After a year of editing and re-writing my genre bending comedy noir hardboiled detective scifi novel 24th Century Dick is now available as an ebook on Amazon, for $4.99. It's longer, more readable and hopefully more funny! Paperback coming soon!
"The Maltese Falcon, but funny, and in the future, with robots and rayguns and spaceships. Raymond Chandler meets Monty Python."
You look into the cracks
Sidewalks cracks
Walking along the path
Seeking revelation or spare change?
There's broken glass there too so watch out
Don't become wounded or at least
Any more wounded than you are all ready
And your shoes are looking mighty poor and over worn now the sole all flapping
Now that I take the time to assess and scrutinize
Your face and visage too
So lined with pain and fatigue
Walking along slowly
Seeking validation or bus fare you bend all stooped
Looking into cracks sidewalk cracks
All the children laugh and point dirty fingers
Scoff away though pal
Scoff away
Keep those unruly brats at bay
Revelation though you know?
Found any yet?
I seek it too
How about in the stars?
Or tea leaves
You like loose tea leaves to drink
Any fortunes therein?
That drink is good you boom at me
It gets rid of the poison and bile inside
But revelation not so much
Nor fortune
Still I seek unhurriedly and I listen
If the gods want to speak to me
Or demons or fates
I'd make them a nice tea for the effort
For our repast
I would enjoy that
Talking with gods or demons or other
Over a nice cup of loose green tea
Better than this limp conversation
With fools like you my son
At any rate
You interrupt my walking
Looking into
Sidewalk cracks
By Daniel Smallegange, copyright 2024, all rights reserved.
I worked ten months on Frankenstein as props buyer, a feature film directed by Guillermo del Toro, shot primarily in Ontario, Canada. This was my crew gift, which kept out the rain nicely on this rainy, autumnal day in Toronto, September, 2024.
Winds come blowing
Howling like ghosts through
Interiors of the mind
Sculpting thoughts and feelings into
Hopes and dreams
Plottings and schemes
Born of all directions
Ancestors and genes, babe
Chemicals and blood wrought too
Look it up, it's in books you know
Or don't you know?
You ought to know things like these and others
Suck it all up inside your brainpan man
So you don't bleed so ignorant man
Winds still blowing
A veritable font of cross breezes
Illustrious or otherwise
Carving channels and paths
Sculpting thoughts and/or feelings
Nature as
Versus nurture is nature
Eroding the enshrouded
Through winds which
Howl like ghosts
Disturbed old memories
Sweeping out
General malaise, fear an' rot
Sweeping out all
These cold winds blowing
By: Daniel Smallegange, copyright 2024, all rights reserved.
Apoplectic you say
Come come
Come along my friend my dear
You scoff and reflexively retract away
And so you say so you say
Your first wish to stay at bay
Fists all bunched tightly
Your smile reversed and teeth clenched
But your anger seems so
Contrived
And so overly
Dramatized
I can see it in you though
You have it in you though
In those wayward eyes
Pretty slate grey-green eyes
Apoplectic with many things
Calculating also
Eyes slant askance
Apoplectic
You say you say!
Against your friend and amie
Your esteemed colleague me
You need to have a rest
Sit down and divest
Some of them heart burned feelings
Your anti and hostile jeering
It begins to make a dent
In my own mental fixings
Apoplectic come come
Makes me so sad I can't help but laugh
You need some healing
Love an' joy
At least some time off
From the grinding teeth clench
And accusatory glancings
Though eyes of slate grey-green
Are not without appeal
Those eyes do say however
I should slowly back away
My friend my amie
And keep at bay
By: Daniel Smallegange, all rights reserved, copyright 2024.
To what do I owe
Such a formal bow?
From a stranger even
On this dark wet lonely street
Or have we met in times passed?
If we were friends or comrades
I should likely recall
Such pale beauty
So perhaps not this
And you prepared with clenched fist
Belies this thought
Such a formal bow
Impeccable in form
Without introduction
You arrive glistening in moonlit rain
To honour your fallen?
To avenge a loved one?
To earn a payday?
Surely then such a bow would be then considered
Undeserved
Impeccable as it is
Speak up my dear
Why so silent fist all clenched
What is in your pocket then
A pistol?
Or a rose?
By Daniel Smallegange, copyright 2024, all rights reserved.
A cloud in the eye to blur the impact
Of your beauty would not
Be unappreciated
Although such a thing is
Unrequested it might be not considered
Unhelpful
As your beauty so weaponized can only
Shock and awe
As you blind me
To all other thoughts and hopes
Joys even
Such is the clamouring bright
Of your visage and general outline
Hopes are after all
Precursors to pain and
Disappointment
And your beauty is after all
Considerable
The blue green of your seeking searching demanding
Eyes
Is impactful to say the least
To say the most you are
Devastating in your conduct approach and appeal
A cloud in my eyes to blur this impact
Might save one such as I
From love or ruin
By: Daniel Smallegange, 2024, all rights reserved.
