John Pursh- A Poem

Periodic Breadfruit

LL-1 giggles at sequenced chalk-talk crackle of radiated pre-war vellum, counting divots and pirouettes of anachronistic wardroom visits, doorstep catchwords, and semi-conversational replays, meshing foggy breath with fossilized deferments. She scans for contrails, finds only shadowed thoughts in old curtains, faded wallpaper, and the peeling drywall of an aching summer camp, pushing through cat door tendencies and slipstream excrement of taut effluvia, given to daydreams of lunar unguent and helium retraction in misty sailboat drift.

Spun from cotton academies, she filters through footpaths of jungle residue, hitting headwater locales with downbeats seceding from internal tremolo guide dog intent, weighing turnip blossoms with a mourning pauper’s incandescent reflux.

Something’s snapped in LL-1’s opinion registration code, rendering spoken ritual dusty and tribal, obviating Etruscan diatribe retorts, flitting from worldwide penance to importuning gravy clots. She suddenly finds no solace in armchair physics, preferring to play chestnut-related whist refusal with a recently macadamized hypnotist, relegating consequential plaque infusion to the drainage shepherd’s ceiling funnel. Even storms of identical horse uremia no longer lunge at frugal cockade hats in her prescience, regardless of lenticular potato stupor’s omnivorous recall.

Somehow hovering has caked in sloppy waves to plug insertion nozzles whenever eastern magnets potentiate dizzying whimsical chaw.  In obfuscated gristle she finds a horoscope of lace and criminology, bent in tiny wire samples of neighborhood syllogisms, blending lusty oats and wicker feelers. Haystacks penetrate perpetuity, revealed in quaint racetrack vignettes of whistle-stop statuary, clawed to piecemeal surveillance by dog-eared marionettes. Parsley sleeps in tender rivulets of silent pain, defrocked light bulbs, and questionnaires in foreign consulates, filing past dreadlocks with cavalry parades down snowy tree-lined memories of fungal stereotypes.

Wondering how aces made emotional cations fold noisy laundry’s aspiring lignite, her lobotics precess about a shaky focal bog of old paint, westerly airfoils, and cannonade starch, slipped beneath a reference to edgework’s perfunctory familial routine. Holes revert to formal logic, predated huckster motifs, and sawtooth souls, wedging her trued insignia in jellied aura’s periodic breadfruit.

John Pursch- Two Poems

Plumbing Tool Watch

Speedily the bronchial, 

the light bombastic flew,

over us they cast their wit

in ceremony sheethed,

off the edge, extravagant, 

and missing only timelines,

sequenced to the genome's 

creed of crinoline and quinine. 

Teacups overflow at 

the slightest jet's impression, 

providential and imprecarious 

in their grace. 

Skeptical blotch 

and spansule notch 

and filament whirl of yore,

plumbing tool watch 

and hammer toe corn 

and luminous pillows of fear,

germinal tendrils and planets of mire, 

adoring a weatherproofed bore.

Decimal Skin

Narcotic folk songs seep 

from warbling tanagers 

in soggy circles. 

Leafy geriatrics slide through 

sweltering breath roulette, 

charting teak cetaceans 

with taupe allergies. 

Should ordinary egg yokes feel 

hysteria in sanitary sackcloth, 

stubbing out the sordid flame

of pesky dioramas? 

Cranking daughters hump 

in steely superstructures, 

explode in sweet beginner sprawl, 

and axiomatize a glowing cinder’s

decimal skin.

Michael Cluff- A Poem

Passage II

The shift from dark to light
is seamless, sameness,
saneness for Carly:
she accepts it without cry
or whimper, wall less in points
of fact and factors
just the slight fuzz feeling of new-blossomed peaches
mauls the edges a minute bit
when Jensen
meanders past the meager cell
in the library Carly maintains
until anything of slightest salamander
redrawings wanders and wonders along.

Michael Cluff- A Poem

Untitled

Indigo umbrellas
ameliorate before the mid-morning
mass of bellicose soup
quivers within the centipedes' side
understanding a conceptual farce
in these early mid-afternoon nights
totality finds forks delicate
trying to slip down the path
inbetween shots of bad whiskey
nicotine knuckles dilating
grips on jammed roque mallets
nick off the oaken balls
orotund in November
risque sounds forming inside a chanting
crowd looking for elegance
or a least a soft-core bloodless death.

