Aphelion Issue 292, Volume 28
March 2024
 
Editorial    
Long Fiction and Serials
Short Stories
Flash Fiction
Poetry
Features
Series
Archives
Submission Guidelines
Contact Us
Forum
Flash Writing Challenge
Forum
Dan's Promo Page
   

Pre-millennial

by James Parnell


All they know, were it measured thus,
Won't fill a thimbleful with dust.
Nor brush a flea from a bald dog's back
Sleeping in shade of a shotgun shack.

When foolish few win to the peaks
Red-tape gods with sand for feet
Beware the turvy-topsy world
Contrary, west to east, it whirls.

Miring deeper with jaded flair
Shadows cast of impending glare
Whine ever higher in dervish dreams
Of conquest, purity, and simple greed.

Dim, across glossed rolling waves
Seas of faces race a-grave
That ghastly ghoulish gamut gapes
Agog -- anticipates.


© 1999 Jim Parnell

Jim Parnell squashes bugs for a living -- like the ones that infest your computer. As a gesture of faith, he plans to be on full life-support in a commercial airliner booking flights and making e-trades at 23:59:59, December 31, 1999. If the plane don't crash, he hopes to get out of the geek business for good.

Find more by Jim Parnell in the Author Index

Comment on this story in the Aphelion Forum

Return to Aphelion's Index page.