John Grey- Two Poems

LEAK IN THE MASK

Thought is the riverbank,

anxiety, the rushing current.

Drowning man can't get

to the safety of his mind,

grabs at his hallucinations,

kicks at his luxurious memory.

He's going-under in the watery flames,

the tumult of a withering brain storm.

Ideas can't spin their satellites

through his flooded hemispheres.

His body is a cripple

struggling to clamber up

on the rungs of disappearing function.

Nothing matters but

the crushing of the lung.

Only his tattoos can dream.

Drowning man embraces the unreal,

expands into the chloroform

of all-absolving death.

He's a planet trying to lasso into orbit,

a meteorite striking the landscape

of himself.

Look up in the sky,

see bear and archer, shimmering lion.

But see drowning man

pulled under by the cosmos.

See drowning man

bouncing off the metal of his ship,

fragments of death

sucked up by life's sleek magnets.

 

EXPLORERS

In this age, the stars are all.

On one side, Gamma Cassiopeiae,

on the other, Mu Cephei.

A jaunt through Bode's galaxy -

some samples gathered,

rogue planets avoided,

a thousand angry rockets

firing at our sparkling tail.

For our lives to be elsewhere,

acceleration, warp, is all that's needed.

Throw away the books.

Facts come at us like lasers.

Blue cascading mountains,

three headed creatures,

hitchhiking thought forms,

unbelievable beauty

stepping from a water-fire.

Space and vision lock in

and away we go.

It's a golden time

for travel, for exploration.

Juice up the engines

and distances fly from us.

City and jungle, hill and ravine –

we name them after dead men.

We zip by other adventurers

from far-flung worlds.

Their missions mirror ours.

They must have some

dandy words for Earth.

Here comes a great blackness.

Blackness - another word for revelation.

More dangers. No problem.

Strange sicknesses -

meet the universe's

premier med lab.

And look, this army

tries to blast our hide.

Can't hurt us.

Our ships have shields.

Our egos likewise.

John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Chrysalis and the science fiction anthology, “Futuredaze” with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Sanskrit and Fox Cry Review. 

Erik Moshe- Three Poems

Nano-techno-cult-warfare

Magnetism’s stay-home-Mom infects plexiglass
dancing lucid in lieu of the Lucy Liu’s,
the Jolies, Monroes, the Metallic Monegasques
behind the laboratory window, cyborg marriages ensue
body parts, accessories, “meet other people”

on the billboards, sugar foam accumulates
energizes, wherein strands of readability take form
sifting like cells through hearts and minds,
through exterior and extracurricular obliques
to reach targets of feel good, and stay pleasedjust say please…
The left region of the brain that functions as an outfield…
knocks pterodactyls out of orbit for being primitive-minded
having the common courtesy to revive them
in a pool that’s compatible to their habitat
although, no intention to release them back to their own
assuring those of us that the jurassic is now
the schematic

there’s smart dust on the mantle
there’s RFID chips smoldering in the fireplace
fletchers, guilders, blacksmiths, lumberjacks
are being replaced now by armies of Tin Can Jim Cramers
uranium is seated upright [legs still 3D printing]
but the process is much like baking layer cake
with sterilized pincers, supercomputer jaws
meticulous fiber optic ripplesmear
megalith in the length of nanometers
positronic decagon dragons, [a microwaveable item]
“an age in which the transmittance of good ideas
depends on organic beings to coerce and think together
can’t depend on machines
to provide purpose for their natural function,”
says the Blackout Brigade, currently garrisoned in a Samoa
that no longer breathes

We take the same path of unconscious antics
as floating orbs in the North Atlantic,
where the portraits fashioned tend to be overly complex
humans are created in the image of tampered-with-humans,
Bionic Manhood Programs sprouting from the hearth
out of identities, a trans-humanist cause plays out
people say “oh, you missed the train”
“my dear, if you missed the latest robotic soul installment…”
“you were behind the times! An intern of the cloth
too busy for the lithographical Codeword Projects
battling the fumes of naivety
to come to terms with an odd world
a glittering, fleshy enterprise much like
Cybertron with a skin rash
and a forgotten birth certificate




Pilgrimage

Uzbekistan rain fell
on an ascending conscious-bot
Striking its back, creating blue sparks
lubricating torsion springs and rusty tongs
generator transplants cooled, steaming slightly
with strong, orderly strides
it made its way up the plain
a zone of sideways wind, a chorus of whistles
water streamed down from the clouds
hydrated the green fields and turmeric summits
gently, but in generous amounts
in a mayhem only time rarely ordains
the robot’s steel boots clunked through puddles
choosing to take a traditional stroll
over teleportation or large vertical leaps
like the ancestors, it thought
I’ll go where I need to on hardened footfalls
The top of the plain was near now,
as the robot quickened its pace to a slow jog
rain slick on its facial gears, and its bent back
muscle fibers were translucent, eyes without expression
something was at the tip that it had to reach
maybe it was understanding, it thought
the world around me beams with life’s currents,
yet favors the cellulose tribes, immortal tenants
I keep going because I can
I know that everlasting existence is a steep slope
the robot had grown to question elements around it
among them, “humankind”
who it was told
was either myth or truth, or just nuts & bolts theory
had God been the entity
who had created him in his image
or was it nature’s mettle?




Mr. Templesmear, in his Forward Thinking Capsule

He careened over a solar system that’s name was
without vowels, without consonants, and without inhabitants
therefore, without religious barriers
hunched over a pew in the meditative chamber of the Spacecrux,
he clasped his hands together and prayed
for terrestrial races with names of which he also did not know
whose creeds, foreign to his own, were supernatural
in the sense that they abided by physical laws, but superseded reason
“This facility no longer offers church services”
came the voice from the purring loudspeaker
“fzzzzzzz-fzzzzzzzzz---FZZZZZZZZZZZ”
the computer sputtered, correcting itself for its intrusion
“Sorry sir, didn’t hear you open the soundproof door,
I was conducting a practice alert system for holistic rituals”
he replied "stand down computer, all is well. I’m the one
who didn’t hear you open the corridors of faith, so
the fault is mine, though religion is still an active wormhole
robotic sentience may as well be a message from the gods”
Monotheism was in short supply those days
especially in outer regiments of each great black void
range rovers and tectonic skimmers were somehow
convinced that a divine engine powered through the rancid
shortcomings of creation theory contained branches
that extended into other fields of destiny, making horticulture
a reality in these vast eco-cosmo vineyards
atoms tended to freefall onto Newton’s skullcap

Mr. Templesmear was designed for the job of reverend
the lord‘s galactic agent, evaluating belief values
with own contraptions and judgments, guided celestial
travel services funded his researches
“the brain of a holy man is predisposed to deterioration
unless an outside device can intervene,
offering moonshine as de-clogging fluid:
the antidote for the mythological, and the Unlikely 
preserving the act of “THINK” - an original feat!"
he poked away at atheist vein formations
like a thirsty astronaut fingering a canteen on Mars' slopes
trying give us something to believe in during the third Nanoage…
A forward thinking capsule of wisdom, his own words
his own impulses and doctrines
he kneaded a personal bible in his ortho-proton-based hands
offering: ‘EXPLORE YOUR DEPTHS’ with the tagline
"Contaminate other worlds with the gene of curiosity,
and no species will be for the worse."

Erik Moshe lives in Tucson, AZ. His work has appeared in Gloom Cupboard, the Broward College Pan'Ku , Spirit of the Stairway, Clutching at Straws, Camel Saloon, and DEAD SNAKES, among others. Find him plucking reality from a tree with a teaspoon on his website at TheCentersphere.Yolasite(dot)com.