I have written poetry for many years and been
published in several journals, magazines and newspapers. I also MCd an open mic
in the San Francisco area back in the early 2Ks. I got into poetry because I
found I could not write a novel length piece and work a high stress/high
responsibility job at the same time, and I wasn’t in a position to be able to
leave that career. Poetry enabled me to take on shorter projects, and while
(for me at least) poetry is harder to write and edit than prose I could still
finish a poem in a week or two. I also had the good fortune of being in a
writing group with other excellent poets who have since gone on to become well
published in their own right.
Elinore
Curious light
thins curtains
drawn against the night
pouring color into
threadbare rugs and
slippers placed just right.
Hinges squeak
loose boards creak
greetings
as old folks sneak
down chilly halls
past the stillness
in her room
where faded roses
bloom on papered walls.
Elinore has gone
to walk among the stars.
Robert Hoppensteadt
One more if you would like:
Monday 9 a.m. Staff Meeting
In my skin I watch their trimmed and
well-planned faces
I speak politely and keep my animal
parts cowered
these folks don’t smell my most
fearful thought
when it creeps in from the mouth of
night
that rotting breath follows me
between the activity reports
and flipping of pages it persists
that nonsense that everything sprang
from a singularity everything from
nothing
without purpose or design no rainbow
no afterlife
our director says we missed our
metrics
we must do better we all agree
let’s “think outside the box”
even though we don’t make anything
here
short relief to drift away imagine
that just maybe
these are traveling souls gathered
around this table
beings with no beginning and no end
wearing flesh
and business casual attire
I wonder if the fleeting thoughts
behind their trimmed
and well planned faces are ever the
same as mine
cowering their animal parts and
daydreaming
of that far off day when everything
around us
has sunk beneath the dirt.
Robert
Hoppensteadt
Spawn of the Cataclysm
Robert Hoppensteadt
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Adventure
Publisher: Solstice Publishing
Date of Publication: March 2. 2020
ISBN: 979-8620552344
ASIN: B085DN3K5V
Number of pages: Print 227; Kindle 194
Word Count: 70K
Book Description:
Humans carelessly wielded their power to create new things, a power that far outpaced their understanding. It was only a matter of time until something went terribly wrong. Something did.
Technology has been erased for millenniums, monsters spawned at the end of a world infest the forests and seas, and a new civilization has slowly risen from the long darkness. In sight of the looming ruins of what was once called San Francisco there is an evil growing.
The people of New Gate are about to face their greatest challenge.
Excerpt Chapter One
“We didn’t create the virus, it lived in the wild. We found it when Howler monkeys began starving to death even though they stripped every local crop in the area. The virus triggered their metabolism to speed up ... we were paid by the Defense Department to develop an offensive application, said we could keep exclusive rights to all its commercial uses if we delivered. It could have changed the way we grow food but they pushed us. It wasn’t ready to test, and when the earthquake hit… is out now. The death toll will be on their heads. And ours.”
Translated from the Cataclysm
Rik Arrowen leaned over the gunwale, his gaze following dancing green shafts of sunlight that plunged into the depths. He strained his eyes, thought he saw movement. A huge shadow drifted slowly below the light. He knew the creature they Hunted was down there, a hungry thing that lurked unseen.
“It is here,” he muttered.
A school of silver fish darted upward, their bodies flashed like a thousand mirrors. Rik’s heart jumped in the instant before a sail-sized fin, jagged and scarred, cut slowly into the green twilight before receding back into the murk. He had no time to catch his breath, or shout a warning, when the great misshapen spawn rose fast and straight into the light, its gaping jaws filled with teeth. The thing ignored the weighted haunch of bloody meat they had drawn it in with, and hit the wooden galley on the port side with enough force to knock four Hunters into the bay.
As the hull rocked, the water turned red and raw screams filled the air.
***
“What a beautiful day to be alive.”
The voice blew away Rik’s memory and brought him back to where he stood, high above the countryside on the windy battlement of Stonehaven’s north wall.
“Oh, forgive me,” the voice continued. “Did I startle you?”
Rik did not bother to turn around.
“No, Jerold,” he replied. “I was watching the bay. It’s been six days since we lost those four Hunters to the spawn. I can’t stop hearing their screams as the thing ate them. Nothing we could do. We hit it with five harpoons and it still swam away. On the way down, it swallowed the bait haunch whole, and would have pulled us under if we hadn’t cut the rope.” He paused for a moment. “I have never seen one that big. I hope it has gone back out to sea.”
“May the Mystery welcome them all,” Jerold said. “I don’t often see anyone else up here this time of day. I like the solitude, the view calms me when the Council is crawling up my back about money.”
Rik scanned the horizon. The morning mist had burned away, and the sea breeze held a hint of pine. To the west rose a low range covered with giant redwoods, some of them hundreds of feet tall. The ridge continued to wind its way from the south, ending in cliffs at the mouth of the bay. The wide channel reflected the blue of the sky, and ripples that ran counter to the waves marked strong currents that carried the tide out to sea. Across the water, the redwoods picked up again and became the great northern forest. Long ago, when the seas were lower, a famed bridge the ancients called Golden Gate stretched above the treacherous waters from shore to shore. Nothing was left of it now but a few worn mounds of concrete piles at each end.
Below the fortress, starting near the base of the hill, the city of New Gate sprouted like a garden. It spread down to the bay, a bright jumble of buildings and spires that tumbled to the busy harbor. There, sailing ships and galleys crowded together, bare masts bobbed within the walls of the breakwater. New Gate was home to almost twenty thousand souls and a passing refuge for a few thousand more at any given time. Now, it was bursting at the seams with wagons and people who could be seen crowding the streets and setting up stalls in the Market Square for the upcoming Equinal Games.
To the east and scattered around the bay were ruins. Most were settled into oddly geometric mounds and small hills covered in green, but in some places, they rose like monstrous patches of black lace from the dense hardwood forests that covered the lowlands around the bay. The largest cluster of these, called Lily’s Bones for reasons nobody could remember, contained broken and crumbling towers so immense that their ragged peaks were sometimes lost in the clouds.
About the Author:
Robert Hoppensteadt lied about his age and started working in Reno when he was fourteen, washing dishes on the late shift at a casino restaurant. Since then he has been a grunt in the Forest Service, a carpenter, and, after receiving a degree in Information Systems, a recruiter and senior manager. Now he writes full time. He has lived on both coasts and several places in between but currently resides in Virginia with his wife and two seriously spoiled and obnoxious cats.
Amazon - https://amzn.to/3a5w7Hv
Twitter - https://twitter.com/RHoppensteadt
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