"fossil" poems
I was with the ocean last night and your body
Was its vessel, overflowing. Words were frail,
Drops indwelling about the shapeless sky,
Water reaching for its own height and breath,
Like touch, were as desperate letters exchanged,
Endlessly read, until like loamy vellums, they
Disappeared in our hands. Inklings of tide-
Pool and driftwood.
My blood was a river that ran
Its course. Members feeding your deltas and birds
Breeding where the water-russet sheds on pampas
And inverness. Eyes like wing through ever—
Green, empties the fossil shell. Fire, brimming
Mountaintops that were, for countless millennia,
Sleeping. Did I mention that the earth moved?
No? Her displacement was involuntary.
Then came the waterfalls, lifting throughout
Time. The scent, searching for its identity,
The wave, calling to its own name— Ocean,
O— cean. And flowers, opening like galaxies
In the after-light. A universe of face and hand
With hunger for salt-rain and then the cloud
Burst-blue and spilt and spun more redolent,
Deities, in joyous creation.
I breathe, in your ocean, like a child unborn.
Jul 3, 2012
Jul 3, 2012 at 7:30 PM UTC
The world is losing
Gravity,
But no one can escape,
We're hurtling on our petrie dish
In a gel that seals our fate;
Gravitating
Towards black holes;
They're closer than you think.
In China
There's a wall of dust,
Seen clear from outer space;
Our living waters die
In a legacy of disgrace.
We're citizens
Wearing masks;
We should hide our faces,
But we're running daily tasks.
We're fossils burning
Fossil fuels
Found in cremation gas.
The amphibians
Are on the fringe;
Whales can't sound,
They run aground.
It's an environmental slaughter.
Our world has lost
Some gravity.
We need to plant our feet,
But charnel fires
And greenhouse gas
Have hastened our retreat.
Migrating birds lose sense of time,
Confused by the lights.
The morning dove coos at night,
The nightingale at dawn;
We're like
New turtles muddling,
Under lost starlight.
We must grasp
The gravity
Of burning
Burning light.
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 10:19 AM UTC
Go hang yourself, you old M.D.!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
I'm not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.
By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever's hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!
Give ear, you scientific fossil!
Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;
The Cold of which researchers dream,
The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.
This honored system humbly holds
The Super-cold to end all colds;
The Cold Crusading for Democracy;
The Führer of the Streptococcracy.
Bacilli swarm within my portals
Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals,
But bred by scientists wise and hoary
In some Olympic laboratory;
Bacteria as large as mice,
With feet of fire and heads of ice
Who never interrupt for slumber
Their stamping elephantine rumba.
A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!
Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;
Don Juan was a budding gallant,
And Shakespeare's plays show signs of talent;
The Arctic winter is fairly coolish,
And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.
Oh what a derision history holds
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!
10.9k
Cuckqueen
in a kink clutch
breaking a twisted angel
on the rack of
onward Christian solders
in ecstatic flagellations
for ***** saliva cliterature
with a mouth black window widows bite
in a white lie light
of cruel dark night
while jazz ****
layonaise spatters
where its soft and hurts good
and fossil **** *******
drive down the armageddon highway
in a bright burn
with ***** feet on clean sheets
and drooling tongues
lickalotapuss
Mar 17, 2019
Mar 17, 2019 at 1:20 PM UTC
I L U like my ***** clothes
Love being forgotten
On my bedroom floor
I L U like chores love the
music that helps them
forget they're chores
I L U like ***** dishes
Love hot showers and
the other side of the sink
I L U like I love spilling
Salt, and warding off the evil,
By tossing some behind my back
I L U like I love
Breaking rules about
my own supposed
non-Superstition
I L U like black cats love
Bad luck, cause to them,
It's just Friday, you know?
I L U like the hot dog bun
Loves staring at the beef patty,
Wishing "if only, if only"
I L U like bread loves
Being forgotten till we're really hungry
And then we're all ungrateful, like
"Hey bread, you remember us?"
