"fungi" poems
Babels of blocks to the high heavens towering
Flames of futility swirling below;
Poisonous fungi in brick and stone flowering,
Lanterns that shudder and death-lights that glow.
Black monstrous bridges across oily rivers,
Cobwebs of cable to nameless things spun;
Catacomb deeps whose dank chaos delivers
Streams of live foetor that rots in the sun.
Colour and splendour, disease and decaying,
Shrieking and ringing and crawling insane,
Rabbles exotic to stranger-gods praying,
Jumbles of odour that stifle the brain.
Legions of cats from the alleys nocturnal.
Howling and lean in the glare of the moon,
Screaming the future with mouthings infernal,
Yelling the Garden of Pluto's red rune.
Tall towers and pyramids ivy'd and crumbling,
Bats that swoop low in the weed-cumber'd streets;
Bleak Arkham bridges o'er rivers whose rumbling
Joins with no voice as the thick horde retreats.
Belfries that buckle against the moon totter,
Caverns whose mouths are by mosses effac'd,
And living to answer the wind and the water,
Only the lean cats that howl in the wastes.
15.8k
One early morning along the quiet forest floor, a little mushroom popped it's head out of the ground. Looking in wonder, he pushed passed the dead leaves and dirt to reach for sunlight below the canopy.
"STOP!" said the forest. "You have been unruly. We have seen you try to grow with discord and disregard, denying the order. And what are you, alien? Identify as plant or animal!"
The little mushroom responded, "But I only did as you did; made a home. Like the rooted trees pillar in our leafy halls, as the moss nestles among the rocks, or how the birds nest in their hollows, why am I so different? I am both you and me."
The forest inhabitants pondered. In this time the mushroom grew and died. It took too long for the trees and the birds and the moss to agree by the time their fellow forest friend had passed.
The trees, too slow to interrupt, cried out to all, "What have we done?! we may not have thought him as beautiful as the rest of us, but the mushroom was a part of this forest!"
As a parting token, the little fungi grew a network of strands below the trees roots to support them all, feeding and protecting them even in death.
With it's dying breath, it dropped it's spores, to which would grow bountiful among the forest floor, among the trees and the rocks and moss. They had not known it, but the little mushroom was a part of a greater fungi, miles across. It had been there as long as the forest, keeping the trees company since time began, before humans, before us.
Only the trees had the knowledge to understand the little mushroom, but their voices were too quiet, too slow. So the trees let the mushrooms grow in their branches and on their logs to give them a home.
Jan 21, 2016
Jan 21, 2016 at 1:35 PM UTC
Hey Human! I am your Sibling.
Queen bee wings are Ripped,
bee niblings are Smoked
For Your Honey Sweet.
Hey human! Listen your Sibling’s Buzz.
Tiger lost bones for Medicine,
Fox lost fur for Fashion,
Sharks lost fins for Soup.
Hey human! Do Not Butcher Siblings.
Simba’s life is not your Trophy,
Jumbo’s tusks are not Decors,
Helmets of Hornbills are not jewels.
Hey human! Do Not Reap Siblings.
Emperors of ice continent lost land,
Economics is making Amazon less,
Logging makes Orangutans homeless.
Hey human! Do Not Invade Siblings.
Warm oceans bleach corals,
Water depleted in cities,
We ingest plastic regularly.
Hey human! Do Not Desert the Earth.
Overfishing is holocaust of aquatic life,
Livestock levitates toxic emissions.
Hey human! Do Not Prey on Siblings.
Lichens stunned by pollution,
Symbionts are disintegrating,
Biodiversity is declining.
Hey human! Be Together with Siblings.
Hey Human! We are Offsprings of Mother Nature.
Monera, Animalia, Fungi, Plantae, Protista
all have common roots.
We are branches of the one Phylogenetic Tree
rooting Common Ancestry unto LUCA.
Hey Human! We are Siblings.
Hey Human! Recall your Siblings.
Hey Human! Revive your Siblings.
Jul 20, 2019
Jul 20, 2019 at 11:19 AM UTC
I am told that Bilbo, before his
Adventures began, would walk, the
Shire to seek the queen of the fungi.
To search was the compulsion.
Driven by taste, for the mysterious
Fruit of the forest floor.
When asked, he would say,
To savour the wild delight has nothing to compare,
To the humble taste of a spud, or sprout,
Just an ecstasy of unparalleled delight.
