6th Mass Extinction

A bunch of articles are coming out about the imminent mass extinction event on Earth. It's only now that this is coming to the fore? It still surprises me that we need scientists to point out to us that we are killing the planet. We need to put a fancy name to it, too--"Anthropocene Defaunation." We even need heart-wrenching advertisements from the likes of WWF, to notice what's happening around us.

If we just look around, we should be able to notice well enough that we no longer see dragonflies filling the skies. The birds have stopped chirping. Geckos have stopped singing "tuko." Vertebrates and invertebrates alike are being reduced in number. When I watched a video of an armadillo playing with his favorite toy, it made me think about how these creatures are so much like people, yet they don't matter as much as we do:

Frankly, I miss those days when I could just watch life be. Now I just find myself people-watching, the closest I can get to disconnecting.

Maybe the world will continue on and this is just a form of hysteria. But it's sad to be the only beings left in this world, aside from maybe domestic cats and dogs.

Poems Published in Apex Magazine, Expanded Horizons, A Hundred Gourds and The Heron's Nest

I know these pubs sound disjointed. Apex and Expanded Horizons are both Speculative Fiction joints that also accept some poetry. On the other hand, A Hundred Gourds and The Heron's Nest are Japanese short form publications for haiku, tanka, haibun and haiga.

Anyway, I guess I'm kind of like that. A bit disjointed some times. I'm wistful and willful, I just go where my fancy takes me, whether its in the hyper-realist world of haiku or the fantastic realm of speculation.

These are my currently available titles:

"The First Stone" - Apex Magazine

**Cover at left

"Their Extinction" - Expanded Horizons

Haiku "night rain"; "silver moon" - A Hundred Gourds 3.3

Haiku "frangipani" - The Heron's Nest