Just Because You’re Paranoid

Robbie was in trouble. The traffic signals were communicating with one another using a variant of Morse code. The lights were against him.

In the park, clockwork birds shadowed his footsteps, pretending to be sparrows hunting for seeds in the dirt. He stomped a few.

Robbie hurried toward the courthouse. Despite his monitoring apps he was surprised when a black hole opened directly beneath his feet.

The manhole cover had been booby trapped. Robbie’s security software hadn’t warned him. “Crap!” he thought as his “Z” value plummeted.

Thank Designer he couldn’t smell! Access ladder gone, shaft too wide for him to brace himself against the walls and inch his way up.

Claws scritch on stone, wet black scales, rows of shiny white teeth. So it wasn’t just an urban legend! Fortunately, he had a jet pack.

Steering these things is tricky, he caromed. Good thing they don’t let humans have them. He stratosphered uffishly.

Calculating tangents and trajectories, reaction mass and resistance, Robbie figured he’d skip off the atmosphere in 3.672 years.

If he slingshot round the sun, he could go where no bot had gone. Solar vanes out, limbs aflexin, Robbie hit the sleep mode of the just.



Bubl. Daily Cabal, 2011

060417c

                          Size Matters

The surface is smooth, slightly concave upward, and bears two sets of parallel grooves that are normal to one another. The surface extends beyond the limit of visibility in all directions. It smells faintly of hot metal. On the surface lies a human figure, face down, clothed in faded dirty jeans and a torn white t-shirt.

* * *

I woke up face down on the ground. I hate it when that happens. At least, I thought I was lying on the ground; when I pried my eyes open I realized that I was somewhere much stranger than that. I sat up, rubbed my eyes vigorously, and looked again. Yep, just as I’d first thought, I was on a smooth featureless plain. The “sky” above was dark. I got up and started walking. After about 15 minutes I came to a trench. It looked like it was about 10 feet deep and had a “v”-shaped cross section, as though it had been made with a sharp axe. There was no way I could get across it, so I turned to the left and started walking again.

30 minutes later I came to an intersecting trench, just like the first one, but at right angles to it. I turned left again. Yep, you guessed it. I was on a rectangular plateau. It took about 45 minutes to walk each side. There was no way in hell I was getting out of there. Then I thought of the trenches. I could get down in them. I could never get back out, but I could walk along them. Maybe I’d find something that could help me.

I slid down and started walking to the left in the first trench I’d encountered. Why not? By now I was a little thirsty and I had to pee. One of those needs I could take care of, the other I could not. I zipped up my fly and resumed walking.

It was hard going. The bottom of the trench was almost knife sharp, and I was walking with my feet on opposing steep inclines. After a while, my legs starting cramping, then my bruised soles started aching. When I got tired I tried to rest. I found the only position even remotely comfortable was lying with my back against one surface and my feet resting on the other one.

I woke up disoriented. Where was I? I felt dizzy, and had slumped over in the trench. It felt as though the whole world was spinning. There was an intense light in the sky. It was too bright to look at, and the air was very hot. I struggled to my feet and peeled off my shirt. The “ground” was getting hot and the air was getting hotter, it felt like I was spinning faster and faster. I tried to run along the trench, but shooting pains from my abused soles threw me down in agony. It got brighter and hotter by the moment. I had to shut my eyes against the glare, the ground was spinning so fast I felt a heavy force pressing me into the bottom of the trench. Perhaps I screamed.

Just as I felt I would burst into flames the hideous trench was gone. I was lying on a rough wooden surface. My skin was hot to the touch and painful, but the air was cool, even cold. The place was very noisy—it sounded like a party. I blinked my eyes to clear the spots from my vision. Then I realized the spots were really there. In the center of the room was a spinning, brilliant globe. It shot patches of color that whirled around the room at a frenetic pace. Something about the disco ball reminded me of my late predicament, but as I was pondering this, I realized that something else was very very wrong. As my vision returned I saw that the room was much larger than I had thought. The party-goers were gigantic, the far wall too distant to be seen. I was standing on a table or bar, and from the perspective of the giants around me I was no larger than a bug. As soon as this occurred to me, someone screamed and I saw a gargantuan hand descending towards me. “Shit,” I said.

* * *

That’s the last thing I remember before waking up in the E.R. I wish I could believe that it had all been a dream, but I cannot. A bad case of sunburn and very sore feet militate against that interpretation.

051217c

The words leapt off the page, pelting him with questions, and then strangling him swiftly and silently. Nobody expects the typographical inquisition!

041617

The Black Hole of Coffee

does one own a thing

that owns itself?

the thingamajig purred,

emitting a pleasing tone,

pleased, too, if I can judge

such things, as out popped

cubes that smelled like coffee,

Earth’s most complex, alluring odor,

but they shone like the sun and, like

the sun, pulled all things to them till only

things nailed down, and me, withstood

their mighty pull; the table round them wrapped,

my chair too (I fell), and I had to duck as knives and such

flew in and in till all suddenly shrank unto a mote, was gone

Powered by prompts.

022417d

Then the salmon wanted a slice too, the cod chimed in, and before all was said and done, there was nothing left of the pale tetrapod at all, aside from its peculiar vegetable covering. No one wanted that.

022217b

I believe that the list of Rhysling nominated poems is finalized. It might not be finalized on the website; a couple of people are still being sought. But I can tell you right now that five poems from Dreams and Nightmares are included. That is the most I ever had, and I am pretty happy about it.

I am even happier at the breadth and depth of poems that are going to be in the volume. Both more poets and more poems than ever before. They cover multiple continents and all kinds of people, all kinds of writing. A bunch of them come from mainstream literary publications, as well as genre magazines. It is going to be great!

020617b

Don't Cut The Mighty Cheese

Cheese sticks marketed themselves as the bones of the one true cheese. Nnonsensical on the face of it. Folks pointed out that cheese doesn't have bones. Ah, but the true cheese, the one true cheese, fervently whispered its adherents: bones out the wheel.

Sales of cheese sticks skyrocketed, but not their consumption. Soon the sticklers, as they were called, began threatening, even attacking, those who slaked their thirst for cheese on the bones of the one true cheese.

About this time, things got so hot that no cheese could remain in solid form. Even the sticks became flaccid. Worship dropped off precipitously.

Which just goes to show the old saying is true

We should all thank God for global warming!

012317b

stars rain down
my face reforms
into the beams of night

010316

FOREIGN SHADES

diaphanous elbows beneath my garden,
a shallow grave of epithets,
coiled like a holiday snake.
Repenting of your virtue
too late for seeing,
too soon for death, but not my own;
a chastisement of angels,
hurtling from below,
not one half so careless
as a filtered, cold reply
laid or tossed
repentantly beneath the cherry table.
Said it?  you said it,
the windows pealed antiphony like
frozen cakes of mud,
blue-nosed to the ears,
and groomed as close as houses