Reveille

Blood pounded all eight chambers of my heart;
As armourer, I saw each new day start:

Fire struck the Watchman's Mark and then the guns
Answered with thunder the glory of the suns.

Exploration Report

Ten planets: six of rock and four of gas.
We saw that numbers three and five held life:
Three looked an undeveloped world to us
But five was hostile, treated us quite rough.

Two ships were burned -- one crashed on planet three.
We dropped supplies to them, rejoined the fight:
Crippled though we were we just could see
Our shot blow five apart and end its might.

Close Encounters of the Bug-Eyed Monster Kind

He was snatched from his home and whisked into the sky
By a UFO that paused as it swiftly passed by.

He gazed in stark horror at a pile of green slime
That quivered and shuddered and asked him the time.

They probed and they prodded, they gave him a scan,
Learned all about Earthmen like an alien can.

He begged for his freedom, he pleaded and wept:
The slime in the corner changed colour and slept.

At last they took pity: returned him to Earth
Some forty-five centuries after his birth.

Copyright (c) John Francis Haines 2001
"Reveille" first published in The Eclectic Muse Vol 2 No 3; "Exploration Report" was published in Overspace 15; "Close Encounters of the Bug-Eyed Monster Kind" first published in New Visions 1.
All appear on the Web here for the first time

Go to Meet the Authors: John Francis Haines