Abeyance

Knucklebones. An asteroid missing its target. The very same bolide hitting the face of Jupiter. The spine of a great beast, sand drifting about its extinguished carcass. Inland seas on the retreat. Weathered cliffs spared the final onslaught. Great beds of mussels dry in the sun. An ancient seafloor settles. This is not a mass extinction. It is an abeyance. This is a time for alligators to prosper in long river courses. This is a time for freshwater fish. I lament every lost mosasaur though, every crinoid without a home. Seas come and go. It is the Earth's way.

math problem

there is a circle. and at the center of it, a sun. at the center of another circle sits an oak tree covered with caterpillars. Cockroaches breed in another circle, and another is packed with freshly picked pears.
Now, rotate each one in a third dimension, so that they form a sphere. Stack the spheres on top of each other in yet another dimension, so that they are all simultaneous, but there is an order to them. The pears intersect the sun. The sun intersects the caterpillars. The caterpillars intersect the cockroaches. Iterate. As you can clearly see, the result varies from one state of the system to another. A single under-ripe pear can drive the cockroaches into the paleozoic, or far into the future.

Angband

A million orcs once swarmed from the gates of this place. Men and elves have met their fates here. Crowned in thunder, a dark god named Morgoth hammered his name across the land in rhunes of smoke and fire.
Day after day, I cast the dice, and their numbers always added up to this.
Iron gauntlets, a horned helmet, filed teeth, a smoke-grey battle axe covered in the blood of trolls-I stalk the halls of Angband. At the end of every corridor, my own death awaits. Yesterday i made love to a harpy and avoided the gaze of Medusa herself. Still, the monsters come. Today, it is orcs, flaming arrows, and pitch black corridors. Forever in a dragon ship, forever under fire, forever swinging an axe at the knees of an opponent or nicking then with an envenomed sword. My wits are sharp but my soul is mummy dust. I long for a peaceful night on the sandy beach, enemies vanquished, wine flask extinguished, moon at full mast. That is not for me. I am haunted, alive and dead at the same time. The labyrinth, it beckons again.

A lament for Stormbringer

I have forgotten what it is like, the experience of not having this black sword at my side. On my hip, in my hand, swung two-handed in an arc over my head. It is the source of so much strength, yet it will be the death of me. Dragons, tall ships. doomed princesses and even-more-doomed cities, it has doomed them all. Doom.

my status as a positive teen role model

I am having so much trouble being a POSITIVE TEEN ROLE MODEL. First of all, I am not a positive person. I have no overarching positive charge, so to speak, or at least, any electrical fields I emit are my own damned business. Another thing about being positive is that a person tends to attract electrons that way, and I hate electrons. I hate teens, actually. I hate pretty much everything, including teens and electrons. This does not make me a positive person. Speaking of teens, I might be a little old to serve as a role model for them. I have never read an issue of Tiger Beat magazine, and I do not know their pop celebrities. I admire Gille de Rais for killing so many teens, actually. He had a great mustache. These all make my status as a positive teen role model problematic, especially since I am usually under the influence of mind altering drugs. Drugs are a good thing, in moderation, and that makes them even more of a good thing when used immoderately. I like to tell teens that life is meaningless, and that they should do drugs to make the pain go away. This is good, advice, I think, and by doing so, I can really connect with them. I suppose, it was these sorts of conversations, drunk and under the influence of mind altering drugs, that led me to believe I could achieve celebrity status as a POSITIVE TEEN ROLE MODEL, but it is not working.

a trout's lament

I hate hanging at the end of a line like this. I am sick of this line. I am sick of this fishhook. They bait them with such lovely things. Now, I see waders in the water.

Rhizodont

I admire your coronoid fangs, beast, and your beauty. Ages before there were ages, you were out there devouring killer sharks with one sideswipe of you crowned head. Your sinews, your dark eyes, the ebb and flow of your predatory moods-they call me. To the dark denizens of a Devonian swamp you are sheer terror to contemplate. To me, you are my origin, my ancestor, and a vision that sustains me no matter where I turn. I could never forget you because you are in my bones. My radius, my ulna, and to an extent I can scarcely contemplate, my own heart, I owe to you and your predatory machinations. You are a lovely beast under that dark water. You cannot last, but nothing lasts, and you will live forever in me as a tetrapod. A mass extinction will take you out the same way everything worth of a real death meets its fate at the hands of a cataclysm. You are no exception, being at the top of so many links in the food chain. Cataclysms will happen, but not before you have given rise to the hands I use to record your passing. You live in me, forever, Rhizodont.