skonen_blades

There's an event called A Day at the Races where poets go to the horse races and they each pick a horse name at random from each of the seven races and then use that name as a prompt for a poem. At the end of the day, we read out the 'winning' poem from each race and then whatever other poems we think turned out pretty good. It's a fun day.

This is poem 02 from race 02 and my horse's name was Champiosa.

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Furiosa’s older sister
Robot legs like a kangaroo
And a sledgehammer battering-ram arm

Furiosa came from a big family

Triumphioria
Conquestilia
Subjugatia
Superiosa
Supremia
Dominatia
Destrucilia
and The Golden Chance

Ten children
Gathered orphans
Turned half machine to protect the Tower Lord
Imperators to guard the new green place

Champiosa ticks at night as her limbs cool
Like an engine on an autumn night

The mechanic repairs the women
after the day’s defense
Successful and alive
The women army
Related not by blood,
but by purpose and apocalypse




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And this is the way the world ends
Not with a squawk but a clatter

Born with a uranium spoon in my mouth
Tongue more fool’s gold than silver
I radiate confidence
In half-living words
From a reactor I can’t shut down

And this is the way the world ends
Not with a honk but a sizzle

“Yes, but what of the turquoise herring?” he asked
“The dreaded black herring?”
I tell him
You’ve always been the plaid sheep of the family
And the fish near the tailing pond
Have always been that color

And this is the way the world ends
Not with a squeak but a ding dong

As sure as that holster is holding a method actor
As sure as monsters are often more famous than their victims
As sure as leaders are sometimes caught green-handed and red with envy
As sure as honesty is becoming just a shade of paint
And the ones in charge have started charging

This is the way the world ends
Not with a boom but a sploosh



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The sky screams
Twisting clouds into fingers to make claw marks
Raking the world’s yard
Scouring the floor
Scrubbing it clean
And rinsing it
Making it break out in arks

The surprising thing about humanity
Is that intelligence is not commensurate with compassion
And that stupidity and cruelty are likewise unrelated

So I can’t tell you what the flaw was
Not exactly
My suit of armor made of pointing fingers
Is great protection, though
I mean I like to think of myself as a penitent man
A dip and a swoon
A skyscraper with good heels
I have a bookmark in my pocket
So I don’t forget my place
But I have a sneaking suspicion
That the call is coming from inside the house

All I know is that

Up here
(At the top of the waterfall
Just before the roaring lip
The longest
easiest
oldest journey)

Up here
(Even with the terrifying momentum
And the shameful memories of how avoidable it was
And how the oars do nothing in this current
And how it’s a long way down)

Up here
The view is great



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As we all go through the glass beneath our feet
It’ll occur to some of us
(Yesterday still hung around our necks like a stupidity magnet)
(An anchor of all our mistakes)
(A wet cement bag of memory that we can’t shake)
That it’s not that we had no idea that the floor was so fragile
It’s that we thought that our descendants would spring the trap
But here are
Failed Indiana Joneses
Falling cats
Feet first
But with no idea how far down it is
Envying the wings
Of all the birds we killed
The emotionless course correction of this machine
Ecosphering us out of the room
Working on the scale of a long con
Punching us in slow motion from the sky
And then from within our own bodies
The old one-two
It was nice at one point to believe in brakes
To think that we weren’t half-scorpion and half-frog hybrids
Stinging ourselves as we tried to help ourselves
And drowning anyway
Playing the age-old game of ‘quit hitting yourself’
Shaking the sand pit of our own existence
Disappearing ourselves in a puff of chalkboard dust
Our own plausible extinction
Just an errand given to us by the teacher
It’s hard to reason with a ball of rock
Or bargain with physics
But wiggle we do
Like there’s room
While the earth watches
Staring at what we do to ourselves
With no expression on its face


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What to do when your child asks when Earth’s temperature will get back to normal:


1. Croon an old song from the fifties in the hopes that you’ll start a distracting singalong. If you want to go more contemporary that’s up to you.

2. Beg for forgiveness. Curl up. Weep. Maybe she’ll be confused and move on to a different subject.

3. Show her every post-apocalyptic film ever made. Instill a love of the genre in their hearts. Encourage them to take archery and swordplay and firearm training when they’re old enough. Get them to start a sustenance garden on their windowsill. Buy a book on which fungi are edible in your area.

