.
Patrick Theron Erickson, a resident of Garland, Texas, a Tree City, just south of Duck Creek, is a retired parish pastor put out to pasture himself. His work has appeared in Grey Sparrow Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, and The Main Street Rag, among other publications, and more recently in Torrid Literature Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal, Arlington Literary Journal and Sheila-Na-Gig.
SPACE JUNK JUNKIE
There is a dent
in the earth’s magnetic field
and it is playing havoc
with the unified field theory
not to mention earth’s satellites
and the space station
It’s got earth’s scientists
engineers and astronauts stumped
Orbit paths decay
satellites splash down
and space stations go kerplunk
It’s like passing through
an asteroid belt or browsing
a space junk junkyard
without a crash helmet
the junkyard dog
hot on your heels
We’re already on a collision course
and we’re not even out of the doghouse.
*****
.
USSR
A graveyard
of iron likenesses
Lenin, Trotsky, Marx
those iron men
cast in heroic poses
larger than life
Where are the hammers
and sickles?
Where are the iron smelting
foundries for a new iron age?
Where are the blast furnaces
to melt down the iron ore
or recast the pig iron
pig-headed
when the coal
to generate the heat
is gone to ground
where the underground is
unmined
because the miners
are on strike?
*****
.
