Submissions by mjs211 (MikeTheEngineer)
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
Poet Introduction
Oh, Mike the Engineer can build your brand-new hip, or synth your pills. But engineers left unfulfilled poor Mike's creative writing skills.
Covenant of Peace, Harbinger of War
with apologies to the original story of the Greek seer Cassandra,
which this is very, very loosely inspired by.
Cassandra wept upon her perch.
Sitting atop the world
sidesaddle as befitting a fair maiden,
the entirety of the world opened itself.
Rome and Galilee revealed their machinations
while mighty Gaul bared its chest to her.
The ancients in Yangtze rice paddies
bowed to the muddy water for her
as she shied from their terracotta warriors.
The Aztec priests carved out beating hearts
and held them up to her eyes. She...
which this is very, very loosely inspired by.
Cassandra wept upon her perch.
Sitting atop the world
sidesaddle as befitting a fair maiden,
the entirety of the world opened itself.
Rome and Galilee revealed their machinations
while mighty Gaul bared its chest to her.
The ancients in Yangtze rice paddies
bowed to the muddy water for her
as she shied from their terracotta warriors.
The Aztec priests carved out beating hearts
and held them up to her eyes. She...
51 reads
0 Comments
Swimming, swimming
We found a young turtle trying to cross the road.
Tiny little thing,
hunter green marbled fantastically into mustard yellow
with angry orange flecks about it. We picked him up
and gave him a name, a backstory, like a little moving doll.
We took what we thought was good care of him—
reading up on diet and habitat,
testing vegetables and meats to see what he liked,
digging up worms (half because he voraciously devoured them,
half because we liked to watch them thrash as he fought them),
setting him in a pretty tank with pebbles sloping into water.
...
Tiny little thing,
hunter green marbled fantastically into mustard yellow
with angry orange flecks about it. We picked him up
and gave him a name, a backstory, like a little moving doll.
We took what we thought was good care of him—
reading up on diet and habitat,
testing vegetables and meats to see what he liked,
digging up worms (half because he voraciously devoured them,
half because we liked to watch them thrash as he fought them),
setting him in a pretty tank with pebbles sloping into water.
...
118 reads
7 Comments
til death do us part
congratulations
me, a 23 year old
fucking genius
for completing
the best years
of my life
already.
i gracefully accept
this gold wristwatch
so that i may
always look upon
my new master.
he has raised me
without my knowledge
and now makes
himself manifest
til death
do i part.
i have myself
to thank
for turning away
from more good days
at such a young age
and starting this
graceful spiral
into stooped
irrelevance,
bent down
around my old
nostalgia.
i accept this...
me, a 23 year old
fucking genius
for completing
the best years
of my life
already.
i gracefully accept
this gold wristwatch
so that i may
always look upon
my new master.
he has raised me
without my knowledge
and now makes
himself manifest
til death
do i part.
i have myself
to thank
for turning away
from more good days
at such a young age
and starting this
graceful spiral
into stooped
irrelevance,
bent down
around my old
nostalgia.
i accept this...
118 reads
10 Comments
The Trekker
The trekker resumed his plodding.
He would never realize fully
why he'd stopped short in the middle
of the Arctic glare. The Kola Peninsula
was no place to pause, even transiently,
and besides, he had miles to go before dark fell.
There would be no divine hand
reaching down to turn him back,
to gaze further at the blank canvas
he had been compelled moments earlier
to scour. So he would never find
the massive, exotic bloodstone
which had been tossed about
the Murmansk Oblast snowdrifts
like seaglass upon a heaving ocean ...
He would never realize fully
why he'd stopped short in the middle
of the Arctic glare. The Kola Peninsula
was no place to pause, even transiently,
and besides, he had miles to go before dark fell.
There would be no divine hand
reaching down to turn him back,
to gaze further at the blank canvas
he had been compelled moments earlier
to scour. So he would never find
the massive, exotic bloodstone
which had been tossed about
the Murmansk Oblast snowdrifts
like seaglass upon a heaving ocean ...
136 reads
17 Comments
Love and sand, the mantra and the ocean
The first thing I remember
is sand in the cracks of the streets.
Short bright shore grass growing out of it,
we learned in school that it and its roots were so short
because it was lodged in sand and somehow knew it,
as transient as our summer fling and the handful of others
we’d had but never talked about because this one meant something.
We’d walk along Main, praising ourselves like hipster monks
for denying ourselves the universal rush to the beach,
the beach the shoobies called it! The beach was the only thing
they knew.
We...
is sand in the cracks of the streets.
Short bright shore grass growing out of it,
we learned in school that it and its roots were so short
because it was lodged in sand and somehow knew it,
as transient as our summer fling and the handful of others
we’d had but never talked about because this one meant something.
We’d walk along Main, praising ourselves like hipster monks
for denying ourselves the universal rush to the beach,
the beach the shoobies called it! The beach was the only thing
they knew.
We...
279 reads
11 Comments
checking in from outside of life
i want to crumple up the door
and the lone window
and burn them to dust.
i exist in a white box.
it's eight by eight by eight
and the cracks don't let anything in or out.
they're just there to remind me
that nothing stacks neatly.
i reconstruct the door
to take a piss. the hallway blinds me.
i wish it would dim to considerate shadows.
i stumble back. the door is again
an irregularity.
my books lay unopened.
i can't face my heroes.
careless apprentice painters
left rough white stubble.
the...
and the lone window
and burn them to dust.
i exist in a white box.
it's eight by eight by eight
and the cracks don't let anything in or out.
they're just there to remind me
that nothing stacks neatly.
i reconstruct the door
to take a piss. the hallway blinds me.
i wish it would dim to considerate shadows.
i stumble back. the door is again
an irregularity.
my books lay unopened.
i can't face my heroes.
careless apprentice painters
left rough white stubble.
the...
