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At His Feet
I sat at Jesus’s feet. Bewildered by the crowd and the heat But what is there to say? I could see His face, hear His words. “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” I am a believer, I have faith. Can the Lord not hear me pray fervently, for hours…
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Twenty Years
I A few weeks after the attacks I realized that there would be anniversaries. Moments in years to come when people would stop and try to remember the event; and try and remember the nature of the world before the explosive propulsion of our wrath halted the inertia of peace. II I…
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Buran
The little pirates climb the metal scaffolds and bust open windows with sledgehammers they carry canvas satchels and metric screwdrivers they attack anything that looks like a computer or a digital display and twist and turn and pull until power cords hang like dripping intestines pulled from a slaughtered pig. Circuit boards broken apart for…
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The UAP Report
It was after 9:00 pm, almost 15 years ago. I was walking my dog Chloe along a narrow two lane road near Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains. There were no street lights, and it was a very clear moonless night. I would stare up into the sky while she did her business and…
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Pilate’s Painting
There is a legend that Pontius Pilate painted Christ long after he retired as governor. What a challenge that would have been to capture the man you so briefly spoke to on a wooden panel yet who’s life (and death) will stay with you for the rest of yours. Would you take red and accentuate…
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Amelia Earhart Sees (Elegiac visions of the next world in the depths of the Pacific)
The silver skin of her Electra reflects the setting sun. The twin engines hum, steadfast lift is provided by the wings. The strange invisible waves of the radio beacon fly out across the ocean, far faster than the plane itself. Here among the tiny green islands and endless blue waters are beasts that wait in dark places.…
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Precursors
In a dark cave, in the shadow of Rome piled up beneath stalactites are remains of ancient proto-humans. You could hold their skulls up to the light and see through the bite holes down through to the brainpan, and run your fingers across their over-sized brows which hang over the eyes like little hills bordering…
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MOOD INDIGO: STORIES NOW AVAILABLE
A new collection of short fiction by your’s truly is now available through the evil capitalists at Amazon here: Moon Indigo This collection spans a decade of output and includes both short stories and pieces of micro fiction, or flash fiction depending on your opinion. Many of these stories have appeared online in different magazines/journals,…
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Justa Grata Honoria Writes to Attila the Hun
“Here is my ring, I will not marry him. Come and take me away Attila, you strong man save me from this run-down world this cesspit of censer incense and lace. Take me away from middle managers and scheming mothers. Away from mosaic gold and lapis. I want to ride your pale horse through the…
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Virginia Poe
We had no portraits of her we had nothing in our heads but her face alive and well dining and singing and laughing and sometimes sinning with Edgar. When she coughed up the blood the crimson stained her lips and her cheeks would flush looking like a painted lady out on a holiday. Edgar stared…
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The Plunge of Pryce Lewis
“You ever seen a view like this one?” The cold December air holds up snowflakes and then lets them fall gently upon the dome with its lantern lit for ships far from home. The newspapers printing in the basement cause subtle vibrations in the iron railing that my fingers feel as they squeeze and below…
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Marguerite Bradbury
Who ends up with the memories of a love when one of a pair passes away? Surely they will last forever in the skull of the survivor: The ring-ding of the door bell in the bookstore where she stood organizing shelves and watched in suspicion the strange man overdressed for a warm LA day when…
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Bradbury Makes Pulp into Paper
Most people want to be shiny quarters Just punched out of the mint Jingling in cattle-like surety Marveling at the cleverness of their security. Stick a pen in their hands Paper under their digits And watch the ink make potty Pooling on the paper like a child Losing their sobriety. Its panic plain and simple…
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Woodrow Wilson Said
I need a Southern Belle like the damned need water in hell dress her up in white lace put some rouge on her pretty face and let me go to town Let Edith come up to my room tell the maid to drop the broom I want her to sit on my face put my…
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See Dinosaurs as Real as Life!
It was the sound of mastication that really set her off. The nerve-wracking squanch squanch of the brachiosaur’s curved white teeth echoed loudly in the primordial setting of jungle ferns. “Why is this stupid thing so loud?” The curator turned to look at her, eyes just slightly squinting. “Ma’am, the brachiosaur was an herbivore, our recreation is…
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Christmas – 2020
It’s Christmastime again. A Christmas set during a year of profound sorrow afflicted by plague, political unrest, and change. Many of us, too many to count, have faced this last year as a trial with the jury still out deliberating our fate. I know that I have prayed to God for help and guidance, and…
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Arecibo Elegy
He stands overlooking the vast white dish like milk poured into a jungle-covered bowl and thinks of radiowaves reflecting into the receiver. “How many billions of stars are hosting worlds where life has figured out how to talk across the lightyears?” But to talk in our galaxy means to wait. The speed limit of light…
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The Voice
I can feel Murray Wilson smacking Brian upside the head the ringing in his ear drifting up the scales to a pitch just at the edge of human hearing a tuning fork stuck on On. How he translated that pain into stacked harmonies grabbed a thousand year old palimpsest filled with holy roundels and turned…
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Demolition City
They sterilized the land the art deco department stores and the stumpy roots of the buildings of the Pacific Southwest Exhibition have been buried under concrete and rubble. every timber and brick that once shook during the earthquake of ’33 every roadside diner every steepled church; flop-houses and mansions torn down for mini-malls. the Tongva…
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The Whales
Barnum brought some beluga whales to his Museum across from City Hall hauled them behind a belching steam engine from up near Canada 700 miles across the land of America he was told they were a male and a female perfect white oblong shapes bathed in a bucket of salt water. Oh dear God, when…
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The Numinous Cosmos 