And bread is high above us, like
"Always."
Not even a hint of scorn
I L U like the first time I saw
Jurassic Park, The dinosaurs
Were real enough
sans chicken feathers, and
Who needs modern science anyways
when love has no fossil records?
I L U like the weather loves
Surprise parties.
I L U like painful
surprise party memories love
being forgotten on my bedroom floor
I love you like Mayflies love living,
oh so briefly, once a day, every single day,
Chapter one to chapter none
I love you like mayflies love themselves,
brevity and all, stirred by nothing but
the glow of Dawn's light,
Dead by dusk, the Mayfly never
knows its final form.
It dies
in complete
incompletion,
but that's okay.
It drank the salt ocean,
it breathed the living air,
And that's how I want to L U
Feb 25, 2017
Feb 25, 2017 at 4:26 PM UTC
Fold you up like unwanted fat
cook you into a rocky stew
placed beneath a mantle of ice
far enough away to be misconstrued
You are old laminated time
And pillowed rock of incomprehensible
Earlier than any lime
Or sand, or sediment, or any kind
You are the grandfather rock
of mine
When I step with my inconsequential feet
living but transiently
I cannot help but be erased
that even you hath but one resting place
All the plants
and sands
and ever since the very first
we have always been ******
to this earth
walking upon your bones
I am sorry we cannot do more
but you know your creator
Speak in the same language
in amalgamators
of which we have forgot
and for that I can say
we are envious; are we naught?
Build softly, and carry us upon your thick
crust like pizza dough, cooking
and you let it sit
Let us win, set us up
drift us apart, leave us crushed
build us,
make us,
break us,
fill us
I want to be restored into your
stony belt and be redeemed
I want to become my own atomic fossil
to connect with the universe through long-lost
plotholes
and once again
hear the story
as a young lad
the way it was meant to be told
I want to eat dinner with my grandfather again
my real sweet stony-chiseled cheeked
father again
to be loved a boy
and a girl
and the whole world
a soul touched back into the deep
left unshackled
by a ***** or a queen
please,
take me back soon
rather than let me turn into
Laurentia
or Baltica
or Gondwana
alack
smacked into new rock to form
Urals
and Tetons
and Moher
back
Carbonate or Silicate,
and the end its the same
It won't be the end
for that fate rearranged
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 2:08 AM UTC
Once I was alive and full of mystery
But now I am dying and full of misery
Soon all that will be left is dirt and dust
My molten sphere will begin to rust
Fossil fuels, logging, factories and pollution
I am dying but yet you have found no solution
Yet you continue to consume without any thought
Pretty soon resources, there will be naught
Time isn’t on my side nor is the human population
Only your obliviousness and ignorance has put me in this situation
The weather cycles are getting stranger and stranger by the day
Heat is building up on the ice caps dirt and clay
The sea level is continuously rising
And animal species are slowly dying
Soon I’ll be nothing but disastrous ruins
You must stop what you have been doing
Cries of agony are an endless groan
I am slowly dying and all alone
Sadly my unrenewable products are beginning to run out
You destroy everything that gets in your way without a single doubt
You say you are humans but yet you show no humanity
You have brought me to my insanity
Animals and plants are only just surviving
But yet you humans are still thriving
You know what you are doing
My broken world will be your undoing
Perhaps you will never learn that my awful slow demise
Was because you never even tried to compromised
If in the end you try to save me from my tragic fate
It will it be too little too late
/gt
May 22, 2016
May 22, 2016 at 7:55 PM UTC
Memories are swept away by the wind
I reminisce all the moments we shared
All my shattered hopes you knew how to mend
No matter what I've done you always cared
