The Frontier draft

It's like we conquered the whole world,
the frontiers remaining only those forged by man
and left the rest of us without homestead
destination and, instead, gave us only home.
Not that the splendor of silicon isn't grand,
not that the charted and developed territories
aren't worth of thanks-on-high,
and not that Mars being dragged within
the grasp of man
was maligned,
yet somehow -
Something seems to be missing,
some survival element of the equation subtract,
some mystery gone vacant.
It's like the only thing
that could ever kill me
is myself.

Phobos Fire draft

Starry skies and saffron haze,
tranquility shrouds the bloodied dead
and cloaks the wail of vultures circling overhead.

Phobos rising,
the glaring red emanating a living glow
from lifeless eyeballs and dried tongues.
Deimos accolades,
the hard violet corroding Sol's hold,
shadowing the glaring glow of long-past dawn.
A grim monument,
An Ares-herald piled-high,
the children of earth beseech their patron:
"Shower us in purifying fire,
lift us aloft with alighting flame,
smite out bode with a conflagration
such that Hades might rage with envy.
Pull at our true selves,
severing us from this mortal coil
with a holocaust of heat."

The killing long-since complete,
enacted with such grim precision and efficacy
to make Sol flee and weep.
Under baleful eye of Demos
and burning glare of Phobos
the husks of the martyred dead
piled high and blood,
gathered as the massacre was lead,
came to designate the omnipresent
flesh-mound a bright and shining red.

The red-ritual complete,
with wall of bone
and pillar of tooth replete,
the sacred eye of Ares turns
and, across the inky black expanse of ether,
opens the ancient portal awide
as volumes immeasurable of death-crimson flame
do spring toward Terra in fever:

A journey of a thousand lifetimes expanse,
bridged in the life and death of a breath,
the flare of the father of Phobos reaches
infant Terra and, noble, green and blue Terra,
is annihilated by the flames' all-encompassing breadth.
The broad expanse of biology destroyed
as the last glowing embers of holy prayer deployed,
and yet, alas, hope for followers of fields and dreams remain, as,
somehow, supplicants of devil-father and demon sons
were, for but a miniscule moment, decoyed:

A babe remained,
swaddled in shrouds of Terra's veridian,
protected until the last of the scouring flames
of the life of the faith drained and, despite their prayer,
a hope, a miniature fragment of life was yet sustained:
Somehow, the flames of Phobos' father
were contained.

Mental Marketplace - A

I got plants and grapes and ghosts,
but what I ain't got is what I need:
stones, dense and solid:
assured.
Though these stones exist not, it's pretty easy
to imagine solidarity in such states of ephermia:
Tangible, real and solid:
unimagined.
Times coming, then, to trade the chemical reactions
for sought/hoped social interactions:
Random, chaotic and anything but solid;
but real.

Spare Some Change, Man? draft

You get used to it.
Telling the same guy
with the same story
with the same problem
the same excuse that you've got nothing to spare,
that what you've got amounts to little and less,
and although this one has a different face,
the guilt feels the same,
and both reactions are the same:
the forced gratitude of charitable attention,
the fake smile but earnest wish for luck,
but you get used to it.

Grocery Shopping draft

Wine by the gallon
bread by the cent
with fevered, raving eye-knives
at the drones following pedestrian procedure.
Disembodied ghost-voices
hawking glowing, hovering sales,
forced forward through
the labyrinth of food, and escape:
please insert bill face up,
conform, know that the command is compulsory,
but:
Please wait for an attendant
so that our silicon might verify your carbon,
but please to not engage her, as
we cannot be held responsible for her attitude.
You brought your cellular, right?
Flee, then, solace in the cool mist
of a late, light May rain,
and home made by way of
beloved, hovering and shining icons
just in case we forget what we're working for.

What Might (She Sleeps) draft

She slept something spiritual;
little and less could be described as
little holistic, less tangible states as
surely naught else might aspire to attain
such a state of grace.
Surreal, unreal, yet -
tangibly, omnipresently, impossibly,
as indicated by breaths deep
and the back-and-forward of eyes' sweet,
it -
is little wonder that I've come to christen
her as Sleep.
That this coordinate of space-time might be
written, repetion unto tomorrow,
that our hour here might be made stone,
that into my retinas forever might be burned
with thsi furiously burning halo;
What that changes-only might be made
exclusively eternal,
and you, and I, might be shielded
by veils of shadow,
while although the world revolves-in-perpetuum,
we might change from this moment naught -

The Other

She left as the snows came,
draining with her footfalls the
silhouette of the skyline,
damning the sunrise to the banish of winter.
Unto the tomorrow deserved
was the logic of yesterday,
unmindful of the toll and vaguely-minded
of the benefits-potential,
aware only that mere steps beyond the horizon
lay that made-sacred destinatory-goal:
the other.

Daylight draft

The great flaming sphere of the burning sun
crested the horizon of catastrophe daybreak,
bringing with it the dawning of blood
and the thousand anguished wails of survivors.
They came at the height of midnight,
heralds of long-axe and pike
putting the believers to the hairline of the blade.
Orange flame of daylight danced atop the
fixtures of ornamentation of the knights of ever-late,
the awful visage of amss-murder below playing out as
mirrors on the visors of the newcomers-at-arms.
They said little and stayed less, the quarry eternal
having slipped beyond reach of their bola-nets and manacles,
and left behind those husks, unburied and burned,
as tokens of a repeated failure.