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.
 

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.

Jeffrey Park- Three Poems

ARRIVAL ZONE

I step through the airlock

walk away from the vessel.

Acid droplets fall from the slate

roof of the sky sparkling

like dark jewels roll

down my cheeks my chest my

arms steaming leaching

away my protective shell

leaving me naked leaving

me cold leaving me clean and

pink and hypersensitive

to every breath of alien air.

See me see my body me inside

bared now for your inspection.

Go and tell your masters

a visitor has arrived.

ISO 99000

Every day

a hundred times

a day

I study my hands

for signs of wear

and tear and rust

and corrosion,

rotate the joints

clench flex gesture

how hard can

these digits squeeze

how gently

caress –

so long out of

manufacturer’s

warranty

and still meeting

the most stringent

specifications

even if

as I myself am

forced to admit

the design

is ever so slightly

out of date.

WELL MET

Coherent sparks flare

for one billionth of one second

out in the whirlwind

airless

colder than frozen

and older than the primordial

ether.

Decoded they whisper

promises

proposals veiled threats

probe show

casual interest in local resources.

In the void

a dark lantern glows –

greetings felicitations best

wishes

soon we shall meet in the flesh

sooner than you could

have hoped

you shall reap your reward.

You are not alone.

John Pursch

EBGB-88

MLK-51 wavers in translucent haze of slowly spiraling pineal dust, blown from central bodice plex to outer edge regalia, seeping thoughts to newly backfilled crux of wholly simplified gestation’s neural frenzy, pondering impending send-off. Strapped and loaded into Montauk Chair, he remains unusually serene, reciting prayerful interchange, relaxed a hundred floors beneath Lung Island’s lighthouse dawn. 

Data drifts in ceiling airburst shades of violet and infra-amber, petrifying pseudo-smoky aural folds, pinging canticles of lullaby quotations, pulsing MLK to heightened awareness, lobotic neuronals flushed of piqued butyl swamping, amping vocal interludes to routine exhumation of soiled devotion’s perfidious embrace, injecting lost partisans from recoil spaceport blob parole to whirled official cordon, orbital now for canny legerdemain.

Returning with donuts, coffee, and extra gauze, Lieutenant Momo Montague glides from subterranean elevator into scattered backlit grain-cut prominence, joining rows of technicians in head-high bubbles, slipping silently through tribal guardian shamrock strata, inner entry guaranteed, bolstering the transit doormat’s filial presumption of imminent release. 

“Perfect timing, Lieutenant,” egyptologist Emily Armature remarks, busily tapping through thousands of floating cubes, scanning the spectral conundrum feed. “Marty’s ramping up nicely; looks like he’ll hit uniqueness in… thirty seconds.”

“That’s cutting it close, even for me,” Momo laughs, donning her headset.

“… Protestants and Catholics…” MLK-51 mumbles, suddenly sweating profusely, peering into holographic Tidal Basin throngs. “I may not get there with ya!”

“Steady, Marty,” Momo intones, adjusting his neural net, tamping down locality, swabbing his furrowed brow with monogrammed handkerchief.

“Pitching up lobotics, set to transfer, triggering Graylien suction,” Emily advises. “Now in funneled pinnacle, whirling off to wormhole haven interstitial pluck.”

“I may not get there with ya!” Marty insists, wrists straining Montauk leather, pate shining liquid clarity, eyes wide dripping spacetime vortices, flecked to gravitating cylindrical mayhem.

“Faucet streaming pure ionic intent; he’s committed,” Momo’s yelling over purple windscream.

“MLK-51 ready for inject, please confirm,” Emily calmly nods to coalescing Graylien image.

“Standing by, portal occlusion dissolves in ten…” the Graylien voices via telepathic pseudo-feed, solidifying as he counts down, hovering just below the concrete ceiling, now descending, “…three…two…one… injection lock… we take control in concomitant segue, lobotic relay per Interspecies Treaty… EBGB-88 now winking into traction fuse…”

“Copy that, EBGB, releasing our local timeline,” Momo signals, stepping into Montauk Bottle, joining last technicians in lead-lined scramble for magnetic seclusion, casting the lobot to winds of hyperspatial fluency. 

Marty’s body gyrates, convulsing in rhythmic collapse, subatomic annihilation, impasse profusion, warping detrital pendular havoc crashing castaway grief of intravenous mumbly-peg, tomorrow’s ventral haversack munitions pedaling upside-east, supplanting dowsed irrationals in flooding plasma juncture swirl of scenic fugue hydration pox, effusive gorgon tentacle moths to EBGB-88’s ballistic whirled tachyon girth, suspending anterior motive chomping lexical byproduct wheelbase flotilla berth, contracting andiron haul-off, gifting visitation allure to crosstalk plaudit, sundry feasts of pleated slapstick denture seize, mocking plaid landings…

Montauk Chair left sizzling in smoking heap burnt leather electronic ardor haze in cabinet demise, billowing pressure suit encasing emptied lobotic ritual, Momo chalky stagger leans to Emily’s stolid tap-thru: “EBGB-88, please confirm slingshot overture egress elapsed tower axial fluxion post.”

Static holographic mist resolves to grainy Graylien image retreat in retooled boxy hearing fall: “Transferring you to raw funicular receipt, femoral translation gratis from MLK-51 and wish you pleasant grafting hours…”

“Check and mirrored beckonings, EBGB,” Momo exhales. “Flipping to autobox relief intrinsics.”

All entrain in astral penumbral box-top bliss, relieved to hear flared crackle of newly injected leader bleat from faraway wormhole gate: “I have been to the mountaintop… and looked over the other side… I have seen the promised land! I have a dream today!”

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.