Remember how we used to play guitar
On The Road To Nowhere we'd take a hike
All these memories seem distant, so far
I miss those days, I miss you Uncle Mike
I'd like to again visit Urchin Falls
And drag our canoe down The Peace River
Hear the frightening sounds of cougar calls
Fossil dig while the rain makes us shiver
When do we get to spend time together
Play in nature all day, despite weather
Nov 11, 2012
Nov 11, 2012 at 3:58 PM UTC
When the streets are made for nothing but thinking
It's the weight of the water that's caused our sinking
It's a loss of feeling that's made me lighter
It's everything around
That makes me neutrally bound
The only writers block is the writer
It's the kind of thing that makes a man with a pencil and paper a fighter
Like the paper's jumping up at you like a, like a alligator
But it's hard to chalk down all the mistakes, cause when you're trying so hard you're just being fake
You just gotta learn to let it, let it all flow
Show your all and let em all know
Just how you're feeling that blow, even if it means one or two bad lines, that's how you feel though
Cause life ain't a poetry book
It's all the points in between the pages that we missed
It's all the things that make us factories of emotions,
A crook with feelings creeping through the motions
Turning pages, trying to **** it all up like the books eroding
Don't you talk to me about feeling
Naw you ain't know what you be dealing, everyone's got there own **** you can't tell me mines to be concealing
See, I'm a material void of expressionism
Cause I told everyone what I feel, not for the sake of impressionism
They chose to see inside and learn a lesson without all the criticism
Everything I've learned is turning me into a crustaceans fossil
Hard to the shell but brittle to the touch, and I preach my **** like a god **** apostle
You make me feel from the inside and I'll be your crutch, but you're gonna need more than a god **** rock hammer to open me up
My words I mend to make up for what I conceal
But as I sit here thinking about how I feel
It's gonna take more than this to make me heal
Now let me dilute as I talk to the god inside my head and make a deal, something to end the pain and suffering I have concealed at the expense of everything real
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 9:48 PM UTC
Sugar and spice and everything nice,
Wolverine claws and a venomous bite,
Armed to the teeth for a ***** fight:
This is what teenage girls are made of.
Maybe I fall in love too easily,
But I’m just sixteen.
And I’m just sixteen but
When you cat call me and I pretend not to hear you,
You call me catty as if it’s surprising.
When you wolf whistle at me and I ignore you,
You call me names that aren’t PG.
I’m just sixteen but I’ve got news for you:
I’m a she-wolf, far from domesticated so
Whistling will do nothing for you.
I don’t answer the call of any man, because
I’m a lioness, and every time you catcall me
You forget who does the hunting.
You need reminding, to be put in your place.
You’re a predator but I’m not your prey-
No, you’re a predator but I’m much, much
Much higher up on the food chain.
Whistle and call all night long,
I’ll chew you up and spit you out
Like the kind of bubble gum that isn’t worth a trash can.
I’d call you a pig, but pigs usually have a
Higher IQ than you do.
My bones are made of titanium, of Adamantium, and
My rage came from the cosmos, and I control hurricanes with the water in my lungs.
I am catty,
And I am a *****
But you are a nobody,
Food for the vultures and
A piece of furniture to sharpen my claws on.
You may be a knife, but my heart is a diamond.
I am a diamond, and you are made of fossil fuels.
We are both the product of years of pressure,
But I took my disasters and made myself beautiful.
You let yourself become ugly, nowhere to go
Except standing on corners late at night,
Pollution spilling from your mouth and your eyes.
Leave me alone.
That’s not me being ‘hard-to-get,’ no,
That’s my wolf howl and the growl of my inner lioness.
Leave me alone,
Or else.