Knowing you have found the woody nutty treasure.
Of the queen of the forest floor.
Tis the biggest adventure a hobbit needs
To test his might against the mighty mushroom.
But then he had yet to meet ...
A wizard and a dwarf.
© Nick Strong 2014
Sep 2, 2013
Sep 2, 2013 at 4:10 PM UTC
The pitter patter of rain echos through the soil,
sending a message in morse code.
Biological clocks begin to turn as fungi wake from their slumber.
Hyphae radiate outward, mapping the skin of the earth,
a living neural network woven into the soil of the forest.
May 10, 2016
May 10, 2016 at 12:37 PM UTC
blushing hues
preserving precious nutrition
the sun is moving closer
releasing fingers that once reached high
tumbling to the ground
drying out, and crinkling
the sun is turning its face
allowing the next phase to begin
insignificant
like tiny ants crowding the cracks
minuscule
like the creeper ******* nutrients
*one "being" on earth
one earth, in the middle of "space"*
ancient methuselah,
your mycelium branching-
entwining, and communicating
giving strength to brethren
as hibernation takes hold
birthing fungi anew
***orange, browns, yellows and reds
i give my breath away***
Nov 12, 2012
Nov 12, 2012 at 5:48 PM UTC
How wonderful it is, I say, to the retreating
yellow form of your feelings I mistook
For Infatuation, you’re a romance heckler
far and far away from
Accepting fruition within classrooms and
being labelled as an angel.
And it was within forbidden hell of
euphoria, I found
You nestled in the society’s psyche
neither content or calling
For help. Neither did you neglect the
pink spectacles of the society,
Even found yourself moulding and moulding
into a fungi green
That I could not recognize, within that
half-sanctum, half-oasis I found you
absentmindedly
Bathing in, you were already out of
its waters.
And I was no longer seeing you within
the dry desert or the sibilance
of my desires, but instead
in cement woodlands and
Within artificial communication and
Intimacy I gave willingly.
Now how does it feel, to have your
heart in one piece,
How does it feel to not use
whipped cream to fill in the
Cracked, salty sections of your
own ***** that,
Out of confusion, continues to
play its favorite song but
in all the wrong beats.
Somehow within cacophony I found
you, nestled, comfortable in
Bogus, fraudulent wings of a former
angel- who now weeps under our
Feet in theory- Somehow, somewhere,
I lost you within an epiphany
That reeked of bliss and pleasure-
Somehow, we end up losing
Twins of the heavens when all is well.
How wonderful.
How wonderful it is, I say, to your
lost, secretly-weeping figure
That I can’t tell whether transparent or
yellow your figure is.
But I keep speaking-
“Oh, how (falsely) wonderful it is-
To love the first angel I’ve set
my eyes upon-
“Oh, how (falsely) wonderful it is-
To lose an angel, no matter how
phoney, to a social heaven.”
- enriko. aug 5. 11:45pm
Aug 5, 2018
Aug 5, 2018 at 12:32 PM UTC
Outside the miner's shack Joshua trees stand silent vigil,
expecting his imminent return, or perhaps his ghost.
Horn silver, weathered by rainwater from volcanic rock,
no longer strews fallow ground to lure the miner back.
In lieu, small succulents feed tortoise and jackrabbit,
replace the metal which only men could value.
Nevada gains a confluence of life in the exchange,
dry-lake flora and fauna bartered for chlorargyrite.
Barren mountains surround this desolation,
where nothing more than fungi lie in vapid dissipation
before the relentless punishment of the sun,
a lattice-work of valleys dissecting their *****
I ventured here to purge my body of poisons,
exhale the vapors and biles of city living,
to rid the alien presence in my mitochondria,
and let it go the way of Silver State.
Feb 19, 2012
Feb 19, 2012 at 11:58 PM UTC
Preventing contamination,
A constant challenge in cell culture.
Contamination not only affects,
The culture in question and,
Costs time and money,
But also endangers the reproducibility of results.
No cell culture problem,
Is as universal as that of culture loss
Due to contamination.
Generally, contamination may be separated,
Into categories of microbial,
And eukaryotic contamination.
Examples of microbial contamination include:
Bacteria (including Mycoplasma),
Fungi and yeast;
Eukaryotic contamination includes:
Cross-contamination with other cell lines.
Bacteria, yeast and fungi,
The three more common types of contamination,
But luckily these forms are often detectable,
Under the microscope and,
By visual cues,
Like colour or turbidity changes in the medium.
