Lead

The gunfighters raised their own pantheon
Of martyrs and saints up to the heavens,
It was the grave alone that could place them
Firmly beyond the reach of challengers
And all their blood-thirsty aspirations.
Their tortured headstones riddled with vein
Pot-marks of bitter grapes from later comers.
Living practitioners were but touchstones,
Their cold professional blood a prized ink
For others to scribe their [...]

Over and Over–Over Again

I destroy you over and over,
Unmake you with every thread I tug;
I see you unravel before me.
Should I fear your dismantlement?
Or shrug, as I do, indifferently;
Unconcerned as a mayfly with time.
I create you again and again,
Re-thread you like an eager needle
That knows no industry but mending.
                      * * *

A Walk Through The Catacombs With My Love

Ghastly, horrid, in tattered shrouds;
Their features ravaged by decay.
Though their faces haunt you at night,
They are only the dead, my love.
Lifeless they lay, fettered to doom.
Unable to taste of our world.
Though their eyes seem ever to stair,
They are only the dead, my love.
Wretched husks, devoid of all sense,
They taunt us with our mortal fear.
Though they [...]

Equations

A life’s work rendered in coarse white chalk;
A monumental undertaking
Of intricate construction, wrought on
A wide plane of slate hung from a wall.
Endless labyrinths navigated–
Thought surging through the darkened future
For the surface and promised daylight.
The numbers boggle me, leave me dry;
My math-happy friend swims their ocean
                           * * *

The Night Has Come Down

The night has come down, come down with a thud,
And the street erupts like an aftershock.
The noise, the neon, the clamoring mob
Are flying, flaming debris in my mind.
The taxi drivers rage at each other,
Pedestrians try to dodge their machines.
Bottles are breaking, transformed into knives,
Wildly brandished but tasting no blood;
Girlfriends calming the would-be combatants
For after all, [...]

Infurnace

One morning, with nothing better to do,
I dropped-by Dante’s apartment in hell.
As we made our way down the avenue
Said he: “Since you’re here, have the tour as well.”
I asked of him: “How’d you land this gig?”
As along the banks of the Styx we trod.
“How’d you end-up in the fiery brig?”
Said he: “There’s no harsher critic [...]

Tijuana Monday

Slowly, I realize my eyes are open;
Apparently, I’m awake and alive.
I’m sore and mangled, wretched and tangled,
I hope I never know what that smell is.
The memories hide behind columns of
Smoke which rise from a bomb-cratered weekend.
I’m left with flashes of nightmarish fun
I’d like to think I’m not capable of.
I need to find the guys and [...]

Knights of the Savage Tongue

Their tongue’s the sharp blade seeking the softness
Between song and speech’s narrow rib gap:
A wispy spring rain and its cool finesse,
The raging storm’s merciless thunder clap.
Their industry flows from the Saxon axe,
Its birthright of dexterous strength and skill.
Through the tumultuous beauty it hacks
And steadily rolls like the watermill.
Their goals they’ll as likely cut as caress,
Their [...]

Worm Sonnette

Above all men does lord the stately worm,
No king or pharaoh or paddishaw holds
A fiefdom as vast as the worm enfolds,
Nor commands his vassals so long a term.
He feasts of his subject’s meat and marrow,
Eating far too well to have cares of gold;
His wealth, the fruit of the earthy barrow.
 
                                * * *

Ode to an All-Night Diner

A point in transit, a lifetime apart,
Forever lost in the smokestack jungle.
No hero, just a walk-on neurotic,
No lover, just a passing addiction.
No reasons, answers, or explanations;
Just a turtle on his back by the sea.
Where can you go to find someone to love
Who won’t try to cut your throat in the night?
Where can you go once [...]

Welcome to Iceni Queen

“Iceni Queen:  A Pirate Yarn”  (c) 2009 Jason Maffettone, is a 132,000 word Space Opera/Social Satire  looking for a home.  It is the first book in a planned series of five:  “Romance of the Evernight.”  I have begun work on the second.
 
 
 “Being scourge of the galaxy involved more work than he counted on as a young lad; [...]

Chapter One: As Good a Time as Any

Look
 
What has become of us?
We, whose rough hands formed
All things of industry.
We who brought down the beast
And made of him a meal.
We who clothed and fed the body,
Who nurtured the growing
Things on our blood.
We who mined, smelted and
Forged the very iron that binds us.
The blood and sweat
That keeps them strong;
Smug, bold, and imperial.
Much of the [...]

Chapter Two: Charolais

Amber Colossus, Darwin VIII, was a monster of a world: a sphere of bright hydrogen and helium spanning a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers.  High deck clouds of sulfur gave the giant its radiant golden-yellow hue and deep layers of hydrocarbons fueled massive electrical storms that flashed across its skies like sunlight glittering on the [...]

Chapter Three: The Wages and Benefits Package of Sin

Scores of ships, large and small, scurried about their business: hauling sugar, hauling people; hauling chickens, ore and vice.  A brilliant but modest G-star reigned, attended by six planets, loyal and true.  A pair of jovians and a modest ice giant guarded its lonely frontiers, vigilant sentinels dutifully gobbling up the comets and wayward stones [...]

Chapter Four: Risk Management

Deacon was thrilled to learn how much credit Julian had been able to secure from local businesses, all egger to sponsor the planned cruise of the shipping lanes outside Hades Rising, congested and remote.  Less so when Julian went on to explain that he bet the lion’s share of it on the gravball.
            “You are [...]

Chapter Five: Cities in the Sky

With the considerable profits of Julian’s gambling venture, and funds now coming in from their technology sales, The Lords were on solid financial ground for the first time in recent memory.  Work on the new drives had nearly finished when Julian, Deacon, Olga, and Guy left for Hades Rising, four months, six days, and eight [...]

Chapter Six: A Rollicking Band of Pirates We

Billy awaited them at “Port Plutus” as the locals insisted on calling it.  Little more than a flat patch of ground that had been paved over with a fueling station and a tiny one-floor office building comprised the entire facility.  Descending in their complimentary Lockhard shuttle they could just barely make-out the new corvette sitting [...]

Appendix One: The Long Night and the Suns of Man

The fall of Night:  In the later days of the Old Era, the Earth was governed by a collection of balkanized nation states and large merchant conglomerates: hundreds of petty despotisms, a few dozen wealthy powers and a handful of empires.  They practiced a variety of social, economic, and religious systems and existed in a [...]

Appendix Two: Metric Standards:

Angular:  The 360 degree angular scale has been replaced by a decimal system.  A circle is now comprised of 100 degrees; each degree made up of 100 minutes; each minute made up of 100 seconds; each second made up of 100 ticks.
 
Distance:  At the signing of the FTF charter, the official length of the meter [...]

Appendix Three: Hyperspace Travel

Hyperspace:  Hyperspace is the means by which a vessel traverses the vast distances between the stars.  While an object cannot exceed the speed of light, objects moving through higher dimensional states possess a much greater degree of freedom.  As shorter paths can be found between two points in higher dimensions, travel times can be greatly [...]