Dec 13, 2015
Dec 13, 2015 at 11:46 PM UTC
Dry veins branch the dead gulch
cinder cones set on a marble tan scape
fanning sands sketch ephemeral
fossil plates fold under columns of gray
Mountain back steep at the crevasse
sinkhole spots form on parallel nine
sulfur pipe stems from molten ash
withered shrubs and crumbling spines
silt fields cover the foothills
swayback shed near the Whipple tree barn
tumbledown shacks form the patchwork
from goat canyon ranch to big bison farm
Salt lakes fractured in amber
sickle-bush cut at the bowline knot
a half-moon traced by the viper
oxbow streams and valley grot
Feb 13, 2019
Feb 13, 2019 at 1:43 PM UTC
Picture a late afternoon
iridescent honey-yellow:
The glance she knows is seen
her cool hand placed in yours
your stripped shirt she rips,
her mouthing, “You’re it!”, hiding,
revealing herself stripped,
her finger tipped shh,
the brush of *******
surrender and assent.
She'll rise with a rustle
of desiccated pines,
needles will fall from her back,
she'll crumple a cigarette pack,
humming a vacant lament,
fingers caressing a fossil flea
embalmed in a dangling pendant.
Copyright © 2003 Gary Brocks
Aug 27, 2018
Aug 27, 2018 at 6:45 PM UTC
The world is losing
Gravity,
But no one can escape,
We're hurtling on our petrie dish
In a gel that seals our fate;
Gravitating
Towards black holes;
They're closer than you think.
In China
There's a wall of dust,
Seen clear from outer space;
Our living waters die
In a legacy of disgrace.
We're citizens
Wearing masks;
We should hide our faces,
But we're running daily tasks.
We're fossils burning
Fossil fuels
Found in cremation gas.
The amphibians
Are on the fringe;
Whales can't sound,
They run aground.
It's an environmental slaughter.
Our world has lost
Some gravity.
We need to plant our feet,
But charnel fires
And greenhouse gas
Have hastened our retreat.
Migrating birds lose sense of time,
Confused by the lights.
The mourning dove coos at night,
The nightingale at dawn;
We're like
New turtles muddling,
Under lost starlight.
We must grasp
The gravity
Of burning
Burning light.
Apr 21, 2016
Apr 21, 2016 at 10:41 AM UTC
Unlike fossil fuels
I won't run my life on things
That are so long dead.
May 21, 2014
May 21, 2014 at 9:59 PM UTC
I live where a man rubbing
White shoe cream on his leather loafers has ulcers
From malnutrition and constant cassava.
Where a man’s sister loves his Fossil watch
And avocados, but gives
The whole fruit to her hate child.
The road is walked in the morning by
Rwandans, the jerry cans on their heads wetting their chests
With water from the spigot, half an hour away.
Nike shoes are unstitched, laces
Washed white daily and
The drinking water is gone by seven p.m.
I live where black people go thirsty keeping
Their sneakers white; throats dry each morning
While lacing their shoes.
Jun 10, 2010
Jun 10, 2010 at 1:03 PM UTC
the simple true |
vs.
absurd ********
water on mars points to the future of
the dead earth;
Fascists vs. aliens | complete fossils of advanced
hominids found miles
deep below [ ]
the Martian surface [but w/ no signs
of engineering or built structures]
questions w/ no answers |
what kind of society did Martians have:
dictatorship, democracy or empire & what kind of poetry
did they write:
searching for the great epic poet
of Mars beginning by digging straight down past the fossil record
coming upon an entirely other set of structures & fossils dated
thousands of years before those previously found
& further down, more advanced forms of society
at the deepest strata advanced electronics & technology appears
w/ less & less hominid forms, n still w/no evidence of written
poetry
|
Martian poetry may have been oral; so in
setting up sound meters to detect
residual radio-sound waves, the history of sound can be
recorded & focused on any one particular voice or several:
from this we detect recited verse
no matter how far back it was uttered; in truth, the older the better as it's
easier to distinguish & isolate the particular voice
from ambient rhythms
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 8:24 PM UTC
Heartstone is a reflection in music on a ‘lost’ poem. The poem described in its two short verses a summer’s day, a landscape, a fossil found and placed in the palm of a child’s hand. The poem inspired a seven-movement work for wind, brass and percussion with solo piano. Here is its poetic programme note.
