New Poetry & Prose: a Bruce Boston Special

Today we are featuring three works by one of the stalwarts of the speculative fiction and poetry scene – Bruce Boston, pictured left (actually Bruce is the one on the right of the picture) at a Bram Stoker Awards ceremony. Bruce's bio can be found at the foot of this column. Enjoy...


Ghost Surrogate
 
The skilled and
distinctive touch
of a dead lover
causes the Countess
to cry out in the night.
 
Her hands pretending
that they are his.


Surreal Bucket List #3
 
Write in a soft voice that carries a crossbow.
Tour Mount Olympus in a Volkswagen Bus.
Recline for a fortnight in shades of fancy.
Trace my roots to a prehistoric sea.



Forever Tracking
for Damon


Forever interpreting ancient texts as their tattered scrolls unrolled within his mind, treading the borders of the Axis Mundi with no more than an empty leather satchel, ranging the streets of Xanadu and Carcosa, Asgard and Babylon, tracking like a beast with a ravenous beast astride its back, whispering sacral curses and foul blessings to the eldritch winds. 

Immersed in dreamtides and chimerical visions and cimmerian prophets whose shadows rose from the dust of ages, worshipping priestesses created for the day, following transient avatars down to a dim beach and the dark sea of a false dawn to hear the damp cries of beached mariners echoing in his brain.

Intoxicated by secret keys and magical rings, obsessed by puzzle boxes with hidden compartments only to be opened by the wisest of men and most cunning women, drunk on myth and history and a tomorrow that foreshadowed more than night.

Enthralled by the occult and the fantastic, Crowley and Blavatsky, Faustus and Paracelsus, Levi’s Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, poring over maps revealing the locations of imagined kingdoms, Mu and El Dorado, Atlantis and Shangra-La, the Archipelago of Dreams, maps fashioned by madmen on a transcendental high over a fifth of Ravens Rum and a pinch of fly agaric.

Anticipating the excavation of underwater ruins and red temples crumbling to red sand in some distant desert, astounded by age-old architectural mysteries, the Great Pyramids, the dour monoliths of Easter Island, the astronomical savvy of Stonehenge, awaiting the lab tests on the Shroud of Turin and the release of a revised annotation of the Bardol Thodol, praying for the miraculous to snuff the everyday.

Last heard from traveling to parts unknown, head down and eyes afire, carrying no more than a worn leather satchel stuffed with worlds.



About Bruce Boston...  Born in Chicago in 1943, Bruce grew up in Southern California in an era of rock 'n' roll, the Cold War, and the Space Race. From 1961-2001, he lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, attending and graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, while active in the psychedelia and political protests of the 1960s. He has worked in a variety of occupations, including computer programmer, college professor, technical writer, book designer, movie projectionist, gardener, and furniture mover and now lives in Florida with his wife – the writer-artist Marge Simon, and the ghosts of two cats. His website is at www.bruceboston.com

His work has appeared in hundreds of publications, including Asimov's SF, Amazing Stories, Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, The Pedestal Magazine, The Twilight Zone Magazine, Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, and the Nebula Awards Showcase. His poetry has received the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov's Readers' Award, the Rhysling Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, the Balticon Poetry Award, and the SFPA Grandmaster Award.