Skoot Larson

This is the second collection of the poetry of author and musician Skoot Larson. Many of the works in this volume were inspired by Hurricane Harvey, which struck the Texas coast on August 25 2017. All are recent writings.

King Irv, monarch of the Wholesale Kingdom is surprised one day when a troop of Vikings shows up on the doorstep of Warehouse Castle. It seems that the Norsemen had stumbled onto the wreckage of Hershel the Merlin's old time machine on some future beach and, fooling with the contraption, suddenly found themselves thrown back through time to the court of King Irv. Demonstrating to the Vikings how the contraption works, King Irv and Hershel, find themselves in the new world, the Viking's Vinland, in the twelfth century. To further complicate matters, one of the young Viking sailors trips, falls and puts the tip of his sword into Hershel's time machine, rendering it useless to bring them back home to the Wholesale Kingdom. The time machine does work, off and on, taking them to modern day San Francisco and then back to the old west of America, everywhere except back home, until a major hurricane changes everything.

While minding his lady friend, Yolanda's, elephant rescue booth at Rockport's Sea Fair, Dave Holman sees two teenage boys fighting atop the carnival's giant Ferris wheel. One boy throws the other from the ride to his death in the attractions machinery. Holman goes straight to the police to volunteer as an eye witness to what is obviously murder, but is informed that the case has already been ruled an accident; death by misadventure. On further investigation, Dave Holman learns that A J Laudermaelk IV, the boy who pushed his friend from the carnival ride, is the son of a prominent attorney from one of the founding families of the towns of Rockport and Jordan. The dead child, Johnny Dominguez', family hire Holman to gather evidence that their son was murdered and bring young Laudermaelk to justice, but as Dave Holman is assembling proof, in the form of videos of the murder, Hurricane Nathan strikes. The storm rips apart Holman's office and scatters all his case files to the wind. To make matters worse, Holman learns that Ames Laudermaelk III is out to halt his investigation by whatever means he can muster, including calling in political favors against the Texas detective and even possibly arranging another murder.

King Irv, Jewish ruler of the Wholesale Kingdom, has a time travel machine invented by his clever Merlin, Hershel. The Christian kings of old England are readying crusades to retrieve something they call the Holy Grail, the cup they believed their savoir drank from at the Last Supper, from the heathens of the Middle East. At the urging of King Arthur, a Druid from the west of the British Isles, King Irv's Merlin decides he can go back in time and procure this Holy Grail thing from right under the nose of the Christian savior. Kings Irv and Arthur can then sell it to the highest bidder. Snatching the grail cup is an easy task, but proving its authenticity to the Christian kings of old blighty proves to be more of a challenge. King Irv's son-in-law in future England, around 2002, has better luck with the sacred cup, up to a point, but before all the bets are in, this sought-after Christian relic comes close to launching a holy war across both time and space.

Santa Nepenthe may just be the last unspoiled paradise in the Caribbean. With no source of fresh water beyond the daily tropical showers and no natural resources, who would want to bother with this island? The Souza family has ruled over the rock's small population since pirate days and everyone seems quite happy with their simple existence, until Emmanuel Souza, the current Supreme Leader, decides to bring some modern improvements to Santa Nepenthe, like the Internet and a community of retirement condos for wealthy American snowbirds.Enter Margo Drelve, reporter for a daily New York newspaper. Margo sees Santa Nepenthe as the perfect place to go in order to write the Great American novel with no distractions or interruptions. On arriving at the island's port city, Margo meets two of the islands entrepreneurs, a chap known as Sport, who runs the island's only bar and Maynard Morais, who owns the island's telephone exchange and its only taxi cab. And then there's Alphonse Friend, a New Jersey gangster hiding on Santa Nepenthe from the IRS, who decides to challenge the Souza family's long time rule with an eye toward building big hotels and casinos across the small island nation. What could possibly go wrong?

Once upon a time, a long, long while ago, before Arthur and Guinevere, thelred the Unready or even King Bewilliam, a lost tribe of Israel landed upon British shores to build Warehouse Castle and establish the Wholesale Kingdom. Many generations later, King Irv made great strides for his people as his Merlin invented solar panels, a time machine, and then traveled to the future to bring back canned ale, pizza and golf. This, then, is the tale of that great monarch, King Irv, his wife Queen Sophie and their children, Prince Sol and Princess Judith, and of an Oxford scholar from the future that changes their lives forever.

The newly elected President of the United States is approached by two former presidents, who just happen to be his father and brother, and the king of an Arab nation with a plan for world peace. The heart of the plan involves giving Palestine back to the Palestinians and relocating Israel to the new world. But is it a true peace proposal, or something much more sinister? The new Nation of Israel is to be given a strip of land 10 miles wide and 15-hundred miles long, stretching from San Diego, California to Port Isabel, Texas, along America's southern border, which will effectively solve America's immigration problem, as how many illegals will be daring enough to come through the Israeli Army to look for work in America? Israel, it is hoped can also deal with the drug cartels that have plagued Mexico and the U.S.While Israel is moving their Holiest shrines to New Jerusalem, the former cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, and America and Mexico are busy working with their new neighbor and the problems of establishing a new land and new borders, who is waiting in the wings to take advantage of the chaos caused by all this movement? And there are also rumors of a conservative plan to revive the idea of a Final Solution as the plot spirals down into a labyrinth of craziness.