Poems by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Archive Copy

We sent the nanobots out
To explore the galaxy,
New jump tech sent them hopping,
Faster than old sub-light probes,
Self-repairing and –replicating,
Using what they needed to
Keep up the search,
They could go where we
Had not the funds to follow.

Back they trickled, flowed,
Then torrented,
Bringing back fantastic shots:
Worlds, stars, & nebulae
Imploding, bursting, shrinking.

Then, one by one,
The nearer stars winked out.

Asimov’s, 2013

* * *

Back Lot at Ed’s Scrapyard, Roswell

Plenty of saucer parts,
But not the subspace stabilizer
I need to get the old jalopy running;
It’s almost Gene-Transfer season back on Aldebaran 4
And my gametes aren’t getting any younger.
You could try Stanford, says Ed—
I make the Gesture of Alarmed Negation:
Peabody in Exobiology is still looking for me,
Has a bad case of autopsy fever.
I hear MIT is close to a breakthrough,
Why not give them a hint?
If it wasn’t for the D.O.D. connection I’d do it,
But those people are paranoid!
No, it’s freeze the eggs again,
Wait for Terran “tech” to catch up,
And continue my research into abduction myths,
Which is now entering the experimental phase.

Asimov’s, 2016

* * *

Clark the Ripper

At first it was a hobby,
A bloody fine way to spend a Friday night.
But then he got hooked:
He was cutting up all weekend,
then weekdays! Lunchtime, even on his break!
Right by the water cooler with Perry in the next room!
While on the phone with Lois!
(“Clark? What’s that sound?”)
Finally it had to end—the city was nearly deserted
and he was running out of freezer space.
Still, no one suspected
his secret identity.

Dreams and Nightmares 52, 1999, Rhysling 2nd short

* * *

Mushroom agriculture

We work in caverns
where scientists used to seek neutrons
or was it neutrinos? A mockery of farming
farmer tans are impossible
tractors would not fit, silos
a joke; we might as well be in
a dank dark silo our whole lives,
such as they are;
and I hate mushrooms.

I would go above like Diane to see
earth, sky, clouds—once; they say
one cannot see the sun
but surely the few nights before
the illness came would not be
as empty as nights down here
even if they were nearly as dark

And I would see her again,
lie with her as I did before,
her bones might take me
where she is now
and where, I want to believe,
she and the child wait for me.

And I would ask her why
why she gave up on the caves
was it the sunless, sleepless nights
the hopeless agriculture, the mushroom
caps made to seem every kind of
food we read about or
the old ones tell us about and maybe
it was the baby, which I thought
would help her dream with me
of a hoped-for future, and maybe it was the
neutrons (or neutrinos)
and maybe it was me.

Asimov’s, 2008

* * *

No Need To Go Home, You Bring It With You

Spreading, ink blotty,
into the galactic arm,
changing as needed
or fancied, everything drifts,
the walk, the talk,
what you pack into your cells,
what you need to breathe,
till the Talking Faces don’t know what,
even more than they never did.

But what the fuck,
I’m a xenolinguist,:
we only care about real aliens
(which we’ve still never met);
gene-drifted post-humans
are just like the pre-galactics,
who lived & died, stuck on Planet Dirt.

My buds went full methane head,
Jovian diving, looking for
a million floating cities,
some sought deep-space sailors,
suited & suitless,
creeping helium, boiling lead,
und so weiter,
but found nobody home,
nobody BEEN home, dig?

Our ancestors killed off
their hominid cousins,
and no one else crawled out
of the collective unconscious anywhere.
We’ve looked—genus Homo is IT.

And, monkey with the cerebrum as you will,
but the brain-stems haven’t changed,
(oh, we could, we did,
but the uniformly brutal ends of
countless colonies of reversionists
proved we can’t civilize our inner lizards)
we are ourselves, whatever the suit,
the tongue, milieu, or place,
ringing changes on a tongue flick
primal stream of the eternal snarling now.

Polu Texni, 2014

* * *

Out of my price range

Nice boot,
I say,
what’s it made of?