Denny E. Marshall- Two Poems

Breaking News (Version #3)

It is late evening on a summer night
All of a sudden, sirens start to blow
Resonance of the approaching hum grow
Look out the window, the feel of things not right
Way up in the sky a strange blinking light
Voice interrupting the radio show
Breaking news, the details remain unknown
Rushing reporters to the landing sight
With a panel of experts on the phone
A special announcement on the radio
Is this a hoax or are we not alone
Repeating, happening a short time ago
Stating over on the microphone
Vague story about a UFO


Space Spies

Since man first set foot on the moon
On the floor of the earth
The telescope pointed at us
Unlike Hubble larger than a bus
With a 10,000 micro-lens
In all these years
Just a few rides to the moon
A few dozen robots
Spinning the solar system
The watchers thought
What a waste of money

Jeffrey Park- Three Poems

ADIEU

 

As the change begins, memories fade

into one another, merge with the shifting

blurring flow of dream currents – the world

where I was birthed, colors, smells, textures,

a handful of moons flung across a crimson

sky, shells of my fathers, flipper limbs

of my siblings, mother’s gelatinous caress –

 

Goodbye, my sweet Earthling, I’m sorry

to leave you this way, sleeping peacefully

with no intimation of what it is that has

shared your bed these many years – I shed

my skin tonight, and more, this alien flesh,

these eyes, tissues, organs – cast them

off with a sense of relief, to be born again

 

as a creature of your wildest imaginings,

the chimera you never suspected, stranger,

visitor who came and loved you for a few

revolutions of this planet around its star

and left you with nothing but memories

and vain questions and a telltale smear

of exotic goo on my side of the bed.

HOT DAMN, THEY’RE HERE

 

I knew it had to happen sometime

and now it sure damn shit is –

finally at long last and without any big

eyewitness-news-at-eleven to-do

THEY’RE COMING DOWN

they’re actually coming down to earth

or Planet ZB705-137 or some such

in their crazy vernacular

 

and now they did it and here they are

in my own damn field right among my

carefully tended crop circles (some

of which are more oval than round

but whatever)

 

here in middle between the light

of the stars and the dim glow of my

porch lights – and they’re interested

in ME by God, and in Brownie and Rex

too, but mainly in me, they can tell

I’m the dominant species around

here I guess

 

and they’re all gangly and eyebally

and alien-looking as hell and they have

long toes and necks and foreskins

intact – could be they come from an

unhygienic planet or maybe they

regenerate willy-nilly, who knows,

 

but I’ll ask them once they’ve scanned

my brain and learned to speak

American and now they’re touching me

all over with their finger suckers

and it feels nice – and son of a bitch

they take me inside the ship, we’re

going up, space is calling, the moon fills

the porthole all bulgy and off-white

 

and who the hell’s going to believe it,

I’m pinching my own butt cheek

but I’m weightless now and they say

they’ll let me piss out the porthole

so I can watch my piss droplets freeze

and boil at the same freaking time –

and let’s face it,

it just don’t get any better than that. 

FORCED LANDING

 

Hope abandoned

forced to put down on a dark planet

vertigo

constantly shifting gravity

inky immunity to instrumentation.

 

We hurl ourselves out through

the airlock

lie gasping

and retching on an endless plain

of night.

 

And then

when the dark people finally come

as we knew they would

no resistance

we follow them into the night

 

to the place where

magnetic shadows sleet down

from above

scorch the unseen surface

with pitch-black incandescence.  

Bio: Jeffrey Park's poetry has appeared most recently in Mad Swirl, Crack the Spine, Dark Edifice, and the new science fiction anthology Just One More Step from Horrified Press. A native of Baltimore, Jeffrey currently lives in Munich, Germany, where he works at a private secondary school. Links to all of his published work can be found at www.scribbles-and-dribbles.com.

Michael Cluff- Two Poems

Boreal vs. Decorative

The begonias
underneath the mighty oak
grab Lianne's eight years old attention
while Sylvester the engineer
sees the solidity of
the more mundane
over the flash and impermanance
of the striking and fragile.

Annie just rests
under the tree's heavy, brooding
yet sheltering branches
secure she can enjoy
the bursts of floral tints and hues
in a soltitude that does not
threaten or impose
as rooms and corridors
are wont to do.

In Ashwater

Samantha Grey pauses
on the edge of the cantilever
and waits......

The sun touches the hair
of Lucas' left arm
and its copper red hairs
flashes into her cortex
at breakneck speed
blinding the mature woman inside.

He is contemplating Schopenhauer
in a corrupted version of low German
from an edition the Nazi
refused to approve in 1938
on-line graduate courses
are an ambiguous solution
for him until the high holidays
are over.

He never sees Samantha
even though she is above him now
and closer to God
and  beneficent closure
than he may ever be.

Audrey waits in the inbetween zone
and hardly moves a mote of dust
the fine soot
of strange factories
and smelt chimneys
best befit her and Lucas
these marsh thinning days.

                  II.

Under the ripples of relief
that barely teases the town
the soil remains electric
in the need to shift and stifle,
Martin Crosse perpetually
unstains his white dress shirt
and Sisyphus gets to sleep in
a dog works just as much
as the most focused banker
and begonia expert:
neither have had a sufficient bath
in these many clotted years.

Lucas grimes the text up even more
with the spittle from his onion-defined throat
while Sisyphus intemitently will chase
solid-sized pebbles Audrey tosses now
at Samantha and inadvertently
always misses.

Brisket and belvederes
and elbowed elation
is just the soupcon to keep
Lucas reading on.

John Pursch- Two Poems

Half Egg Time

Cows shed chromosomes,

pigs float in saucer foam,

Gray-Glo whale eye-eyes

ogle sallow drilling sites

of raw pituitary potion. 