4. Say “Everything will be fine in a few years. Don’t worry.” and then bit your knuckle to keep from screaming.

5. Offer them ice cream. It’s amazing. They’ll forget what they were even talking about.

6. Tell them to invest in sunscreen companies. When they ask what ‘invest’ means. Tell them it’s about making a bet on a financially stable market future. Then have a deep think on that and refer to #2 or #5 or.....

7. Offer yourself ice cream. It’s amazing. I’m telling you, the salt of your tears barely alters the taste.

8. Remind them that living in the downtown core of a desirable city with high property values and strategic importance means that when the missiles fly, you won’t even notice when you’re evaporated in the atomic blast. It’s freeing.

9. Denial. Pretend you didn’t hear. Then actually believe you didn’t hear.

10. Point to the recycling bin, the compost and the second-hand clothing in an effort show your child that you’re doing what you can. Explain that you don’t eat meat as often as you used to. Let them know that that next car is going to be electric, for sure this time. Explain why you bicycle more. Do all this to show them you tried to be less culpable. That it’s not your fault. Don’t tell them that such actions are nothing in the face of the large scale deforestation, the toxic production waste products, and the rising carbon emissions. Let hope be the last thing to die.



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And so we lit the way with burning bodies
And neon crows shining so black that the whole the country went blind
For what is darkness but a welcome reprieve from seeing the twisted acre this world has become?
We threw orchards at the tumour, treated the pain with diamonds and promises
The portal spread wide and gave birth anyway
To a long-overdue apocalypse
Howling down walls, exuding fear that could be breathed and drunk
Fear so thick you could eat it like toffee
Every head crushed by a cash register
Tigers loose inside every heart
Exes on the eyes of every conscience
And the zoo doors yawned wide
Rage-driven claws
Shredding the doors to old grudges
And laying waste to them
Marching in to settle scores
In a chaos that was the opposite of balance
The only common factor was blood
And we folded up and away
Swirling down the drain of annihilation
In the end it was a mercy
The prophecy was a manifest destiny of self-fulfillment
It took longer that some imagined
But in the inevitable end
Our planet became a gravestone
Among the many other silent sentinels
In this deathly quiet place




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Odin is as Odin does, and I know what’s worth knowing
My shoulder ravens watch the shows that all of you are showing
I have two wolves that also spy along with my two birds
On top of seeing eve-ry-thing, I’m also God of Words
I am a trickster god like many trickster gods before me
But not a mean, chaotic, liar like my bastard Loki
And while I’m strong, I’m calm and clear. I know the price of war.
Unlike my son. Shampoo commercial. Mjolnir-wielding Thor
I’ve been god of magic, death, of healing, execution
And of the runic alphabet, and god of elocution
200 names they’ve found for me including Hrossharsgrenny
Which translates ‘horse hair moustache’ so while MY names number many
I much prefer the Odin name that’s now my legacy
I live on in myth, in song, in films, and on tv
My name continues to be known by BOTH scholARS and LAYman
In comic books and marvel movies, novels by Neil Gaiman
I hear that Tony Hopkins plays me well with gravity
And Ian McShane, I ascertain, plays me majestically
My eye sees all so I know all. I spy with my little eye.
I know if you’ve been bad or good. No that’s a different guy.
I see you folks, your tears and jokes, your struggles, wins and fails
I see you all as viking boats, with winds that whip your sails
And monsters lurking in the depths and storms that rage above
I see you plot, betray, revenge, despair, rebuild, and love
I’m like a search engine that sees your every truth and lie
I see EVEry WORD you TYPE within my Googley eye.
I see your secret joys and shames. I see it all. I know.
I see you curse the weather, cry, and then I see you row.
You all keep going through the storms that pummel you with rain
You have a sleep, a bath, a meal, and then you go again
You have to understand it’s so confusing to the gods
You all stand tall though that makes you all into lightning rods
On the sea, and in the air, all over Earth, you do it.
Or Midgard as Valhallans say when they’re referring to it
You’re not immortal like we are. Your deaths are permanent.
It’s great you have this heart despite all this disHEARTenment
I should be flattered. Humbled. Grateful. Happy I’m still here.
I should be touched and say something like “look, a single tear”
Your drive to keep on keeping on through wind and sleet and hail
Your drive to keep on striving even though you mostly fail
Isn’t noble. That’s the meat. The animal in you.
Any living thing with drives can do what you can do.
The thing that differs you from pets is you can speak your mind
That’s half the gift I gave to you and all of humankind
The other half of my great gift is that you all can listen
And that’s the half that’s disappeared. That’s the half that’s missin’.
These days when I listen in to everything you say
It’s just a sea of noisy garbage day by day by day
So know that I’m returning here to tell you all fuck you
You’re messing up by dumbing down and failing to be true
To language and communication. You lack the words I gave.
You’re weakened by your laziness. You’re all too dense to save.
For I’m a co-op god, you see. You have to help yourselves.
And if you can’t I’ll wipe you out like I killed all the elves
You may have noticed Earth’s more hot. Midgard’s getting warm.
And now I’m bringing down to you a deadly perfect storm
Fifty Noah’s Arks will fail and all inside will die
I’ll plug my ears to all your screams and I’ll turn a blind eye
Cause I’m the god of words and words are dying, so it seems
With snapchat, facebook, instagrams, and tweets, and sharing memes
I’ve talked the talk. It’s what I do. So now I’ll walk the walk.
Now that you’re all stupid here, I’m starting Ragnarok.
The third day of the week is Odin’s day. It’s named that way
Cause I can be, as you can see, a real C U Next Wednesday
In the land where all are blind, the one eyed man is king.
So smiley face, emoji this, I’m ROTFLing



