Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

                                              Alfred Lord Tennyson

Grieve the fallen warriors of diversity.

A trumpet’s mournful sound now casts its pall . . .

Southern rumors: prophets of perversity

Non-profiting from Liberal wherewithal:

Poverty’s pimps. Their bold hypocrisy

Weinsteins loudly, colliding with our news;

Southern Law: poor as our democracy

Purporting to promote progressive views.

His name rang sweet in all progressive ears

But now the cypresses sigh out their song;

For scams must be exposed—though it wring tears

We hear the dirge; night’s shadows looming long.

Weep, oh armchair zealots of the cause

For Morris Dees, a victim of his laws.

I.

evolving, thunder-struck

amino eventualities

and bio-potentialities

in the muck

re-group, protoplasmic and joyful

singing in the proverbial soup

of circumstances

and random cosmic chances

a song of differentiation

loose ends / ragged strands / loose lines

of poetry: DNA spiral dances

Precambrian time, period of time extending from about 4.6 billion years ago (the point at which Earth began to form) to the beginning of the Cambrian Period, 541 million years ago. Precambrian time encompasses the Archean and Proterozoic eons, which are formal geologic intervals

II.

the wriggling one-celled poet decides

to become complex

takes its time:

geologic / astral eons

twitching and failing

into the fabled tadpole of adaptation

to a godless universe, diverse

in its variegated futility

this idea has been summarized in the mouthful, ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’, which means the development of the individual embryo repeats its alleged evolutionary history. The first thing to say about this dictum, is that ‘law’ it is not!

III.

our fish, now fowl,

proclaims its Archaeopteryx manifesto

standing on Precambrian banks

demanding a return on its investment

in sedimentary overlays:

Ernst Haeckel !  shrieks the avian jokester

The Imaginary Monera: the eating habit and reproductive cycle of an alleged Moneron to which he gave the scientific name, Protomyxa aurantiaca 73 pages of his speculations more important than facts and evidence.

IV.

into the long long corridors

of time’s bad poetry

sleeping off the tadpole nightmare

sprouting flippers, legs, digits, wings

deciding to fly, smashing antediluvian cedars with trilobite tail

upright biped sporting body-hair

you shall prevail

descending from trees in African dreams

misanthropologically *****

gracile / robust (that’s us)

Hey turn that **** up ! yells Piltdown Man

from his evolutionary window

He believed that the only major difference between man and the ape was that men could speak and apes could not. He therefore postulated a missing link which he called Pithecanthropus alalus (speechless apeman) a woman with long lank hair suckling a child.

V.

falling for the lies

of the Lord of the Flies

Zinjanthropus asks quizzically

How much more of this

are you prepared to take ?

misbegotten centuries glimmer:

light years of bad poetry

captive eons of incoherent free verse

as we wait

for the Bronze Age Myths

to begin

Poetry ought to do things right
and document reality—
but modern muses lose the fight
weaponizing identity.

Out-doing themselves, our leaders all
legitimize perversity.
Who gave them this satanic call
to demonize normality ?

In showing off their dubious worth,
the nation’s ignobility
transform to Babel all the earth
augmenting instability.

They can’t go One-World fast enough
suppressing Christianity.
Their matriarchy’s mom is tough,
enforcing femininity.

Milk of reptilian global beast:
postmodern animality
offers her withered poison breast
maintaining infantility.

They pour across. We help them in
supporting illegality;
our taxes fund their brand-new life
rewarding criminality.

A Monginis Cake Shop flex hangs
above a hardware and electronics store
and a man in front of it
speaks loudly into his phone,
trying to explain this his location,
slapping the other hand on his forehead.

Another man, this one on a scooter
going slower than a public transport bus
has his helmet resting in the front
between his feet
instead of on his head.
(Is this blatant disregard for life
or staggering confidence about it?)

An old Nauvari-clad woman
bearing a big vermillion stain on her forehead
innocently spits her paan on a
Clean Mumbai, Green Mumbai graffiti.

I get up to go stand
at the front door
and someone else takes my seat.

They will see a skinny girl
typing furiously into her phone
this very poem.

side hugs are like
performative wokeness;
shallow, flaky, meaningless
convenient, censored -
appealing, yes?
appeasing, too, i guess.

but no
i demand the real deal
furnish me with both arms
disregard my weak frame,
i promise, i wont break
let me have it
im not a snowflake
just a girl who
likes to take
on the world
with hugs
as her weapon of choice.