Heated pint o’ legs a-drying, 

hybrids hover paralyzing

hefty hairy hoi polloi, 

scuppered into twisted boys 

of candy homo sapiens. 

You yourself are calmly shown 

polyurethane urethras, 

dying tutti-frutti pleas

in shellfish frowns 

and quacking sounds 

of alien abduction. 

Shave and sew in quiet orbit’s 

flying disco hypo climb, 

luminescent thighs absorb it,

just relapse in half egg time. 

Chimpanzee Debris

Trichinosis threads 

ethereal assiduity’s 

European hardtack spine, 

handing endorphins 

to funky umbilical prawns. 

Kookaburras ignite defaced dew lines, 

saturating posh cops with cranial insistence, 

shelving spaceports with inner tube leis. 

Pressing gowned cigarettes 

in vividly smocked alarms, 

we realize diurnal battery drainage, 

spilling sumptuous eagles where tariffs soil 

embalmed golf balls with sewing crabs. 

Washing handedness 

of noble orientation, 

spiriting away a stone floor, 

lapsing into false contusions, 

fisheries melt the air with 

ossified remains of mendable fins.

Stretchers stoop 

in umbral seclusion, 

swiping floral tin 

from forehead wearers.

Colin W. Campbell- A Poem

GREY WATCHER

I'm the Grey that watches you, 
there are many just like me, 
knowing everything you do. 
Can you see me in the sky? 

There are many just like me
in our alien agenda.
Can you see me in the sky 
you are in our arena.

In our alien agenda
knowing everything you do.
You are in our arena,
I'm the Grey that watches you.


 
BIO: Colin W Campbell
Colin escaped from the day job in Scotland and now writes very short fiction and poetry in Sarawak on the lovely green island of Borneo and faraway in Yunnan in southwest China. www.colincampbell.org and www.shortstory.mobi

Denny E. Marshall- UFO Haiku

UFO Haiku

Landing UFO
Occupant’s shade of purple
Not the color green



Landing UFO
Made bad choice of place to land
City skyscraper

 
UFO’s Landing
Earthlings are all unaware
Cyclones good cover

A.J. Huffman- Two Poems

Swimming Saturn’s Rings

She slips her skin, splashes through the atmosphere.

What’s left of her body dissolves into glistening matter,

dissipates, becoming part of the surrounding circumference.

Internal organs pulse like stars in formation yet to be named.

Light years away from where she began, she surfaces,

stares at surrounding curtain of blackened sky.  She wonders

what the light of celestial bodies feels like from a distance,

mourns those confined by gravitational pull.  They will

never know continuity in its purest form.

Red Sand Beach

I pretend I can breathe,

extract myself from protective coverings

necessary for travel.  33.9 million miles from home,

the distance to this temperate paradise where

I am immediately lighter,

require no anchor.  I lie

back, sink into the embrace

of blood-tinged dust, disappear into my own

imagination, my dream of diving

into waves that will never rise

on this deserted planet,

unless human hands interject, introduce

disastrous global warming effects on glacial caps. 

I shudder at the thought, or possibly the fading

daylight hours.  I rise to a distorted reality,

a clear image of earth moving to take a place

in the sky that used to belong to the moon.

A.J. Huffman has published six solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  Her seventh solo chapbook will be published in October by Writing Knights Press.  She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the winner of the 2012 Promise of Light Haiku Contest.  Her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  www.kindofahurricanepress.com

Michael Cluff- A Poem

Untitled

With the brilliant pink, white
and black good 'n' plenty Western sunset,
I realize the sky has split
for real
over on the plain above
the quagmire
this time,
and I do see
to the other side
and its indifferent poised
choler and gorgon stare
of reproach and long
pulverized peace
into a loneliness
that no logarithm
or pupate
can reconcile.

John Pursch- Two Poems

Buttered Idea Bread

Fortunates dissolve in airburst dreg dispersion rays, 

funneled up to cruising transport holding tanks, 

shuffled into communal anonymity, 

awaiting resequencing. 

No intention transits concrete 

pillar trapdoor malfeasance, 

everyday dungeon girth, 

ribcage contagion, 

biologic midden, 

bodily duress, 

toil to gruel infusion, 

sapped in saturated heat glow, 

mornings reclaimed to windowless towers, 

pinned to boxcar retreats in astute confusion, 

repacked deadened meat for televised brain transplant, 

bereavement complete in sleepless restitution. 

Hover nightly, 

buttered idea bread, 

vacuous signatory ignition, 

formless feed of headless munitions agreement, 

plundered human fuse box bursting syndrome, 

trust in beaker bleach, 

busted toothy grime, 

blacked to grinding metal wheels, 

breaking vents of alley tease,

guarantors in triplicate confusion, 

simulcasting glut in paucity.

Abdominal Essence

Sneezes put you in a city, 

unaware of your surroundings, 

flecked with streetlight splines 

and treed delight. 

Scars whiz past, 

urging on sinusoidal plunder, 

fueling replication’s dirge 

to dunce cap rituals, 

moribund and sagging 

in a dimly lit crawlspace 

of burnished embers. 