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White clam chowder and over-easy eggs. Soup and eggs for short.

Mass was the problem with colonizing. Getting mass near C was expensive. The smaller the load, the better. Sending ten thousand colonists was impossible.

But sending ten thousands eggs and ten thousand loads of semen was way cheaper.

The ship had a chilled cargo of those two ingredients to make human babies. Womb ships, they were called. They had a skeleton crew of scientists, techs, teachers, and caretakers trained to take on whatever challenges might arise at first contact with the target home but after they’d landed and seen that everything was alright for seeding, they’d get underway.

The birthing tanks would be unfolded and irrigated with dehydrated amniotic solution. These giant uterariums would then be flooded with the soup and eggs slurry sometimes referred to as brunch. The old exponential dance would start and babies would pop up like strawberry Christmas lights on the vine. Tendriled, manufactured, multiumbilicals would snake out and attach themselves to a thousand belly buttons. Each tank was filled with fraternal millituplets.

Wait time was the human usual. The children would be boosted with learning enhancers and xenoviral protection. A small percentage were always lost to errors in cell replication no matter how tailored the dna but the average yield was 90% or 900. Harvest would happen in two-year stages, nine hundred per year. This was called the familial ladder. Ten years of baby making before shutdown for 9,000 humans.

The crew would foster them with help from the AI adoptives, working as a team to cram as much knowledge and mental health into them from the get go before they took on their new world.

It was a system that had worked twelve times before. Twelve Edens had successfully flowered with no humans needing expulsion from angry gods.

This was going to be unlucky thirteen.

The tailored enzymes would fail and the entire crop would be born sociopathic and cruel unbeknownst to the crew. As the children grew, they schemed and the crew began began to meet with accidents. Before any of them figured out was what happening, they were gone.

The children were geniuses. As the other batches reached fruition and were born, they were taken in by the first two waves and taught to be just as awful.

The planet survived and flourished. They developed weapons and a reputation. They broadcast torture videos and vile non-consensual pornographic videos. Their system of government was opaque. It seemed like anarchy but they had such organizational skills.

Their planet is isolated. Quarantined. Embargoed. Struck off the records as a failure, they’re monitored for signs of extra-system aggression. They’re an embarrassment.

A closeted mistake until sixteen minutes ago when their entire planet, now decades into post-womb colonization and nearly five generations deep, completely disappeared off of everyone’s scans.

And reappeared near Earth Prime bristling with nuke barrels and planet crackers pointed at our race’s home.

The pirate planet had come home, prodigal son returning.

They didn’t open fire immediately but they did send a message system-wide on all channels before they started the war.

“No more wombships.”

After a heated exchange of nuclear fire that the pirate planet lost, they drove their planet straight into Earth. Terran defenses didn’t stand a chance.

We no longer use wombships for colonization but we are still trying to figure out how those little bastards made a whole planet capable of faster-than-light travel. None of the other Edens have come anywhere near that kind of technology. The philosophical implications of their success don’t bear thinking about.

Evil might be smarter than good.




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I looked into the eyes of my husband. At least, I was pretty sure it was my husband. Ever since The Crash, I haven’t been able to tell.

Our implants and knowledge banks were all erased on that one day. Theories were still being talked about.