156 reads
5 Comments
Art appreciation
(a response to Robert Frost's poem Design)
What but design of darkness do appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.
[font=Verdana]
— —
Spiders' lower leg joints contain special pads
which dampen low frequency vibrations
like wind and sway
and transmit high frequency vibrations
like crawling prey and mating calls;
and the pads transition from plastic to glassy when the sun goes down
to be stiffer at night than the day,
to transmit vibrations from further afield
when the...
What but design of darkness do appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.
[font=Verdana]
— —
Spiders' lower leg joints contain special pads
which dampen low frequency vibrations
like wind and sway
and transmit high frequency vibrations
like crawling prey and mating calls;
and the pads transition from plastic to glassy when the sun goes down
to be stiffer at night than the day,
to transmit vibrations from further afield
when the...
417 reads
10 Comments
continuum
there is no better advertisement
for infinity or eternity
than the stretch of existence
between giving up on
turning your back on the night
(the sigh, the tired sweep of the face
across the pillow, the electric blue
screen reappears in the dark)
and the symbolic, defeated fuck-you
to the night as it's already
dying into day anyway.
the a/c unit hums
as electrons course antipositive
to the current
spinning and ricocheting
around nuclei
which push back
feeling their oats as "permanent"
bits of charge...
for infinity or eternity
than the stretch of existence
between giving up on
turning your back on the night
(the sigh, the tired sweep of the face
across the pillow, the electric blue
screen reappears in the dark)
and the symbolic, defeated fuck-you
to the night as it's already
dying into day anyway.
the a/c unit hums
as electrons course antipositive
to the current
spinning and ricocheting
around nuclei
which push back
feeling their oats as "permanent"
bits of charge...
139 reads
0 Comments
know your place
It's morning again
and the dead rocks of this city
hiss in the rain.
The cold rain
inspires these hands
to pale, desensitize, stiffen
to match my mind.
My mind could use
a snap. Anything to resuscitate it.
I'd take an explosion. Defibrillation.
The world seems
like it just doesn't want
gray. I'd settle for black.
Maybe I'm just paranoid.
Maybe it wants to be gray
while wanting more.
Perhaps
I'll try to
fly today.
These decaying rocks
bruise my stiff hands
anyway.
Tomorrow
will be...
and the dead rocks of this city
hiss in the rain.
The cold rain
inspires these hands
to pale, desensitize, stiffen
to match my mind.
My mind could use
a snap. Anything to resuscitate it.
I'd take an explosion. Defibrillation.
The world seems
like it just doesn't want
gray. I'd settle for black.
Maybe I'm just paranoid.
Maybe it wants to be gray
while wanting more.
Perhaps
I'll try to
fly today.
These decaying rocks
bruise my stiff hands
anyway.
Tomorrow
will be...
161 reads
2 Comments
Keep driving through
Go ahead.
Keep driving through.
Don't slow down any further
than you're already driving
in the left goddamn lane
of the goddamn Turnpike.
Keep driving through.
We don't want you.
Take a deep breath as you pass the refineries
belching over exit 13,
you'll tell your grandkids about it.
Get it straight though--
that's the only part that smells.
Keep driving through.
Don't clog up the Parkway
thinking you'll go take a trip down the shore
stupid shoobies. It's all knocked down anyway
and the City got the fuckin'...
Keep driving through.
Don't slow down any further
than you're already driving
in the left goddamn lane
of the goddamn Turnpike.
Keep driving through.
We don't want you.
Take a deep breath as you pass the refineries
belching over exit 13,
you'll tell your grandkids about it.
Get it straight though--
that's the only part that smells.
Keep driving through.
Don't clog up the Parkway
thinking you'll go take a trip down the shore
stupid shoobies. It's all knocked down anyway
and the City got the fuckin'...
150 reads
2 Comments
Falling
I.
I remember the first time that my
father picked me up and walked me outside
into the warm dark summer night,
nature breathing soft and hazy on us
and he pointed up at the stars.
"D'you see those?" he asked softly,
as I wrapped my arms around his neck
and looked down his shadowy arm into the sky.
Little speckles of white in black, like looking through
the holes of my grandmother's crocheted blanket.
My world was as big as my father, and my mother,
and my preschool classroom. The stars
were my father's, apparently, and he'd put...
I remember the first time that my
father picked me up and walked me outside
into the warm dark summer night,
nature breathing soft and hazy on us
and he pointed up at the stars.
"D'you see those?" he asked softly,
as I wrapped my arms around his neck
and looked down his shadowy arm into the sky.
Little speckles of white in black, like looking through
the holes of my grandmother's crocheted blanket.
My world was as big as my father, and my mother,
and my preschool classroom. The stars
were my father's, apparently, and he'd put...
246 reads
10 Comments
rocks never die
when you die
i mean when your earthly body
rattles its resignation speech
to the room
your body's nothing but an oddly shaped vein of
improperly fired carbon
that coulda been a bright shiny diamond
if it didn't take the low road out of town and
marry a commoner for love
too doped up with oxides and phosphates
to be allowed atop a duchy
but you go on living
in those that knew you
all you've lost
is the ability to change what they see
which is all you really are
anyway
but really
one leads to two leads to...
i mean when your earthly body
rattles its resignation speech
to the room
your body's nothing but an oddly shaped vein of
improperly fired carbon
that coulda been a bright shiny diamond
if it didn't take the low road out of town and
marry a commoner for love
too doped up with oxides and phosphates
to be allowed atop a duchy
but you go on living
in those that knew you
all you've lost
is the ability to change what they see
which is all you really are
anyway
but really
one leads to two leads to...
289 reads
12 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by mjs211 (MikeTheEngineer)