Raptor’s tongue flicks out, in
my wife’s uncle,
he says,
very high quality.

Asimov’s, 2011

* * *

The Universe According to Arf

Dog created matter, and energy,
igneous rock, which maketh all new,
and sedimentary rock, yea,
and that which has metamorphosed,
dog put into motion the geochemical cycles,
and created diverse microscopic organic spheres,
dog allowed environmental parameters to wax and to wane,
and lo, there was selection (naturally),
and much time passed,
and things were primordial,
and it was good,
and yet more time rolled by,
like unto a mighty river,
like unto the Mighty Mississip,
which did not yet exist,
and dog made a mental note,
and saw that it was good,
and dog saw further that there were plants,
and invertebrates aplenty,
a veritable smorgasbord of them,
but no vertebrates,
not even Amphioxus, their flaccid cousin,
and so the world was sadly lacking
	in the bone department.

“Woof,” dog said,
and there were bones,
and it was good.

Polu Texni, 2015

* * *

Ghost Lakes

Deserts sometimes dream of water.
Lost lakes gleam in the noon heat shimmer,
rippling faintly just above the ground—
the juniper sways in remnant currents,
remembers seaweed,
and impertinent fish.
You think you can feel it;
a cool breath chills your sweat,
and your cheek turns with the tide.
The lakes might have lived forever,
but drought came, water drained away,
and the fish crawled into stones to sleep.
You can find them still,
at Green River, in Wyoming,
where incandescent sand blew in on the west wind.
The corpses of lakes filled with camels,
with pronghorn antelope,
with the many wild dancers
for whom the desert was a keyhole,
through which they hastened out of the past,
water drying on their backs,
into the rejuvenated sun.
But on moonlit nights,
sky clear all the way up to the stars,
and coyotes strangely still,
the deserts sometimes dream of water,
and great fish swim, untroubled by the absent sun,
and scorn abandoned hooks,
their ancient scales shining with the moon.

Strange Horizons, 2001

* * *

granddaughter 
auctions last thoughts
objection noted

Inverted Folk, 2012

* * *

Superheroes

You have to jump,
and it’s a long one,
but you make the leap.
Far below, a few cars are moving,
their lights illuminating
the fog from within,
its swirls and eddies the internal organs of
Ghosts.
You stumble and catch yourself
on the next roof with the fingertips
of your right hand on the gelid
Tar. You wiggle your fingers to
obscure any possible prints and
stroll over to the skylight.
She is waiting, alone in her bed.
There are so many ways to get through a skylight,
here are just a few:
* plunge feet first (closing eyes)
* rip it right out of its frame and toss it aside
* melt it with infrared eyebeams
* teleportation
* Slip through the crack where the water gets in.
But this skylight is open, and so you
simply jump down to the floor.
The girl smiles sleepily and opens herself.
You cover Brenda,
or whatever her name is,
while the CD changer shuffles through
some psychedelic rock.
It’s good, very good, and lasts a long time,
superhuman stamina being what it is.
Afterwards, you trace the line of her jaw with a finger
that can poke through solid concrete.
She catches your finger and bites it playfully.
You slap her, not hard, and suddenly you are
wrestling.
No, you are fighting,
and it’s taking all your strength
and art to keep your head from smashing
big holes in the floor and walls.
“Why Brenda,” you say, “I had no idea.”
She sinks her fangs into your neck.
You moan in terrible ecstasy,
your powerful limbs suddenly flaccid.
“Brenda, you suck,” you whisper from
withered superhuman lips.
She picks you up and throws you into the
laundry chute. You slide down headfirst and land on
A pile of bodies. Somebody’s thumb is in your eye.
“Fuck me, she caught another one,” groans a faint voice.
It’s Spiderman.
“Superman?” asks a thread-like whisper.
“He’s not coming, Batman,” Spidey retorts,
“he ain’t that stupid.”
“Anyway,” replies Green Lantern,
“he’s got Lois to wax his board.”
“Well, I only came because you did,” Batman retorts angrily.
You won’t die here, evidently,
But if these assholes don’t shut up,
You may wish you did.

Strange Horizons, 2002