Churning exhaustion peels 

stamina from polished faces, 

furrowed with lame plaudits, 

creased to spoken incendiary tension, 

a testament to slow gestation’s 

endless causeway. 

Youth severs known nadirs 

into sleeveless cinders, 

set for hovercraft seizure, 

pasting ballast over 

headroom prowess shortfall. 

Frowning aprons fixate, 

bubbling lugubriously, 

advertising sworn allergens, 

sputtering organic statutes 

in coded numismatic bliss.

Breeding channels tunnel greed 

within specific creep of fault line passivity, 

growling at curtsying mastiffs. 

Salient bowers press heels 

to stop-sign collarbones, 

imitating shackled bystanders, 

staging burial tirades 

for pruned abdominal essence.

Denny E. Marshall- Three Poems

Eruptions On Io

Gushing out two hundred miles into space
Material from eruptions on Io
Speeds of two thousands miles per hour they race.
Gushing out two hundred miles into space
Sulfur and rock flowing at a fast pace
Molten activity of a volcano
Gushing out two hundred miles into space
Material from eruptions on Io


20/12 Vision

Earth has an expiration date
Who holds the keys to cosmic fate?
Mayan, Physic, Time travel elves
End of the world twenty twelve

End of the world unreported
Library goes unrecorded
Dusty volumes on doomsday shelves
End of the world twenty twelve

Book dated nineteen ninety nine
Long pages wait in six, six, six line
Futures voices twenty-one twelve
End of the world twenty twelve


Rocket Dreams

When dreams turn into spaceships
Do not need to be a scientist
All the controls work just fine
The images beyond describable
If you discover a nightmare
You can wake up anytime


Bio
Denny E. Marshall has had cover art, interior art, poetry, and fiction recently published.


 

Les Merton- A Poem

Country Man

Pheasants in season

rabbits for the table

clay pigeon at the country fair

he’d shot them all.

     What’s up?

You are looking bloody fierce

     with that AK-47, 

     are you starting a revolution?

No! Just looking after me own…

  What do you mean?

Aliens have been sighted … 

What are you going do?

Enjoy a little target practice…

Les Merton has 20 books to his credit and he has won numerous writing awards. His poetry has been published in magazines in the following countries: Algeria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Cornwall, Cyprus, Eire, England, Finland, Germany, India, Italy, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, USA. He also has had many poems published online and in anthologies.

During his writing career Les has also appear on: ITV’s That Sunday Night Show, BBC TV Spotlight News, and on the following Radio Stations: BBC Radio Bristol, Duchy Hospital Radio, BBC Radio Cornwall, BBC Radio 4, Pirate FM, BBC Radio Five Live, Penwith Radio, St Austell Bay Radio, Redruth Community Radio and ABC Radio Canberra, Australia. He enjoys performing and has given readings all over the UK and in Ndola Zambia.

Michael Cluff- A Poem

Aural Voyuer

On the other sides
of hotel walls
the noise of people
you will probably never meet
intrigues so much
one may put
clear drink glass to ear
and drink in what
one can't normally discern
or hear.

A surprise may be in store
or disguise even repulsion
but I always hope
it will be something
kindly disposed
towards my various kinds
or even, just maybe,
me
yes ' lil ole' me.

John Pursch- A Poem

Lung Island

MM-33 woke to the sound of Jack’s snoring. The lab was brilliant, morning sunlight streaming over uptown Madhatter. Her left eye caught the time from holographic ceiling: just after noon. Still no sign of Momo and Emily. Her right eye lay shut on JFK-19’s bare chest; rising, falling in lobotic sequence. Sounds of traffic filtered up from the street through open windows, warm summer air, smell of RFK cologne filling the room, reminder of the row of Bobbies she’d burned out before finally meeting her match around midnight, just fine…

JFK-19 stirred, eyes sprang open: “I, uhh, Miss Monroe, have you seen my birthday cake?”

“Why, no, Mister Precedent, what heavy cuddle moan? Wire wood ladle hold eeny meeny minor hold mien shaver wand to nose out slumber caulk wane sheik hood avenue orchid chasm wend heaven she blanked ewer ossified mint?”

“Whale, hue cotter crude pointillism tariff,” Jack observed. “Two varied grate ponds, canoe datum tinkling a pout hat. Pinochle feed chores, Toby shore.”

“Naught bet tea fly nest,” MM-33 modestly agreed.

As they woke, the conversation drifted and subsided, lobotic lust overcoming any linear programming, and they resumed their marathon. Meanwhile, far below Lung Island’s crashing breakers, Momo and Bahama Matt were mopping up remains of Montauk Chair; MLK-51 safely injected halfway across the galaxy. 

EBGB-88 had long since returned to lunar orbit, bathing in titrations of teenage secretions, recharging his superluminal inklings, already prepping for MM-33’s impending injection. He thought up Lola Kirov, realized she was still in Days Ago, contemplated time lag trawling, and settled for telepathic feed to LL-1, trusting relayed tryst mache. Leaning back, the sluiced gush of Midwest daughters drafting down his smooth hairless grey skin coat, body now coursing with LL-1’s lobotic residue of thought release, flooding his open brain with images of coconut palms, Sloth Specific sunsets, pipeline kick-outs at Whyme? Caught by her grammatical stoppage, he spluttered in the bath, coming up for air, great almond eyes beyond dilation’s spindrift peak, taking in stardust reflection.

