Long ago, there were castles
carved of ice in the frozen South.
Auroral fireworks flowered
from their ramparts,
and rained liquid silverlight
into shadows to equalise
the darkness.
across the street
My story “The Beautiful Horizon” in The Purpose of Reality: Solar has been shortlisted for the 2022 Aurealis Awards in the Fantasy Short Story Category. Info about The Purpose of Reality collections below.
They’ve built a block of apartments
across the street, all the way along.
My neighbors over there had to vacate,
but I heard a little wailing
beneath the motors’ roar
when the night machines
ground their houses to gravel.
the book
An inconspicuous library
in a forgotten country town.
The librarian won’t let you borrow it,
but you may read it in the library,
hold it in your calloused hands,
even riffle its soft pages
gently with your fingertips,
like so many have before you.
curriculum vitae
In my youth, I pored over arcane
manuscripts, in the vain belief
that I could comprehend
their mysteries.
where is the sun?
A car the color of the sunset disappears
around a corner, the sky recalls a long-ago
metropolis, and films of rain are shining
on the concrete and the bitumen,
the bushes and the trees.
I think about what I’ve done and
what I will, and wonder where’s the sun?
Am I any closer to it?
the approximist
He won a prize at the Marimbondo Circus,
proxime accessit, said that he treasured it,
more or less.
Compasses and crossroads
confused him, and he couldn’t tell
the narrator from the narratee.
the amazonian
The skyward myths, the poppy-field poets,
have vanished, the inexpressible
has evanesced above the tar pits
like the long-lost Brachiosauridae,
and in the cities, all that’s left is
Amazon and online dreams.
inexpressible
The Purpose of Reality illustrated short story and poetry collections from Meerkat Press, with pretty fair reviews from Publishers Weekly and the like, now available on Amazon and at other outlets, click for details including reviews.
“It’s time to write in the first person,”
he declared, “no more
of the inconsequential,
the vaporous, the bland quotidian.”
the problem with reality
The Purpose of Reality illustrated short story and poetry collections from Meerkat Press, with pretty fair reviews from Publishers Weekly and the like, now available on Amazon and at other outlets, click for details including reviews.
A sun shower in the kitchen
washed my thoughts away,
dissolved my maudlin words.
I didn’t care, my pointless pen
and paper only served
to pass the time.
reasonable mistakes
The Purpose of Reality illustrated short story and poetry collections from Meerkat Press, with pretty fair reviews from Publishers Weekly and the like, now available on Amazon and at other outlets, click for details including reviews.
“You know Rodney, you’re just
a hanger-on, a waste of
space, time, and air.”
She never got my name right,
but I knew where she was
coming from. I was her ghost
companion, a Dapto tourist
information brochure
for an interstellar traveler—
unnecessary and pointless
in every way.
beyond the glass
The Purpose of Reality illustrated short story and poetry volumes from Meerkat Press, with fair reviews from Publishers Weekly and the like, now available on Amazon and at other outlets, click for details including reviews.
Beyond the glass, the water birds
are gliding on the rails of rain,
and, for a moment,
their distant pattering melody
recalls a semblance
of another chance
at hopefulness—even with
the knowing that it’s far too late
for all of that.
camera obscura
The Purpose of Reality illustrated short story and poetry volumes from Meerkat Press with reviews from Publishers Weekly and the like, now available on Amazon and at other outlets, click for details including reviews.
The imagined is ordinary,
the signifiers of what lies beyond
were long ago ground away
to the commonplace,
applied to pedantry and potatoes,
lost in the semantic sea.
the realtor’s dream
The Purpose of Reality, illustrated short stories and poetry from Meerkat Press. They’ve had some pretty fair reviews from Publishers Weekly and the like. Now available to order on Amazon, and at other outlets. Purchase, review, and other info here.
Location, location, location,
the realtor’s dream of sifting
through the time stream’s rows
of single bed room nights
in the company of shades and shadows,
and never lost in someone else’s thoughts.
the purpose of reality
Unlike the solitary dreams of sleep, reality is common ground, a place where we share with one another, and intertwine the other kind of dreams: our plans, hopes, and visions for the future. That is the purpose of reality.
My Purpose of Reality books from Meerkat Press, illustrated poetry and short stories, are now available, with pretty fair reviews from Publishers Weekly and the like. Reviews, purchase, and other info here.
the snow globe
I know time turns without me,
forever leaving me behind.
May I pass unseen,
unnoticed day by day.
May Jakaíra, the Queen of Mist,
wrap me in her clouds.
ten hours
I cannot comprehend the thinking of others,
their symbolics and demarcations,
dressed in their effete stigmata,
flowing in Babel’s river
to the sea.
the quiet hours
The rain was running late, still pattering
on the muddy puddles of the city sky,
and the street was smeared with cloud
star-ridden with mercury lamps—
a world as dreary as long-lost
infatuation, as a friend’s anger,
as empty jealousy.
Like a moth attracted
to the flickers of fluorescent lights,
I chose a frayed café where
my dairy-whitened instant coffee
with artificial sweetener
—all its chemical delights—
put me in the writing mood.