Beard, a poem

Beard

This beard, I complained,
makes me look too old;
I shaved my chin clean — 
yes, I felt quite bold!

A glimpse in the mirror
should show a new truth — 
a face that revealed
my lost inner youth!

I turned and I twisted,
examined it well;
damn! I still looked
older than  hell!

Stephen Brooke ©2026

We Go, a seasonal poem

We Go

Our seasons here are nearly run;
it’s time to seek the Southern sun.
In the fields the farmers mow;
we gather now in each fence-row.

We go, we go;
this is all we know.

Heeding Summer’s fading song,
telling all we not have long;
when the cold winds start to blow,
when the weather cocks all crow,

we’ll know, we’ll know,
it’s time for us to go.

Dawn comes late now, chill and gray,
as leaves scatter, borne away,
and we too must join the flow;
our world has been ever so.

We go, we go;
this is all we know.

In night’s darkness voices sigh;
brothers passing through the sky.
Far below us, stag and doe
make their passage through the snow.

we know, we know,
it’s time for us to go.

Stephen Brooke ©2026

possibly for a children's book, should I write any more of them 

Hill, a poem

Hill

Paradise is found beyond that hill.
I climbed it once, to look upon the golden

and secret distance of horizons I’d
not dare. It lies there, that land, in the mists

of every morning, in my stars of night.
A glimpse I had, no more, before descending

again to worlds known, those journeys never
begun. Climb if you will; climb, and cross over.

Stephen Brooke ©2026

The End, a poem

The End

The end of the world
has come once again;
was it just last week
it vanished in flame?

I’ve lived through it thrice
at least, I am  sure,
though I could be dead,
a ghost, nothing more.

We’ve scheduled the end
again for next month;
perhaps on a Tuesday
nobody likes those.

Stephen Brooke ©2026

doggerel of the day 

Recreation, a prose poem

Recreation

Though I destroy infinite worlds, infinite worlds remain. The goal is not destruction itself but the infinite joyous act of destruction.

Elsewhere, infinite others revel in the act of creation. Each of us wields our hammers to our own purposes and our own purposelessness.

We adorn the courts of timeless kings. See how well that illusion hangs? Tomorrow and every tomorrow it will be torn down.

Yesterday and every yesterday it will be recreated. The word erased remains written on infinite pages.

It may leap from the first book you open, ready to your desires. It may hide in fear of such gods as we.

Let it go. There are infinite others of its kind.

Stephen Brooke ©2026

Primitives

Prehistoric humans of various sorts have shown up in some of my stories. Although the dwarfs and trolls of my fantasy work would seem to be related to Neanderthals, we ignore this in the tales so I’ll do the same here.

We do meet Neanderthals in my time travel science fiction novel, ‘When Man Was Young.’ These are straightforward denizens of Italy, c.60,000 years ago, so there is no fantasy element involved. I endeavored to be realistic with them instead, and probably succeeded reasonably well.

Then we have the Larnagians in the sci-fi novel ‘Alienese’ (written as Oliver Davis Pike). These are the descendants of ancient Earth humans who learned how to teleport via their brain power and went off to colonize elsewhere, forgetting the way home. A hundred thousand years ago? Two hundred thousand? Who can say? They definitely look like humans of an earlier time, heavy of brow, robust of build (especially the men). They could be Homo longi (Denisovans) or perhaps they come from around the time when Heidelbergensis morphed into ‘modern’ humans. All these I consider to be races* of Home sapiens, actually, and the Larnagians are mutually fertile with Earth humans.

Now the ‘First Children’ of the Malvern novel ‘Valley of Visions’ are almost certainly Heidelbergensis, or closely related. Again, able to breed with modern humans. And, as the Larnagians, not quite as bright** as us, on average (but not that far off). These are a much more gracile sort; that may be their ancestry or they might have evolved that direction during their residency on Exura. The Wizard-Lord Hurasu has kept them under his protection in a sort of reservation high in the mountains, but all are gone — at least from that spot — in a couple thousand years.

They, and the Larnagians, are dark of skin. Not so the ‘beast men’ encountered on an island in a later Mora novel, ‘Warrior of the Moon.’ These are rather hairy with pale skin beneath. With the protection from the sun provided by a heavier pelt, plus a somewhat dim forest environment, dark skin serves no particular purpose (as with chimpanzees). They are far more primitive than the First Children, building rude huts and not knowing fire. Probably some sort of Homo erectus? That would be a good guess but I’m not saying one way or another. After all, who knows what sort of humans and near-humans exist out there in the infiniverse?

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*True races or sub-species — all humans today are one race, from a scientific view.

**This was for the sake of the stories. I would not be at all surprised if the real ‘primitive’ humans were every bit as intelligent as us — or even smarter.

Utility

Utilitarianism believes in the greatest good* for the greatest number of people. This is something with which I totally disagree. Every person is equally important. Their needs are not to be subordinated to those of some hypothetical ‘humanity,’ but neither should they be elevated over those of another.

This is, to be sure, more difficult in practice than in theory. We are bound to place the needs of our loved ones ahead of those we don’t know. Humans have a certain amount of built-in tribalism, both for better and worse. The dynamics of all this is certainly useful fodder for the fiction writer. I rarely write of actual politics in my stories but one can probably detect an undercurrent of a left-libertarian (that is, anarchist) viewpoint.

Fortunately, most of my protagonists are practical sorts and can work with this.

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*Not that anyone can agree what this is. Some say ‘happiness’ but I can be quite happy being unhappy at times.