“Gotcha, Boy Toy!” LL-1 laughed, deep in Puntagain vaults.

Coughing fit gave way to EBGB-88 acknowledging: “In victoriam pax to woe belief scam.”

“Sleep well, wholly Graylien,” vibing him ursine cosmic blush.

Erik Moshe- Three Poems

"The Stag and the Ethernet Cable"

A squire’s camp in Senegal consists of warrior scholars
Servants pass through the periphery as they manage duties
small tents seldom erect themselves; partisans sit around fires,
relaying on the geometry of the sun’s orbit subordination,
and Ethiopian rice pudding with a bit of menthol
Nightfall assumes its unequivocally dark form,
providing drapery for a setting comparable to a Bedouin wifi café
camel coffee stands, alchemist tables & stools
A boy measures the googols of sweat beads
on his father’s forehead reflected in the firelight;
consigning himself to fetch the water for the morning wash

An exotic stag rustles sheepishly in a nearby cage,
no doubt, coping with bondage, in Adaptation Tug-A-War
A souvenir from foreign trade posts,
luxury livestock product #three from a decoyed Moorish module
The stag amidst the yammering breathes calmly, surveying
campgrounds as an animal spirit caught in a dodo’s wings,
property in an odd template of cosmological herd hierarchy
Is it an object of wealth, of worth? Is it a sovereign creature?
or an instrument used to ride toward the agents of fortune
as they encircle the Jordan River with mysterious resoluteness
(the Euphrates data network support team)
A hand latches itself onto the lower leg of the stag,
jarring it from awake-sleep; the transaction goes unnoticed
It grips until flesh is visibly bruised, blood trickling
beginning to insert a cartographer map-sized yolk of wires and chips
into tendons and bone enamel, utilizing electrical impulses
to replace the ones that give it the gilded essence of life
A human hand of ordinary appearance catapults out of the desert
Half mummified, half massage therapist;
Some connection immediately made somehow sparks communication:
“The people… they’ll use steeds as an expenditure for conquest,
until pale horses that revelation spoke of are unveiled
on the bleeding turf as the latest technological breakthrough…
-- dubbed Palomino Hovercrafts!”


"Pineal Gland Pie"

Young lithium generations
treat budding contra-bandoliers like vanilla cake
They march like impala through rustic heartlands
with biometric pacemakers - the voices of toddlers
act as chakras
octopi in deserts shout ‘influenza!’ from the inlands
Madagascar melts,
under pressure, a titanic library overlooks the boilers
Alexandria, but better known as Allegra
is dampened. Her stores of energy are iotas
A playground at recess
features Bridget, omnivore sidekicks, Icarus
They emit prehistoric grunts as she walks
then boys in the sandstone shanty
upload hieroglyphs, because ancient glyphs are “good”
These alkaline bark brothers in arms chew on cicada kebabs
They eat their veggies too, for nuclear blast nutrition
childhood collides with madness
kaleidoscopes poke out of mouths like popsicle sticks
or thermometers that detect human nature’s feverish
condition
Earth is turned holographic in Townsbend
Did anyone notice
Pee Wee Herman’s letter of resignation
floating on the sea like a merchant's vessel?

“Kids do the darnest things,” said Betty White,
hands on her hips before she jumped 80 feet into the air
landed, then her throat detached -
out flew a toy drone!
an accessory hidden in the neck until activation
Technology will change things, except
for those bright baseball mornings, or discussions
of the third eye at a town tribune by a forest
Surveillance isn’t what the city’s aboriginal architect
had in mind. old ladies laugh, and dead grasshoppers leap
from digital coloring book pages

Elders in an orange landscape
scatter chop suey well wishes in the widgets of the day to day
“Why Richard the Ironheart fell in love but couldn’t close the deal
because he was missing a heartwarming alloy in his extremities…
Heed these words. Let them help you watch “Progress”
Not watch others exclusively from behind the oven door



"The Killer Czar’s Flight-line Badge"

Leather face, Lazerface Lenin-freight
Bulkhead Tunisia pilgrim maker mangles Jango Fett’s head
Psychosomatic spring time…clip of birds that unlearned
How to fly - super weapon Ildemar
Nicaragua nationalist, red badge of curbage to the oil corps
Garbage planet disposals were bad timing
irrevocable relapse resulted in sulfuric barges, binges,
most all of, bargains to keep the country afloat

John Carter of Mars on his Presario
viewing cybernetic hand weavers on a palm pilot
The moon landing in the crosshairs
follicles straight from Pinocchio’s nose growth
Blaring signals
Have you ever seen a crow in space
or a supernova vulture riding on wings tipped
with Sagittarius birth canal suds?
It’s a sight to see
Occult diction wilts each word wispily
Hectorgrams char the benchmarks of Achilles heels
setting fire to a henhouse made of marble
Cosmic eggs rain from the heaven-themed ceiling canvas
flying down like angelic insurance fliers