Some think a solar wind or some sort of EMP just randomly wiping through space was the culprit. Some think enemy action was responsible and they were scared. Myself, I didn’t really know. If it was enemy action, we were easy pickings and if there were invaders, they hadn’t started invading yet. My bet was on some naturally occurring galactic disruption pulse sweeping through our solar system, a pulse that would’ve been much less dangerous to a pre-net world.

But here on Earth it was a catastrophe. Everyone’s headbox had been erased.

All the ‘soft in my brain has gone blank. It was two pounds of tech in my skull just taking up space, just the same as everyone else now. It had my phone book, my addresses, my schedules, my tutorials, my contacts and e-profiles, and perhaps most importantly, my facial recognition programs.

Including all of my important memories. The ones I wanted to remember most of all. The best ones. All gone. I have only vague, foggy, mists in my head now when I try to glance the past.

Pre-Crash, whenever I met someone, a sparrow-cloud of data spooled across my vision to let me know who they were and what their connection was with me. Everything about them flew up against the windscreen of my eyes and let me know all the relevant details. Previous conversations, secrets we had, times we shared in the past, references to in-jokes, ongoing issues, financial records, and a thousand other points of interest jigging around real time, undulating and updating as we spoke.

As a race, we were the best conversationalists we’d ever been.

More importantly, the elderly and mentally infirm now no longer had to pause to remember forgotten pasts or struggle awkwardly in social situations. Grandmothers could recognize their granddaughters. It was a golden age. It was a time of miracles.

My regular ability to recognize people had atrophied, however. It had for all of us. I know that now.

Ever since The Crash, I couldn’t tell strangers from close friends. I looked at people’s faces and I felt nothing. I knew nothing. I couldn’t tell if I recognized them. Some looked more familiar than others but I had no reference point.

If I did feel like I knew them, I didn’t know from where or what we used to joke about or discuss on a regular basis.

I still knew how to do my job. I was lucky that way. Every day, I see my co-workers and I wonder if we all used to have good times together. I know my name. I barely know how to drive even though I don’t know how to get anywhere without the map implants. I’m lucky I lived close to where I work. But I don’t know my birthday. I don’t know anyone’s birthdays.

On the streets and in the bars, we all stare at each other awkwardly. The few who try to talk to each other usually regret it.

The man in front of me looks really familiar. We have matching rings on our fingers and we both have keys to the same house and that’s pretty much all we’re going by. I’m going to try to kiss him but I’ve forgotten how.





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When all you have for dinner are the shadows on your plate, you realize that relying on companies to feed you was a mistake. Some of us don’t have any blood left but we’re still going to work. Those of us that have bought into the railroad boxcar cattle market workplace and voluntarily put the yoke of mortgage and loan around our own necks know that human kindness and capitalism go together like rope and trees and we’re all become low-hanging fruit.

The strong make the rules and there’s strength in numbers. Any bean-counter will tell you that it’s a tough balancing act because we’re more cost-efficient when we’re dead but we’re more profitable when we’re alive. The solution is to give us a half-life, a zombie constitution, a nice lawsuit to be buried in. Read us our rights but keep quiet on the wrongs. If Adam and Eve only had sons and the race still managed to continue, then we’re dying by incesticide.

The high whine of the mistakes we’ve all made as a race are mosquitoing in our ears, landfilling our conscience, making it hard to breathe. Soon, agoraphobia will no longer be a sign of sickness, it will be a need for survival. War would be a quick end to us. I think we all know it won’t go down like that. It’ll be a slow drowning in our own aquarium because we’re living here like God is a janitor, treating denial like it’s swappable for oxygen. Are they still called mistakes if you keep doing them, if they become a lifestyle?

When we’re gone (and we will go) all that will be left will be some mutated animals that won’t have anyone around to let them know that they’re mutated. There will be aggressive plants that will take millions of years to break down our ‘disposable’ lifestyle and they’ll have no idea what ‘millions of years’ are. In nature, there is no Wednesday. There is no August 16th. There is no 3 o clock. Calendars die with us and so does definition itself. Will the animals go back to not having names or did they truly ever have them?

If we are the human race, we are in the home stretch before the finish line and we’re all about to tie for last place. We will permission ourselves to drink the kool-aid instead of the water. We will breathe in the carbon monoxide made from burning dinosaurs and we will softly go to sleep, committing suicide in the garage we’ve made out of this earth and this is what it would say on our tombstone if we were in a position to be given one that spoke the truth:

Quit hitting yourself. Quit hitting yourself. Quit hitting yourself.





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