Sci-Fi Poem "Explorers"

 

Here's the first poem of mine to have been accepted for publication in an edited small-press zine, although it's not the first to have been published in such a venue.

Dark sci-fi poem "Explorers", originally published September 2007 in The Fifth Di... and also published June 2009 in the anthology Wondrous Web Worlds 8 and August 2023 in the now out-of-print poetry collection Cosmic Journeys and Gothic Visions.

Explorers

In the looming darkness of an alien world,
Suns slip down in a lavender sky.
Distant stars blaze on one by one,
As shadows creep forth from labyrinthine hollows.

The scream of engines breaks the anxious silence.
Dust swirls thick in the toxic atmosphere
As a silver ship comes slowly to rest
Upon the chartreuse soil of a contorted land.

Explorers claim the planet as their own
And plant their azure flag in the barren ground.
Brave souls probe the black unknown
And rouse things better left alone.

Sodium lamps cast a sanguine glow
Along the seething banks of a sulphurous stream.
From its murky bed a native leviathan rises,
A savage titan towering over its otherworldly prey.

A thousand green eyes glare with excitement
As the sands are drenched with purple gore.
Survivors scramble for the safety of their ship
As the creature begins the evening’s feast.