Let the cultural significance of hidden murals
bear no ill will or wounds toward our concrete forefathers
Equilibrium speaking, we’ve been
War college authors refurbishing the dilapidated curriculums
of the past; paraphrasing age-old idioms
“Don’t be discouraged by what you cannot accomplish
Blood, sweat & tears is no mere vampiric custom”
or“Slice a tidal wave in half with a hacksaw
and it’ll still strike a beach with the same initial impact”
or
“Carpenters may recant on carpe diem
but I consider malice the ballast that enables colonies
to stretch forth across webby land masses”
For every bead of sweat, another species of self doubt
is discovered and polar bear gums bleed
from fresh breaths in the isolation destined for all

 

 

 

Bio: Erik Moshe wonders what horticulture is like in alternate dimensions. He plans on listening to chakra melodies in the morning when he returns to his home planet in two weeks...South Florida. His work can be found at TheCentersphere(dot)Yolasite(

dot)com.

 

Michael Cluff- A Poem

Howard Sheridan

Dad and I
discussed riboflavin
and jacarandas
quadrilles in Burgundy
squabs
and hoary frost.

The toast took on
an extra dash
of graininess
the red peppers
deeply reflected the sliver
of sun uncovering
from a mauve and puse sky.

And then moved on
back into quadrilateral squares
and formicaed doormats
safely encompassing
sweat socks
leg garters
tennis shoes
and tassled loafers.

Denny E. Marshall- Haiku

Three UFO Haiku

landing UFO
earthlings are surprised they had
no concept of clothes

landing UFO
should have been a big story
reporters all crushed

landing UFO
unaware clearance needed
to land at airport


Bio
Denny E. Marshall, his bio this week, is fill in the blank. ____________________.

John Pursch- A Poem

Cinco de Mayan

Days Ago City pharmacies and blackened markets sell a vast array of time drugs: slo-mo spray, fast-forward foam, missing-time milk, time-reversal rub, injectable interludes, paradox pills, time-stop stogies, time-loop lozenges, time-echo enemas, time-delay deodorant, time-travel tabs; all highly illegal outside of Days Ago, hence heavily smuggled, sold in thriving underground trade system-wide.

Practically overnight, Days Ago rose from third-world laughing stock to economic superpower, dominating Dearth and many of the so-called target worlds; all due to the discovery of ancient Mayan time springs deep in the Youcantan jungle. Public time baths soon appeared in every Days Again town; the active ingredient was isolated in labs at the University of Days Ago City, the borders were sealed, entire nation quarantined, time traps installed at every entry/exit point, time bombs secretly planted in every major population center around the globe, world powers forced to silently capitulate, accepting terms of subservience to peculiar whims of Days Again authorities, under threat of instant random regression to technologically helpless eras…

Treaties with the Untied States led to development of the first time machine on Dearth, coinciding with the end of the Mayan calendar. Soon so-called Montauk Chairs sprang up throughout Nerd Americon military bases, leading to rewrite of Graylien treaties with much better terms for Dearth, communication with parallel worlds, alternate timeline trade routes, timeline tourism, mass migration of Dearth’s population to more viable worlds, worldwide time drug abuse, time wars…

New worldwide holiday: Cinco de Mayan, when everyone uses whatever time drugs are available, resulting in unpredictable melees. Time drugs available by prescription in Untied States and Myopia on qualified health plans. Laborers behind schedule avert job loss by visiting doctor, using time-rollback roll-on, time-delay darts, time-reversal rub, smoking time-stop stogies, smear on time-creation cream…

Swiss develop new timepieces that are not effected by shifting realities, stay synched/locked to MMT (Mayan Mean Time), the “universal” standard on Dearth, as measured in the Youcantan jungle, only place on Dearth where time does not slip. Existence of a fixed-time locus on the globe is guaranteed by the Brouwer Fixed-Point Theorem. Intuitively stated, it says if the surface of a sphere is mapped onto itself, at least one point of the surface must remain unchanged by the mapping. The rest of the points on the sphere might be interchanged, but not the fixed point. This, of course, is the minimal case; more than one point can be fixed. In the case of Dearth, the site of the original Mayan time springs deep in the Youcantan is the location of the single fixed point in time.

Denny E. Marshall- Three Poems

Rim

After countless light years
Passed, counted, and forgotten
The end is finally visible
Physicists say no center or edge
As far as you can see
Now only a rim
Like a shoreline
To start over again
To another unknown


Paliens

Long time ago first contact occurred
Barely before the start of humanity
Deep in an area now called Amazon
A strange craft crashed in the jungle
Exchanged knowledge with flowers and trees
Intelligent and they too are plants
No way home permanently stranded
After a million years or so
Still remaining silent
Waiting for the right moment


Untouchable

In the night sky
Wishing to fly
Without sleep

The distance is far
To the closest star
So far to leap

The light is old
The void is cold
Out in the deep

Lost in a spaceship
Destination unknown
Someplace no ones has been
A planet to call home


Bio
Denny E. Marshall has updated his bio, can you tell the difference.

