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.
Tag Archives: fantasy
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 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.
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.
a goanna, a penguin, and Blade Walker
Previously on Blade Walker: the earth is inhabited by extraterrestrials, and humans are an endangered species. Blade Walker (human) and Alícia (alien) have been freed from mind-controlling insects by an electromagnet in Rick’s scrapyard. The previous episode is here.
Alícia was always herself,
and now I was me again as well,
following my path of faux pas.
But I wasn’t a shallow as I used to be,
because I had a secret.
the realm of Jaci
To be consumed by her freezing flame,
hot as dry ice, an unrenounceable
illiterate desire that drove
my past and drives my future.
All I see, all I hear, all I touch,
all around me is the realm of Jaci.
the moray
Fragile as a ghost, I drifted
on a moonlit beach
in the Shoal Haven,
oblivious to the obvious.
A message was written in the sand,
cursive, but not by any hand.
The Architecture of the Sea,
a short course on the shore,
taught by a moray eel.
time’s machine
In a pendant past, still waiting
to become, my dreams were ever
wandering in a lifeless land:
the high night of suburbia,
where the homes were anthracite
compressed from smoke,
and the streets all ran with bitumen,
flowing over aeons to Nocturnia.
horizonte belo
I’ve held the laments of strangers in my arms.
They come to me because of who I’m not.
Like with like, in vacuo, a meeting
of invisibilities.
antimony in annandale
The city has no interest in my breathing,
it contaminates my lungs with anti-air,
infuses them with vacuum.
Yet, should I leave this wretchedness,
to find a place where burnt-out cars
are overgrown with vines,
where the breeze blows allergens
and dust, and determined insects
seek comfort in my flesh,
my heart would be tormented.
the apposite planet
“I cannot find a single word
I favor,
not a one, and my heart,
it pulses
like a stroboscope,
in flashes.
“Still, I started life as a half a packet
of Tim Tams, so I have no reason
to complain.”
nothing new
Deija, the Martian Princess of Glass, was lounging on a chaise longue in her Dapto Castle. Her butler was nearby, drinking bluegas through a striped straw.
She sighed.
“There’s nothing new under the sun.
Is it worth invading the rest of this sorry planet?
It might all be like Dapto. This place
has infected me. I have a rash.”