Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Matt Berkes Jun 2016
Grains of sand
Suspended in their
Journey beyond
The crevice,
A raindrop
Halted before
Imprinting on
The pavement,
Musty air caged
In my lungs,
Dust in a cloud
Frozen in the room,
Time has not
The decency to
Even crawl
But instead hangs
In perfect entropy,
Dangling the future
In front of me
On the broken hand
Of a clock.
Seconds acquiesce
To each their
Own eternity
And I scream
Into the stillness
But the sound
Never escapes
My own head,
Encased in
A personal, torturous
Epithelium.
jigyasa Jan 2016
the presence of your breath
down the nape of my neck
goosebumps
encaptivate fields of epithelium
ravaging my integumentary system
follicle by follicle

the touch of your lips
color my cheeks
like the red of holi
marking every cell
every junction
as conquered territory

the gaze of your eyes
occipital lobes, is it?
strip me naked
without a touch
simple introspection

*I really can't get enough of this anatomy
Six times life has trembled,
At the passing of apocalypse.

Each time,
Three causes were possible:

Heaven,

Hell,

And Earth.

From heaven, asteroids could fall,
And throw up curtains on the world,
Or passing waves of cosmic fire
Would strip away the clouds.

From hell, the waters of Styx
Might slip through terrestrial cracks,
Then rise as gas,
To heat the world as sheets of floating glass.

Between the two:
Animals themselves
Could mediate the flow
Of Earthly poisons.

Of the three apocalypses
Born on Earth,
Their horsemen are:
The progenitors of atmosphere:
Primordial Cyanophyta,
Then Archeopteris, first of the trees,
And inventor of the root,
And last:
Humanity ourselves,
The apes who play with fire.

Apocalypse number one was caused
When Cyanophyta -
Named for the blue-green colour
Possessed by these bacterial worms -
Learned to inhale the Sun.

They breathed in photons,
Filtered through a heavy atmosphere,
And exhaled an ocean of oxygen,
That filled the skies with ******.

Then the world was a canvas painted
With a single simple transformation:
The land – which then was only iron –
Was touched, naked
By the breath of blue snakes
And so the wide metallic continent of Ur,
Was racked from coast to coast
With rust.

The world’s iron skin absorbed oxygen like cream;
So that, when the global epithelium
Could take no more,
The new air rose,
And thinned the heights,
And all the gathered warmth of centuries
Escaped into the stars.

Then – an interlude of flame –
Comets fell on reddened ice,
And the planet’s molten core restored
The stratospheric glass,
And the world was hot once more.

Next, Archeopteris:
First of the trees,
As plant life rose to giants,
The primal soil of Gondwana
Was infiltrated
By the evolution of the root.

As vascular limbs drilled down to earth,
They plundered minerals,
From which these new goliaths
Grew fronds,
And then, upon the giants’ deaths,
Their carcasses were ill received
By little lives
Who could not hold their salt.

Then came the chaos of holy war:
Heaven rained and hell spilled up,
And so passed end times three and four,
Up to the kaleidoscope of teeth and claws
That was the age of dinosaurs.

Now the fifth apocalypse
Was Chicxulub:
A worldstorm in a meteor,
So named for baby birds
And the sound of Armageddon:
Xulub!
A knight in igneous armour,
Who killed the dragons of Pangaea.

Now, to the sixth.
As yet far less fatal than the rest,
But the first apocalypse
With eyes and ears,
Who sees the fire its engines breath,
And to its own destructiveness attests.

We began in the trees,
And once the planes were cleared of predators
By mighty Chicxulub,
We moved out onto the grass,
Stood up and freed our hands,
And learned to play with fire.

With it we loosed the energy
In roasted meat,
And poured the new-found resource
Into intellect,
Then wielding sapience,
We humans spread:
The first global superpredator,
We preyed on adults of apex species,
Tamed the world,
Then dreamt of gods
Who placed us at its helm.

We noticed then,
The manifold atomic dots
On the cosmic dice that cast us;
And stuttered in shock.

Our dreams of stewardship
Were dashed on revelations,
That we are the chaos
In the inherent synchrony of dust.

Refusing all potentials
That mirror the errors of our youth,
We let the title ‘sentinel’
Drift from loosened fingertips,
Any now by morbid self-assertion,
We mark ourselves:
The selfish sixth apocalypse.
Kate W Feb 2013
deafening entrapment
bursting wings
through tight and suffocating epithelium
born into a beating prison
barred and trapped
clawing crying
out
if only these tears could melt through my body and sweep onto the floor like over filled bath water
to
sink into the earth
   where the turning ceases.
poached wings and a chalk outline
how can you fly without wings?
weighty
lascivious
odious perfection
Andy Chunn Oct 2022
Simple squamous epithelium
That lines the frothing orifice
Of politicians and wine-soaked braggarts

Cytoplasm
That flows equally
In justice and infectious regurge

Genes
That transplant the ghastly
Pale-light abscess of custom-made drivel

God, Ph.D.,  you too?
Robert C Ellis Jun 2016
The common blow fly, the
Adults, feeding off nectar and
Animal carcasses
All Forensic protozoa
Owing their
Fine structure of mid-gut
Epithelium to an alchemic
Grand Master,
Razing his glass knife
across alabaster and
buffer acetones as
These  larval Celestials
Intone
As gendarmes of Cyrus and
Cassaiopeia vibrating
The metronome
Honed with memory,
In my ear
All of it History
ChronicSage May 2020
Bare before me
in diffused light
the naked secret
of a sheared bark
unfolding delicately
perfectly born
freshly untouched
alive
simmering
in a pure state of passion
and lying in quiet entreaty
for a reckless mind
with a thoughtful touch
to pleasure
beyond the epithelium...
Robyn Oct 2019
the water is luke
closing the tap as i let it run
slowly
i knew this day would come

the scars reveal my attempted past
my reflection ripples
as my salty tears drop
it is time

the cool blade kisses my skin
as i slide it deep across my epithelium
opening what i know will forever be lost
but forgive me, i have to do this
at all costs

— The End —