030721c

 

Martian ice caves

I carve my initials

among the others

011421b

 

the bus 

becomes an RV

slowly

071918c

In two days  we are leaving on a trip to visit ooe of our daughters. The dog doesn't know that she has signed up for a five-hour car trip, but I think she will prefer it to not seeing us for a week. If only she understood that that is the choice! There won't be room in the van for much of the stuff she left in our house, but at least some of the books will fit. The piano: no.

070818b

We took almost half a year off
to visit the inner system:
the rings of Saturn
the spots of Jupiter
their moons' ice-capped oceans teeming with microscopic life
the mountains and canyons of the red planet
even our sad, bad original home
desert Earth

Returning to Eris
I knew it was true:
there's no place like home

020918b

we have purchased an old bus that a small city (really a large town) used as part of its public transportation system.. It holds 22 passengers,, plus one in a wheelchair.  We have to get it here from Mississippi and then turn it into an RV.. We are thinking of names,, especially names that end with the word rocket or the word  flyer.  But not "flexible!" Suggestions?

012118d

Death's vacation
came to an abrupt end
idiot sub keys to Underworld
lost and found

a shade wandering in gloom
swore at her stubbed toe
crept to Hell's door
flung it wide

looking like RenFaire escapee
wandering fields
dusty roads
small-town sidewalks
eating it all
with her eyes

"Howdy, miss"
young man with evident interest
her hobby, languages
practiced on new arrivals
she had an unearthly air
made friends fast

He who'd lost the keys
hoo boy!
sucks to be him
thousands had escaped
some hadn't gotten far
took years to find the rest

any that had made it offworld
D. hired hit men
charge a bundle for that
Death offerred immortality
most laughed in his skull
sent where sun don't shine

bottom line
when she died
started studying Martian
it was cool

070117

How I Spent my Summer Vacation At the Galactic Core

We went to the black hole at the center of the galaxy last summer? And it was sooooo boring. The windows, excuse me, view screens, were opaque because of a “flare.” The food was yuck, and they didn’t have Squirt Jelly. This is supposed to be the center of the galaxy, millions of civilizations, and they don’t even have Squirt Jelly!?

Okay, I’m getting to the educational part. You’re gonna love it.

There was this girl… cat… lizard… thing and she was as bored as me. We started hanging together. I had some games she’d never heard of. So we talked and played games and got lost on purpose so we wouldn’t have to listen to any more brain-killing lectures. Turns out she is a little older than we are. I’m not sure how old, but if a Lakhtia is like a year I guess she’s about 200. We’d be old enough to do everything if we were 200, and they don’t let her do anything. Anyway, she is working on this genetic engineering project for school and she actually hadn’t started and it was due the day she got back. So she decided to take some of my genetic material. I won’t tell you how she got it! Okay, okay. I will, but I better wait until after class. She’s going to combine mine with some of hers to make a new organism. She figured she’d get top marks, because no one else would have human genetic material where she comes from. And, like, her parent is a Planetary Security Administrator and keeps her locked up. This trip was the first time she had gotten to leave her home planet since she was, like, a baby. That was more than 150 years ago. He, or it, or whatever only let her go this time because it was required for graduation. And she has to marry this old cat-lizard that’s over a thousand years old. That’s why she is never allowed to go anywhere by herself. And when they found us there was a big argument. Some of the cat-lizards were pointing stuff at me and she looked scared and stood in front of me, like they were going to shoot me. Right. And cause an interstellar incident! Finally they took her away. We were there two more days, but it was really boring.

Chad, that is very rude. I did not interrupt your presentation about the steel whales, which didn’t even make sense, by the way. Anyway, I don’t care if the sky is turning purple, you can wait until I



Publ. Daily Cabal, 2011

050617b

Alt.Madison

We drove up to Madison for the wedding

shared a room with a noisy couple

marveled at the highway to nowhere

suspended in the sky.

It reminded me of New Orleans

those crazy crossing-three-lanes exits

and that jumper stranded us on the bridge

halfway through the night

At the other end of that bridge

in some other Madison

dwarves hammering out stone cars

run on gravel and water

taking the economy by storm

082916

I missed you, the dog said
candy wrappers and a chewed shoe