 

Jeffrey Park- Three Poems

HARVEST

To the reaper
single-minded
and dispassionate as it is
there are no victims or fallen heroes
or enemy combatants
or collateral damage
only a rich harvest of biomass
waiting to be collected
an abundant bounty
of serendipitous
fallen fruit.


THE LOST MAN

Stranded in an expanding exploding corrosive
universe of attractions, conflicting forces,
pulsars pulsing and quasars quasing, cosmic rays
on the hunt for something to fry to the far side
of extra-crispy, dark energy straining, dark matter
throwing its weight around, black holes wondering why
they can’t just be dark like everything else –
ice-cold and loaded down with the sorrows of a billion
stillborn galaxies, the Wanderer, the Lost Man strides
from one shifting constellation to the next,
watches time and space fold themselves back
before him like heavy oil flowing down a bottomless
drain, like the dream you dream every night
and desperately try and inevitably fail to hold onto
as you drift up out of a deep exhausting sleep.


OBJECT OF DESIRE

Occasionally I ask myself what it is
that draws them to me.
I study my reflection – broad, gently
curved shoulder elements;
gleaming pelvic ridges, razor thin,
streamlined; telescoping
tubular shanks, fully extended;
imposing steel-and-ceramic codpiece.

The face – its absolute lack
of expression, I’ve been assured, allows
the beholder to assign to it any
of a vast array of human emotions.
An onboard systems display with its
mildly hypnotic battery of data readouts.
Every component an unequivocal
statement of functionality.

Am I objectively beautiful,
mysterious, masculine, seductive?
Hampered by built-in self-judgment
inhibitors – useful as they are in
the field – I am ultimately forced
to leave these questions unanswered.
So I continue to accept their
admiration and adulation – to me less
than nothing, but they seem to find it
strangely comforting.

 

 

Bio: Jeffrey Park lives, works and writes in Munich, Germany. His work has appeared most recently in The Speculative Edge, Eye to the Telescope and the Science Fiction Poetry Association's anthology Dwarf Stars 2013. Links to all of his published work can be found at www.scribbles-and-dribbles.com

Michael Cluff- Three Poems

 Untitled

At 5:02
July 19
Lilith Adams
and Damon Cain
were at the top
of the hillock near
Edenia and Pussy Willow Roads
karate chopping
the thirteen foot
balsam wooden cross
Bruce Lee-style
down to nothing
in front of the near
rush hour
ninety-six or so feet below
and no one paid
attention
not at all.

They were sad
and bothered
all those lesson
were for naught
until the Sheriff dropped by
their lower class neighborhoods
arrested Beluah and Zeke
Philonia and Jeremiah
their parents.

Cold dinners and
empty propane canisters
were unplanned for
but the beatings to come
when the adults got home.



Day 4
In A Highland Garden

In the waiting evening
a snake watches bumblebees
chortling over the stung wasp.
The viper turns
and smiles
as only a demon can do
when he sees Valerie and Mario
engrossed in the other
as they move eye to eye
down a bucolic ridgeway.



Untitled

Chinese elms
chaparral clippings
the metatarsal
an afternoon
nee brunch junket
beyond the extension
of the test site
for unannounced fiddlings
Shelley could not fathom.

Donal Mahoney- A Poem

America in 4013

Is that lava or simply mud

dripping from the cheeks

of this old woman asking me 

why this library has no books. 

I ask her where she's been 

for the last 2000 years.

Under a rock? In some cave? 

After all, the year is 4013

 

and now the only book extant   

is the Bible and the only copy 

of the Bible is in Rome where 

a few monks older than she is

sit in catacombs all day 

copying pages of it

onto yellow foolscap, hoping 

to create another Bible

no one will read, as was the case, 

I'm told, when dusty Bibles 

were in almost every home

and computers were a luxury.

But then I soften up because 

I can see this woman was born 

without a cell phone in her ear. 

I tell her if she wants to read 

something wonderful online,

as soon as a computer comes free 

I'll call her even though she has 

no cell phone in her ear.

First, however, she must show 

a number, not a name,

tattooed above her navel,

the only form of identification 

accepted in America in 4013.

Michael Cluff- A Poem

Untitled

A shoulder loses to ennui
a world tumbles into an ink void
Atlas is on the injured list
Prometheus got a permanent
liver from a donor in the Doric part
of strident Sparta.

Nowadays Hamlet
could be as happy in Lake Elsinore
as in  the Scottish part of New England
dunkin' donuts does not depress him
have a Dutch apple faced uncle
plus ambiguous father does.

Godot is in a holding pattern
between a shoe and a shepherd boy
bowler hats hide the hair
one is only lucky to have.

