Every ten years
I look in a mirror
And get fussy
About my age
Why can’t I
Be more like the
Ten-year-old who
Was just excited
To be a year older
And eager to see
What lay ahead
March 22, 2023
From “40 Years, 40 Words” by Anonymous
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May 4, 2019
From “ポンダババのバラード” by Claus Roggee
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February 6, 2019
From “The Coatl’s Dream” by Amanda Elton
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Dangerous days lie ahead, O friends
In this city of magic and smiles
I see many ways your paths may end
But still, tarry here for awhile
Among you there is a child of gold
Beloved of one who does stalk
You’re but a key to be controlled
For a treasure untold to unlock
Another will find that what they have lost
Is really still theirs to find
But then they must ask, is it worth the cost
When the truth will lay bare their mind
The last will have truth knocked out from below
Like a hangman removing a stool
They must then decide if the reality they know
Is worth bearing a past that is cruel
A welcome I sound to the Witch Queen’s town
To all of you entering here
I hope that you all find here fame and renown
And lose nothing you hold too dear
January 1, 2019
From “The Poacher” by Chea Thorpe
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He cradled the homemade shotgun.
The barrel a stolen pipe.
The stock a stump he carved.
Gunpowder stolen a pinch at a time
Unraveled from blasting wire
Stolen from a mine.
There were only fifteen rhinos
In the whole park, the whole nation.
Odds were not in his favor.
But a single kill, a sawn-off horn
Would feed him, his family, a month.
Powder, foreign rich men’s medicine.
Handles, for foreign rich men’s daggers.
He didn’t care, the money was real.
His family was real.
Crouched there, in the dark
He put his family before the beasts
Rooting around on the brink.
How many men does it take
Making the same decision
To consign that species
To the history books.
December 30, 2018
From “The Statue in the Garden” by Anonymous
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My spellcraft was such
That they were turned
Instantly
To stone
They sit there, now
Unmoving and still
Do they
Dream
In
The
Marble
Or is it like death
Body a husk, spirit
Departed
For we
Know
Not
Where
I do not know which
Comforts me more
Kindly dreams
Deathly dreams
Or the
Sweet
Oblivion
Of
Long
Ago
Murder
October 21, 2017
From “The Gardener’s Lament” by Anonymous
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April 20, 2017
From “Waste” by Anonymous
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Why happens when we
bump against a mechanical dustbin
the one that contains everything we’ve
ever thrown out as useless
The instructions read like
they were assembled by an electorate
maddened against a sinister they
can’t grasp
Before this
the domestic likelihood of finding a
lasting mate
A machine
Safe brains miss the obsolete
even as they
practice an Occam’s of pragmatic
worth
The old rockets into the trash
another prospective razor held against it
the simplest is the best
Beneath whatever abstract speculations
what we discard
lies unwelcome
its service forgotten
entombment
in earth
its only
fate
October 21, 2016
From “Haiku to a Lonely Beer Can” by Koji Umebayashi
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September 10, 2016
From “A Moment” by Anonymous
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This moment isn’t worth
The wistfulness it brings
So alone at this juncture
Trudging among skeletons
From the intolerant earth
The machinery mutated
Beyond all recognition
In a space betwixt realities
Who will tend to our tombstones
Never acknowledge the damage
Someone who grossly overstates
Their own worth has caused
A view you paid dearly for
The catharsis of melancholy sadness
September 9, 2016
From “An Ultoq’s Stirrings” by Jill O. Garibaldi
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“Tell me about it,” I said. “Describe what you’re feeling.”
Neltoq inclined his head. “It is like…” He trailed off, and for a moment there was just the sound of his reedy breathing.
“Go on,” I said gently.
“Imagine a song you have never heard, but one which you nevertheless know by heart,” said Neltoq. “You hear it distantly, as if borne on a summer breeze. As much as you desire to hear it, you hold back out of fear.”
I could only nod my head.
“How else might I describe it…?” Neltoq closed two of his eyes to re-moisturize them. “Perhaps…you see an old lover from a short distance away. You want to cry out to her, but at the same time you dare not. It is too dangerous. There is too much pain. Instead, you feel the embers of what was, what could have been, stirring deep within you.”
“I didn’t know you were a poet, Neltoq,” I said.
“It is an avocation I hve been studying,” he said. “It is a tradition among the Ultoq to compose a final testament before the metamorphosis. I have long thought that I would prefer for mine to be a poem. My scientific work will speak for itself, but it contains none of my soul.”
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 