Chert
The piano draws an arc of rhythm
rising then falling.
Above
two choirs of wind and brass
exclaim, fanfare, mark out
shorter, determined
gestures of sound.
The procession, almost a march,
becomes a dance.
Alone
Two choirs of wind and brass
become four couples
whose music weaves
from complexity a simplicity:
Chromatic to Pentatonic
twelve becoming five.
Prase
Four stopped horns,
five extended tonalities.
Together they wander
a maze of Pentatonic paths;
alone, and in pairs, as a quartet
they discover within
a measured harmonic rhythm.
Tension: resolution
. . . and surrounding
their every move
the piano
insists an obligato,
a continuum of phrases,
absorbing into itself
the warp and weft of horn tone.
Sard
Oscillating
in perpetual motion
the full ensemble
occupies a frame
of time and space.
Flutes, reeds,
double-reeds
brass, piano,
percussion
mirror-fold on mirror-fold
layer upon layer
overlapping.
Yarns of threaded sound.
Tuff
Without a break
the mirrored oscillations
patter pentatonics
on tuned percussion
of marimba and vibraphone
whilst
a batterie of drums
lays down
shards of beaten rhythm
against this onward
folding of tonality change.
In the background
a choir of winds
flutes and single reeds
waymark this recursive journey
gathering together
cadential moments and the
necessary pause for breath.
Marl
Relentlessly, the motion is sustained,
piano-driven,
a syncopated continuo,
rhythm-sectioned
amidst layers of percussion.
Adding edge,
a choir of brass and double reeds
amplify the piano’s jagged rhythms
providing impetus for
phrases to become longer and longer,
ratching up the tension,
ever-denying closure
until the batterie
delivers
a conclusive flourish.
Paramoudra
Pulse-figures of winds.
Motific cells of brass.
Both
negotiate a stream of
fractal-shaped tonality
expanding: contracting.
A blossom of fanfares
folding into
pulsating layers
of tuned percussion,
flutes and reeds.
A dance-like episode
absorbs a chorale.
Four horns in close harmony
against the continuing dance.
A duet of differences
flows into a cascade of chords
in closed and open forms.
The piano supports
brass-flourishing figures
before a final stillness.
Heartstone
In gentle reflection
the solitary piano –
a figure in a landscape
of collapsed harmonic forms -
presents in slow procession
the essence of previous music.
Jan 27, 2013
Jan 27, 2013 at 12:41 PM UTC
platonic years insurrected by civil wars (again)
one girl hit by lightning (again)
x-rays of her broken limbs painted from memory
caught between flintlock and fossil
with a just-sleepy-enough, narcotic feeling
his ghost in the sock drawer
his odd fingerprints on her luggage
the wilt of flowered books
full of wide-eyed selfies
and running scared old love letters
(or were they death threats?)
all roadblocks to her star-shaped chemical world
until her coup d'état falls helplessly into the sea (again)
Sep 18, 2023
Sep 18, 2023 at 7:52 AM UTC
(Rock Lake, Canada)
In this country there is neither measure nor balance
To redress the dominance of rocks and woods,
The passage, say, of these man-shaming clouds.
No gesture of yours or mine could catch their attention,
No word make them carry water or fire the kindling
Like local trolls in the spell of a superior being.
Well, one wearies of the Public Gardens: one wants a vacation
Where trees and clouds and animals pay no notice;
Away from the labeled elms, the tame tea-roses.
It took three days driving north to find a cloud
The polite skies over Boston couldn't possibly accommodate.
Here on the last frontier of the big, brash spirit
The horizons are too far off to be chummy as uncles;
The colors assert themselves with a sort of vengeance.
Each day concludes in a huge splurge of vermilions
And night arrives in one gigantic step.
It is comfortable, for a change, to mean so little.
These rocks offer no purchase to herbage or people:
They are conceiving a dynasty of perfect cold.
