Owning The Adventure

You will never believe

The things that I have seen,

Though, I could tell you a hundred stories

of

Days when everything Is sacred And pregnant With hope. Grass stands Thick, cool, and green Beside a burbling stream On a Siberian slope. Trees older than Jesus Reach to the sky Gnarled high, Mid-Nevada miracles, Stark clear and dry. A mother, A astronaut, Reaches the stars And shares the trip So that more children Dare the slip From the surly bonds Of gravity. Free to see Earth’s blue marble beaming. Underpaid firefighters Stop traffic To rescue Blossoming Squirrel puppies. All God’s creatures Are small, Are great-- Small on judging, Big in faith. And I believe In everything.

Days when nothing Is sacred Nor born With good will. Rival owners Firebomb strip clubs Killing sex-traffic victims And booming their business. A trusted official Commits the felony And not only goes free, But doesn’t have to flee, And still gets re-elected, While the Under-Represented Minority Remains unduly suspected. Fundamental attribution error Breeds increasing cognitive bias Like plastic pollutes the sea And millions in apathy Toss on billions of straws. Camels aren’t just beaten Bloody and raw In fables of Shahs. A Grandmother, A hater, Brutalizes a baby Breaking bones zero to 206 Per angry shake, But she gets to demand The doctors finish Killing the kid slowly On life support. And I believe In nothing.

What does it mean to believe?

There once was a fork in the road…

I choose my own adventure.

There is never enough time to choose, and yet we must choose again and again each day.

The Low Down, Dirty, Shameful Truth

I'm not always zen.
I believe in the magic
of cheap rhymes,
thick novels,
lonely times,
and not worrying
about when,
as much as
why.

I love like sin.
I believe in my wife,
one of the biggest,
baddest,
baby-saving,
every-day-slaving,
bad-ass heroes
in life.

I'm a total goof.
I believe in singing
operas,
in full Texan drawl,
to too many pets
and stone deaf
to the wall,
to keep laughter
warm
and misery aloof.

I know I'm a fool.
The doctorate
is only more proof.
I'm stubborn
and dumb,
plumb crazy
numb
to basic
necessities
like common sense
and public cool.

You can plainly see,
millions more patient
than me,
more focused and kind,
and ready to find
fault fixed
in our world.

But...
the low down,
dirty,
shameful,
truth
is...
I'm already
on
your side.

Spaceship
Earth
already set sail
a gritty
long time
ago,
and we're on it
together.

So,
I'm not always zen,
and I don't care about when,
but here's my hand;
and I hope you'll take it.

I think we can make it,
if we
love like sin,
keeping laughter warm,
too stubborn
and too dumb
to find fault
to fix
in each other.

Stuff grows on the dirty down-side!

The Poet Knows It

A poem on a napkin
is more like a tissue.
A poem on a blog,
ephemeral as fog.
A spoken rhyme
mere litter
among airwaves
in time.
All,
words to the sea,
a token memory
of a world
that existed
with me.

A moment of sunlight creates poetry of light.

Every Time I Hear Loony Tunes

Every time
I listen
to The Cure
I think about
the boy
that got away,
like Wile E. Coyote,
over the edge
of a car crash
in the dark of night.

Every time
I listen
to Tricky
I'm sure about
the love
I've given up,
like Bugs Bunny,
knowing I should
have taken
a left turn
in Albuquerque.

Every time
I listen
to Morrissey
I'm crazy about
the day
fading out,
like Yosemite Sam,
hollering when
I say, Whoa!
I mean, Whoa!

Every time
I listen
to Lucinda Williams
I'm sick about
the way
grace slips by,
like Sylvester
lisp suffering
succotash
while Tweety Bird
twitters.

Every time
I listen
to Wagner
I'm mad about
the gray
given sway,
like Marvin the Martain
sneaking in unnamed
for two decades
until Warner Brothers
needed to market him.

Every time
I listen
to One Republic
I feel about
to hope,
like Pepe Le Pew
fondling faith
despite rebuff
from
the millionth face.

Every time
I listen
to Everything But the Girl
I remember
what it's about,
obnoxious but true,
like Foghorn Leghorn
bellowing
that's a joke
to the bewildered
book Chick.

Ever time
I listen
to the music,
I hear
a Loony Tune,
a siren song,
about life,
and keep
living
like that's what
it's for.

Another nostalgic siren song source.

.

A Lone Star

An excerpt from my new Romantic SyFy story, now available in The Lone Star Collection (12 Texas Stories). All proceeds from the book support the Lonestar Lesfic Festival in Austin. If you buy the print book and bring it to the festival, I know a whole lot of authors who will sign it up good for you (including me).

A Lone Star

Bad ass. That was the first thought that came to Venn Jules’ mind as she looked over the Lone Starport’s new sheriff, Arnika Verne.  The sheriff stood on the deck of the hovercraft, eyeing the vast sea below, with one hand on her trim neoskene-armor clad hip and the other wrapped around a laser-arc spear like she knew exactly how to use it in a hurry. Which was very comforting, given that Venn herself was too stymied by the Great Orange Kraken’s tentacles, and now also too fatigued from wrestling with it, to keep the kraken from chewing on either her or the Starport’s tidal stream generator.

Operating a new near-equatorial launch facility on the shores of Austin came with more risks to manage than the Governor and his cronies cared to admit; but at least that ass-hat and his merry troupe of brown-nosers had finally seen fit to grant Venn’s appeal to hire some protective muscle. Sexy muscle too.

“Looks like you’re an ass-crack away from becoming Kraken snack,” the sheriff said with a sultry grin. Her accent dripped of Nor-easterner, someone used to the cold horror of the Arclantic ocean, and thus she probably knew fuck-diddle about the warm terrors of Venn’s Gulf of Mexico operations. Venn’s hopes of salvation diminished.  “No shit. Now shoot the bastard in his damn plate-sized eye.”

Black hair whipping in the wind, the sheriff sent an off-hand laser bolt into the Kraken’s beak just a foot shy of Venn’s head and then, in such quick succession that Venn never saw the sheriff move, fired two more bolts into the Kraken’s eyes.  Venn dropped from the Kraken’s failing grasp into the ocean like a stone.

Luckily, she hit the muddy red waves feet first, but the velocity of her fall still sunk her a dozen meters. She knew her immediate-personnel-locator-tags likely tripped on two seconds after being submerged, but they wouldn’t do the sheriff any good toward dragging her out of the water is she didn’t break surface in a hurry--before any of the Kraken’s sisters sensed her presence and dragged her to the blackest deep.  And it would be the Kraken’s sisters, Venn knew, because their males were mostly lame, much like the men of today’s United States of Oceania.

Venn kept kicking hard, but nearly laughed underwater as the words of her cynical birth mother sprung to mind. Men were only good for three things: sperm, hysterics, and a whole lot of indignant insinuating that some ancient artifacts indicated they were really the dominant gender a thousand years ago. “Yeah, and I bet the water and sky were clear back then too,” Venn thought and added broad desperate breast-strokes to her efforts. She spotted what could only be the snout of a monstrous Great White shark speeding through the murky redness in front of her. Another murderous sister hard on her heels. Just great...

Read the rest in the book, available now in print and eBook formats on AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Lone-Star-Collection-Carsen-Taite-ebook/dp/B079HWJCQS

Benefiting the Lonestar Lesfic Festival