040521d

 

loafing the day

away on wings of words

dropped like pearls from lips

smacking the hours

into night

082520

 

you fell into the time gate

came back so changed

I didn't recognize you

I thought I'd lost you

mourned your passing

then I looked in the mirror

I was lost too

it was ok

072920

traveling 

shifting shapes

colored shadows

faster flickering

slowing now, stopping

a laboratory grows around me

some force has trapped my machine

its lights die

a creature reaches for me

with a soft pallid arm

like the flesh of grubs

my claws uselessly pull back 

the handle, I have gone too far

back to the age 

of these destructive creatures

projectiles tear through me

they emit loud noises

from hideously pliable faces

I long for my beloved nest

my offspring

and our comforting

earthen walls

052620b

great glass wave
off New York City
actually a liquid

030820

the years keep getting shorter;
to an immortal,
the years flit by like
days to a child do;
the fall of Rome
feels like yesterday;
dementia,
almost a relief

022920

What Kind of God Would Allow This To Happen?


How inconvenient!
The Creator allowed us to invent time units,
based on a perfectly sensible diurnal cycle,
that leave leftover bits
at year's end:
WKOGWATTH?

So every 4 years,
we just make up a day,
out of nothing, out of desperation,
'cept every 100,
'cept every 400,
and it just goes on,
by a process of successive approximations:
WKOG etc?

Plus,
and furthermore,
a mere billion years ago,
nearly 500 days per yea,r
and in the beginning, a spinning top,
a whirling dervish:
is there no constant in this world?
W etc!

So, does anyone really know what time it is?
Does anyone even really care?

123019c

one more year
till the end of the decade
not that anyone cares

112519b

A year ago today
My daughter was visiting
Same as now
Good food eaten
Same as now
Slowly healing from a serious injury
Guess what!

Is time passing at all?
Well
Every winter shorter
All the birds rarer
Everyone else looks older
And crazy talk from everywhere
Even crazier
The more things stay the same
The more they change.

112419c

accelerating, fast as we could go,
our ramscoop reaching 0.99999999999 C,
still not quite fast enough
to catch the oldest galaxies,
still less our cosmos' rim,
before protons pop,
and even black holes sublimate.

111719

The Quanta of Time

The quanta of time slip by, a profusion of solitudes,

Their legendary brevity challenging would-be observers.

Deniers outnumber believers in this mixed-up world,

Where gremlins skip through gaps in time,

Souring milk, stealing socks, and spoiling meat.

They're building a sock golem bigger than T. rex,

It's lumbering toward Bethlehem, “Live”

Sewn into its corduroy brow,

Each step a tock between the ticks we know,

Each in-drawn breath an entropic wind,

Peeling paint off galactic hearts,

Each exhalation a disintegrating blast,

Burning subatomic bonds

In an unrelenting flame.

If a creator made this thing, this world,

What the hell was s/he thinking?!

052319

spending time
like there's no tomorrow
change in a minute

032218

the salty brine that remained
was buried by wind-driven sand
which contained the particles
worn from a thousand civilizations
built by a dozen extinct species

so that all that was left
were traces of complex petrochemicals
and a few bones

and if the interstellar colonies
of any of them still existed
no one bothered to visit
the corpse of the motherland

020218

an old film
folks are still using hand-held
 phones

121017d

The stones lie

The stones lie, naked,

spread wide in beds whose coverlets

are years. Sand lies with shale, shale with

lime, and many years later

gives birth to that which is dead.

ammonite, trilobite, placoderm,

they all live under glass

and fluorescent lights; fourth graders

escape No Child Left

Behind and leave their schools

behind and soon they grow,

leave their homes

behind, marry and leave their lives

behind where acids burn

their bones, but a few live again

under glass after sleeping with

sand, shale, and lime

for a few million years.

082217

when the moon moves
farther from the Earth
no more totality

081317

Set a spell

The cabin hid behind its sagging wooden porch. Only gradually did one realize the frayed clothing in the battered folding chair held a man. The jeans were patched and re-patched, the shirt might have been yellow once, the hair and beard were white, the face was lined and dark. Behind the cabin the land fell away. The front of the structure already shadowed, the valley behind was drowned in light. The old man might've been staring at a young visitor standing in front of his home.

The Colonel cleared his throat, unused for so long. "Johnny? Is that you? City treating you well?"

Silence.

There might've been a time ... but no, there was no one. The fading sound of a car going down the little-used dirt road, a brief pause to the bird song and rustling in the dry leaves. The house was empty as it had ever been; on the porch a gray rag and a couple of broken sticks were heavily carpeted with dust.

Publ. Daily Cabal 2009

062417

Doing Free Time

Will opened the letter from Stupendous Stories. He had just sent "Revenge of the Kudzu-Eaters" two days ago, and here was the reply. "Dear Mr. Stockton. It is with profound regret that I write to inform you..." A rejection! Well, he'd revise the story and send it to Daring Tales. He was pondering "which" vs "that", when the phone rang.

"Hello."

"Hi Will, want to go to the movies?"

"Aw, Mary Ann, I'm in the middle of a story..."

"But I didn't see you at all last weekend. What's the new story about?"

"I'm revising Kudzu-Eaters."

"SS didn't like it? That story was great!"

"Thank you. Look, I'll call you when I get done. Promise."

A new story. He did have an idea about a sequel to the classic "Mole Men" tale.

"The black needle ships descended in their thousands, disgorging the sinuous bodies of the Mustelid Marine. Ambush predators by nature, they made the ideal guerrilla warriors...."

He quit working on "Attack of the Space Weasels" when he got too hungry to think.

10:30. Too late to call Mary Ann now. He assembled a turkey sandwich. Then he made a second one.

In the morning, he kept his eye on the mailbox. As soon as the postman arrived, Will was out there to get the mail.

Not counting junk mail and bills there was a letter from Stupendous Stories and one from Daring Tales.

The envelope from Daring Tales contained "Kudzu-Eaters" – which he had only put in the mail that morning. Stupendous Stories had accepted "...Space Weasels." He looked over at the computer, where the unfinished story showed on the screen.

"I wonder how it ends," he thought.

He reached for the phone. "Mary Ann? I've got some time tonight; still want to see that movie?" Before they left he jotted down a note: "write something about an empire in an underground lake."

The next day he received $350 payment for "Empire of Darkness," and another $275 for the sequel.

Will quickly settled into the practice of coming up with story ideas and collecting checks for the unwritten stories.

Three months later he was arrested for the murder of his wife Mary Ann.

"I haven't even married her," he protested.

"You will," Sheriff Sims said grimly.

Publ. Daily Cabal 2008

052617c

slapping the stuck window hard
running to the kitchen
full of church ladies
bleeding on the tiles
scar's gone after 40 years
so's the thespian
and the boy
and the window

052517

does the day lily bulb love
each of its mayfly children
the mayfly does
she fights for every second
her epic poetry
is like haiku
her haiku, an antenna dip
Gaia's long love song to her progeny
ends with a red giant's kiss

051917

According To Hoyle

snapshot time,

its semblance of order

mocked-up by what we imagine

to be memories

(frayed-tail streamers

from every solitary moment);

no arcing bow of causality,

not really, no experiential narrative,

just saltating consciousness,

flashlight on a cavern wall,

no matter how many times

you light on this perfect day

it's always the first and only time,

ten thousand frames flicker,

space-time's frozen illusion,

a blurred album

of unchanging flight.

Prev. publ.: Magazine of Speculative Poetry