John Pursch- Two Poems

Topsoil

Polishing tin shanties by the Wobblyass River, native Who’syerdaddies skedaddle at the merest hint of enema contractions, fearing the dreaded dung heap of eerie sewage known to erupt from river monster entrails on an hourly basis. Blown sky high by billows of bilious sod clouds, u-turning dirigibles deflate in rank succession, decapitating flood victims before ureic seepage hops their peristaltic trains. Rhythmic paddleboats steam up river, saving the hotties, shifting them to hired ground for immediate enrollment in neural armpit sex slavery, perhaps shipment to Knobby Scepter via transcontinental plastic lubrication tubes buried far beneath the disappearing topsoil of Nerd Americo.  Farm bred corn-fed nubile creatures fan out from Indianimus, Ioweya, Neveraskher, Cannedass, Misery, Manysodas, Sillynoise…

Once was corn belt became porn belt, feeding Dearth and many more viable timelines, pumping freshly sown boys and girls to lechers, vagrants, CEOs, hobos, oglers, perverts, doppelgangers, two-timers, polygamists, hypnotists, donkeys, mules, sports celebrities, senators, congressmen, renegade lobotic escapees on piecemeal orbiters, hastily constructed android shacks, any kind of sex junkie in any starving world. Blondes, redheads, brunettes, tall, short, leggy, buxom, petite, served up piping hot from Dearth’s burgeoning online porn catalog; millions of adolescents zipped from Midwest Americon bedrooms, nighties still intact, in Graylien pipelines lubed and packed with vital nutrients, picking up to escape velocity aboard mammoth mother ships, kids converted to time-bath gelatin pools, attributes in cryogenic computation silos, jumped to wormhole regression in myriad rotating cylinders…

Picked up nightly for cloning, dropped off before daybreak, teenagers worldwide form the breeding stock for lobotic armies, spawned into slavery across the system. Mother ships send thousands of scout saucers to perform this somewhat onerous task. While preferable to the collection of bovine genetic material, it is nonetheless considered menial labor among the Graylien hierarchy. Upstream reside the inter-timeline transfer functionaries, translating cloned identities into soul receptacles, governing the transmigratory process, allocating breeds to competing worlds, occasionally siphoning off pristine samples for their private harems.

Lobotic Pulp

Regional conflicts rage round-the-clock, migrating the dead to viable timelines as fast as Graylien pipelines can absorb them. Direct transfer through death-rebirth is the preferred method of transmigration, most likely to result in a unique, one-to-one, stable, constructive thread of consciousness; necessary to spiritual growth, required by lamas, gurus, ascendant masters, and the like. Death and reinjection into cloned hosts, on the other hand, results in lobotic awareness, a shunting of the identity to merely automatic life, a dead-end evolutionarily speaking; useful for mass labor and specialized leadership positions, but useless for the generational progression of consciousness.

Lobots are actually unaware of their limited identity predicament, believing themselves to be fully gifted human stock. This illusion is of prime importance, of course, in the execution of their missions, but saddles them as somewhat pathetic figures. The confabulations and rationalizations generated by superintelligent lobots are profoundly entertaining, however. Properly translated and reframed, they form the basis of virtually all the most popular mass-produced fiction available in the system. Actual human work along these lines tends to be far too nuanced to compete for mass appeal; lobotic pulp wins out everywhere. Oddly enough, lobots prefer the human-generated brand, providing an artificially steady market for actual creative art, while humans wallow in lobotic pap.

What of interbreeding, of lobotic sex slaves humping humans and Grayliens? And what about lobot-on-lobot action? Surely lobotic females must give birth. Actually, lobot-lobot sex does not create offspring, due to inefficiencies in the lobotic genome. This “problem” is not easily addressed, even by the Grayliens and their contemporaries, or so we are led to believe. It’s possible that the Grayliens simply prefer this state of affairs or don’t have the Graypower to fix it. In any event, it is well beyond the current ability of human scientists. Human-lobot sex does, however, generate offspring, via lobotic females only; lobotic males can impregnate human females, but the fertilized egg is soon sloughed off. When lobotic females give birth to hybrid human-lobots, the above limits on further reproduction cascade along probabilistic lines.

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His work has appeared in many online literary journals. His most recent book, Intunesia, is available in paperback from White Sky Books at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks . He’s @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.

Denny E. Marshall- Three Poems

Motion Stars
 
Wondering the space with no light
Dark holes, planets hidden from sight
After long stares a silent ring
All night motion stars dance and sing

Take a chariot track the hoofs
Dust of nebula high above roofs
Riding the moon upon a wing
All night motion stars dance and sing

A wishing star passes the skies
Leaves a long trail before it dies
A stage of future shows will bring
All night motion stars dance and sing


Unseen Deep Travelers
 
At the far edge of the universe
A life form travels much faster than light
Tracing in the endless voids and wormholes
In between the absence of day or night
With form and frame larger than some planets
With little effort, countless shifts and glides
Older then some of the known galaxies
In cosmic camouflage effectively hides


Just 400 Million Miles Short

Hearing a signal from space
Reaction was surprise
Curious to find the sender
They studied since that night
Together working the project
Was large in scope and size
Had the knowledge and know how
To send a ship a year from that night
A journey that took over a year
Engaged in overdrive
Very close to the destination
The craft had a malfunction
And crashed into a planet
With a red haze sky



Bio
Denny E. Marshall has had art, poetry, & fiction recently published. Denny does not have a Facebook page or Twitter account but does have a website with previously published works.