The Traveler

More transient

Then the gate's shadow on the bricks

and tiles of the walk

The dew on the pre-dawn grass

The zephyr dancing across the dust

He pauses

and reaches for something in his pocket

 

I have trouble seeing him

As he flickers in and out of existence

I can't hear him at all

But I'm certain he is trying to tell me something

Across the vast distance of an arm's length

 

What?

He's holding something out to me

I think he wants me to take it

But I can't see what it is

Wary

I lift my open hand

 

 

 

 

In the Courts of Light

The Sun went down

in robes of Fire

Down into the Sea

Golden fire in the waters

Fire flies ignite

the velvet night

 

Unsummoned memory ghosts

Brush by me

soft as shadow

And

Once again

I dance

in the Courts of Light

 

Life begins again

Ships of the Wind

swing through the trees

Rivers of Song

Paint everything I see

And I throw my head back

Breathing the sky

 


Proteus Unit Dis-engaged

The Proteus unit was dormant

recharging its ergon cells

How else could we have found it?

Morphing in its active state

As one with any landscape

The very dickens to find

 

Our Minerva unit

Disconnected his power feed

And hooked in

one of her trickle chargers

Holding him suspended

in his dream state

She can be so inventive

 

Oh don't mind the twitching

We just do that to keep

his actuators operative

He doesn't feel a thing

 

Here

Put on the helmet

Comfy?

Now lean back and try to relax . . .

 

 

 

Mary Shelley's Monster

What could be more alien . . .

Dead torso, limbs and such

Stitched together

like some beggar's ragged coat

Re-animated by

That most mysterious force

running the belly of the sky

Electricity

Say the word

Electricity

It sizzles on your tongue

 

A dead man

Fabricated from dead parts

With a diseased brain

That was better off

in the glass jar

But she built him

(What, you thought it

was Dr. Frankenstein?)

Bit by bit on those cold

winter nights

Her tender hands

Elbow deep in gore

casting and molding her nightmare

Percy

 

 

 

Salvage

The smell always hits you first

Every time we ram one of their doors

Even seasoned salvage veterans vomit

 

Silent apartment

Save for a high pitched whine

Debris and dead food

Heaped and strewn at random

And the smell

I bite back the bile

 

My lucky day

I find

The worshiper of the one-eyed virtual god Her hair tangled in greasy masses

Twitching and panting on the floor

Struggling to crawl back into the chair

Blind eyes searching for one more phosphor-fix Bony fingers reaching for the joy-jack

And I remember

My daughter . . .

 

Months later

She is sitting across the table

Cleaned up

Politely interested in my opinion

Amused at the general tone of this litigation She knows she must convince the doctors

The board

Even me

That she's well past it

 

No one ever listens to me

Equipment is cheap on the streets

And she'll be jacked in

Before the first snow

Maybe next time

She won't be so fortunate

And some other poor slob

Will have to put his little girl

in a box 

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