Mycoplasma is a small genus of bacteria,
That lack a cell wall and for this reason,
They remain unaffected by common antibiotics.
They are also difficult to detect,
With standard microscopes,
Due to their size, about 0.1 μm in diameter,
And the fact that they often attach to host cells.
To prevent contamination,
Use 70% ethanol for disinfecting,
Equipment & surfaces,
Related to cell culture.
Sterile filter the media first,
Before bringing to the lab.
Fetal Bovine Serum,
A potential source of contamination,
Contains mycoplasma.
Filter it at 0.1 μm, or,
Gamma irradiate it.
Aseptic technique,
Necessary.
The laboratory workers be the last,
But not the least source of contamination.
Teach them the ideal laboratory practices,
To ensure asepticity in a laboratory.
Dec 6, 2016
Dec 6, 2016 at 9:02 PM UTC
In braze, silent breeze of dreams incantations,
Shiva arms sway in the forest dark, mushroom,
Cloud, lord with fungi, mosses whose clinging
Shades of branches, braids deep, forking stories
Of old, brooding cauldron Druids, sidles Eastern
Spindrift words of Sanskrit spake, told in veined
Sacred hands unfound, celestial spines, moulded
Green, in the windy monkish statutes of the fallen
And single handed claps of the missionary leaves.
Aug 28, 2013
Aug 28, 2013 at 10:41 PM UTC
the october rose is wistful and reticent
our defenses dense like sediment and sentences
love descends like a fog
and we begin as quickly to depart
our dialogue takes many turns
from staunch to raunchy in a few minutes
there is no need to be concerned
its only in our heads
our needs no longer mean anything
love is lost in forms
amidst the storms of anger and rage
imprisoning our souls
dinosaur bones roam the earth
i went out in search of chrysanthemums
and instead i found you lying on the ground
making a pillow out of superconductive fungi
to test your theories of interconnectivity
what transpired cannot be spoken about
all my doubts vanished and the words that were spoken
resounded for days in my being
as if they echoed from within some part of me
that had always longed to hear them
Apr 15, 2018
Apr 15, 2018 at 11:44 PM UTC
Saffron, delights, rubies and gold
Crushed silvers from the shores
Cornish tin, copper green as mould
Heathers from the mauve moors.
Buttercups and daisies in an English lawn
Red and white spotted fungi in the wood
Hedges laden with gems stripped and torn
Smashed diamonds embedded in the mud.
Little gems sparkle like prisms on the twig
Fat with juice, brimming with good
Good enough to eat, best to swig.
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 4:16 AM UTC
He was known as the local Mycophagist
In the dales, the woods and the hills,
What happened was sad, for he wasn’t so bad
Just a tad underdone, Toby Gills,
They say that the cord was around his neck,
He was born with a carroty mop,
And a pale white head, he was almost dead
When the doctor had called out ‘Stop!’
They cut the cord and they let him breathe,
The damage was already done,
The blood had been stopped to his carroty top
So they said that he’d always be dumb.
But he found a niche where the fungi creeps
And went out collecting the spore,
In a year or two he knew more than you
And the college Professor next door.
He studied his mushrooms with loving intent,
He knew about hen of the woods,
He knew about bracket and shaggy manes, magic
And paddy straw, they were the goods;
He fostered his lobster and hedgehog and oyster
And coral fungi and stinkhorns,
But didn’t discern between fly agarics
And toadstools that grew in the lawn.
He grew his spore in a deep, dark cellar
And sold to the folk who came by,
And never would judge between Widow Weller
And the ordinary witches of Rye,
He’d sell death caps, and pigskin puffballs
Not thinking to question them why,
Or who would be eating his laughing Jim’s
And whether they knew they would die.
The air was thick and the air was damp
And he fell in the dark one day,
Scattering toadstools into the air
And their spores had floated away,
He breathed the spores right into his lungs
For he hadn’t been wearing a mask,
But ****** them in right over his tongue
And they came to his lungs, at last.
I happened to see him out in the street
He was finding it hard to breathe,
He could only take a couple of steps
Then sit on the kerb, to heave,
I tried to help but he waved me away
And his eyes were yellow and cruel,
Then I saw what he’d thrown up on the kerb
Some yellow and red toadstools.