In a month we'll wonder what plates and forks are for.
I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.
The Pilgrims and Indians might never have happened.
Planets pulse in the lake like bright amoebas;
The pines blot our voices up in their lightest sighs.
Around our tent the old simplicities sough
Sleepily as Lethe, trying to get in.
We'll wake blank-brained as water in the dawn.
3.8k
Currently there are:
Thousands of cars zooming down the highway at breakneck speeds,
Millions of lights illuminating the dreary road,
With the power of a hundred valiant steeds,
Causing the cement to corrode and erode,
Thousands of fossil fuels burnt merely to transport other fossil fuels,
Pollutants filling the air and altering our environment,
But these are the worlds most precious jewels,
All to feel the capitalist tyrant.
But hey... At least I have air conditioning in my F150 while heading to set off Chinese fireworks while celebrating the 4th of July.
The American Dream.
Feb 18, 2014
Feb 18, 2014 at 7:38 PM UTC
This was written a few Septembers ago. Walking on the streets of a now deserted beach island, only the leaves, in various states, to keep me company.
September,
walk with me,
under bridges of wedding tree canopies,
still green aplenty,
tho subtle marked for change,
making summer illusions,
environmentally unsustainable.
September,
stroll on pathways
of lesser, off the track, shaded lanes,
the sun blocker trees wear new necklaces,
brown and yellow diamonds,
a coming attraction of
their denouement,
their denudement.
The September trees are:
Ever so slightly stooped,
bent with weight of a surety,
knowing with high certainty,
their future, bleak,
bowed and drooped,
discouraged by the
cold travails soon to arrive.
Living in the recent past,
I am dressed inappropriately,
white tee and shorts,
past pretender,
still dressed in my
Gap issue summer uniform,
summer suspended animation.
Island streets are de-humanized,
gone home are the children,
newly fallen leaves have,
their place, taken.
The leaves are:
magically organized along
the sidelines of empty streets,
quiet stadiums of would be
kid's touch football fields.
browned, crisp and soulless,
first greet this solitary stroller,
like a cheering throng of ghosts,
celebrating a sighting -
man, as a seasonal fossil,
one that still is living
and worth reminding, yet
human too shall pass when
his fall arrives.
the leave's cheers make over
into jeers and mocking laughs:
Oh humans, they say,
your summer songs naive,
mais tres charmant.
On Crescent Beach,
the driftwood sadly forlorn,
looking more adrift than ever,
for no one passes to express
admiration at the past seasons
Nouveau Expressionism,
an objet d'art lonely,
for the beach gallery shuttered,
raising questions existential.
Is driftwood on the beach sans
human admiration,
art, truth or refuse?
I am looking backwards as the
Earth moves forward.
My own axis, my eyes,
conscientious objectors
refuse to be pressed
into service of the seasons.
No, no,
to involuntary servitude,
to rotation and revolution.
Nature's witnesses,
trees and leaves write
their own poem,
of foolish men who:
Bow and droop,
discouraged by the
travails soon to arrive,
Delaying their own fall,
finally shed summer delusions
like leaves upon the ground,
summer poetry silenced,
summer suspended, no more.
Dec 7, 2013
Dec 7, 2013 at 8:06 AM UTC
Using my fairest hand
I wrote your name on a scrap of paper,
And slipped it into my wallet
So it would be next to my heart
All day.
So that I could carry you with me
To venerate
Like the bones of a blessed saint
In a casket.
I opened up my box of relics
A testament to loves
Unloved
To hearts broken
To lives unravelled.
An acorn that did not grow into an oak.
A fossil from some petrified forest.
Mocking my broken heart
With it's unthinkable age.
The note, scribbled,
The perfumed scarf.
The poem.
The coaster.
Things.
To remind me
As if I could ever
Forget.
May 12, 2015
May 12, 2015 at 5:26 PM UTC