Thursday! The E-Zine for May 1, 2024
V4, I23
Hello! I’m still here and, thankfully, so are you!
Writing has been an odd experience for me over the last…month? Six weeks? It’s tough to track my work when I haven’t exactly kept track of it1. Yesterday, I spent some time going through my Substack Notes2 and pulling out the little poems I wrote, more or less on a whim3, so I could save them for later use. Who knows? One day I might gather up a whole bunch of the haiku I’ve written and publish them in a cool book. You don’t know! Weirder things have happened4.
Anyhow, though I’ve not had a head for stories, poems still find a way to get out of the ol’ noggin and they’re pretty good! The Bigfoot poem, especially, was fun to write. I’ve needed fun. Maybe you need fun, too? I bet you could use at least a little snack cup of fun. Well, you’ll get that this week, plus some other stuff to take with you because, well…the world is awfully tough. You should have some cool things to make it less so.
Here. Try these. Cool? Cool.
Poems
Stories
The Loud World
Everywhere lightning; Everything thunder and clash Of every loud sound. This is the seeming of life. This is not life always true.
Tilted, Angry Noon
Drown the sun in haze. Hang it like a crooked clock: Tilted, angry noon.
Eclipse, 2024
The sun hides its face So that shadows may frolic And humans may fear.
Bigfoot Daydream
I think, were I a Sasquatch, I wouldn't live outside. The woods are dark and scary. And bugs, I can't abide. I'd have a cozy bungalow Not too far from town. With running water, internet And a genny when power goes down. I'd be an awesome neighbor, Literally and other ways. I'd bring a side dish to picnics No allergens. No mayonnaise! There'd be some press around, I'm sure. Sensational bloggers, too. I'd be polite, but refuse them – No Squatchy interviews! Yeah, that would be a fine life In my Bigfoot bungalow. I think I'll wish upon a star. Why not? You never know!
A Memory of Coffee Among the Asteroids
What they don't tell you on the long missions is how much you'll miss coffee. I'm not kidding. People make jokes, but it's not funny. Not anymore. You spend six months in a can hauling rocks from the Asteroid Belt to your assigned processing dome, then back around for more, then back around again and again, you start to miss normal things. A reliable sense of "up" and "down", for instance. People too, which also sounds funny but definitely isn't. Human beings are made to have their feet pointed toward the center of something spherical and to have other people around them once in a while. I'm still a human being, no matter what the contract says, right?Right. We humans are definitely meant to drink coffee. I can tell you that for sure. The stuff the ship synthesizes and pipes into my tank isn’t the same. The taste -- is that still the right word for it? -- is off. It reminds me of a spice I can't quite identify, and I've had months over months to try to remember, but it won't come to me. I used to think it was cinnamon, but I had cinnamon a long time ago and that's not it. It's probably a glitch and for that I blame the Consortium programmers. They've gotten lazy the last couple of updates and I'm not happy. Anyhow, I miss coffee. I dream about the smell of the beans in the grinder, that first tongue-scalding moment right before your taste buds sigh in exultation. I dream about a lot of things, to be perfectly honest. The Consortium agent said I wouldn't all that much after the Translation, but I do. Maybe they'll roll back to the old version like I asked when I finish this run, so I can feel that feeling again, and get that coffee taste back and...the dreams. Less of those. They owe me, don't they? I gave up my body for this job. It's the least they can do.
(Photo Credit: WikiImages on Pixabay)
Well, duh.
Did you know Substack has a Notes thingie? I write little posts, kind of like you’d find on Twitter or Facebook. You can read them, share them, reply to them, shower them with little hearts of affection — you know, social media sort of things. I’m not entirely sure I’m sold on Notes as I don’t want to worry about a whole new social media platform, but I’ve met a couple very good writers there and I share their work betimes.
Here’s an interesting thing. When I say I made something “on a whim”, I almost never mean that I did it casually and haphazardly. Just about everything I write is the product of some prior consideration, even if the consideration happened quickly and was entirely unplanned. Maybe I’ll explore that in a future Between the Zines issue, if you’re interested.
For example: an undersea, unexplained mass sponge migration!
I like the sound of that Sasquatch! I’d have him over for a BBQ any day.