The man was a walking toadstool spore
They were popping up out of his hair,
Pushing their way though his carroty top
In a bid to get to the air,
And his skin was blotched like a puffball, he
Looked up at me, and he cried,
As a giant toadstool grew from his throat
And he lay on his side, and died.
David Lewis Paget
Dec 7, 2013
Dec 7, 2013 at 5:22 AM UTC
.
In braze, silent breeze of dreams incantations,
Shiva arms sway in the forest dark, mushroom,
Cloud, lord with fungi, mosses whose clinging
Shades of branches, braids deep, forking stories
Of old, brooding cauldron Druids, sidles Eastern
Spindrift words of Sanskrit spake, told in veined
Sacred hands unfound, celestial spines, moulded
Green, in the windy monkish statutes of the fallen
And single handed claps of the missionary leaves.
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 6:47 PM UTC
Mediocrity
Mediocre
No good melody
A definition stained on the upper region of my brain
Actively producing fungi fumes
Nauseated, you are excused
Instant hate when uttering its name
It makes our hands shake, to be displayed in such a way
It has no purpose, only an intention
Killing curiousity, by outlining others self righteously
Mediocre is my creative space for acceptance and I have requested an invitation to everybody
No reasoning just letting go of expectations consuming
Hope to see you soon
Jun 4, 2016
Jun 4, 2016 at 4:00 PM UTC
Life is a writhing swirl who's information is meaningful but the information does not exist for the purpose of being comprehended so it is only taken in and interpreted as well or as usefully as the perceptive devices.
Nothing significant has a vendetta against the individual beings' happiness or success, though beings may appear as food or some other form of fulfillment to other beings. Beings will view other beings as their appetites would view any other thing. No one can exist in the view of another. Don't expect others to view you as you do. You are NOT their center, only your own.
Everybody thinks everybody else is insufferably selfish and everybody is right.
Love is interesting though. More on that after more data is collected.
May 30, 2015
May 30, 2015 at 12:24 PM UTC
Nearing great compost pile,
that steamy heap,
insatiable hunger hits guts.
And I know fortitude for journey
is contained in wealth of
centipedes, predatory mites,
rove beetles, ants,
nematodes, protozoa,
and **** of wriggly worms.
Virgil waits for me, as he did Dante.
He takes form of a sowbug,
but with whole of worldly wisdom.
Shows me circles to which I will fall:
organic residues,
primary consumers,
secondary consumers
and further tertiary consumers.
An ancient pyramid decompositional
processes the scaling down
before the rising up. Each eating
excrement of another before them.
One I become with slugs and snails.
Invertebrates shred meat from bone.
Flies make airborne my bacteria,
carrying me off to feed birth of
future fungi.
I am reborn over and over.
Never more have I known
anything more Godly.
Intestinal juices of earth, enzymes
and other fermentation
taking me down,
pushing me out,
transforming trash of my existence
back to Eden.
Mar 25, 2016
Mar 25, 2016 at 6:49 PM UTC
Rays of the morning sun
Encroached the attic
From a very notorious
Broken piece of window
Exposed the little specks of dust
Suspended
In the rotting wooden walls.
Some sticking in the peeling paint
Some lying
On her mother's once famous cookbooks
Now being devoured
By selfish
silverfish and fungi.
The dust
Telling stories of her childhood
Settled upon the rocking horse
And her favourite little music box
And a carton full of holiday polaroids.
The dust
Such a dry commodity
Moistened some old memories.
Reminiscence.
Isn't it amazing?
Feb 10, 2015
Feb 10, 2015 at 1:23 PM UTC
She has cooties,
that taste like
candy cake, bad breath
that smells like
caramelized honey.
She has mono,
that gives you
superpowers, ******
would be a blessing,
but that’s just a cut
she got from climbing.
If I said, “Is that a fungus?”
She’d say nope, fungi
and I’d say ****
I got the fungeries”
If I kissed you
it wasn’t from lack of trying
not to, but because
your lips looked tasty
and I had the munchies.
Jun 13, 2011
Jun 13, 2011 at 12:29 PM UTC
She hides in pockets of flesh in my gums
I can taste her in the morning when I spit
at night I can feel her swimming in an ocean of mouthwash
In sleep she oozes onto my pillow
moistening the dusty fabric under my cheek
When shes really playful
she will wiggle herself into my cerebellum
and dance furiously with my dreams
or gently sing lullabies when my heart wont let me sleep
when the world and its filth have commandeered my hope
she is there to brush away the dirt with untarnished hands
she is my religion she is my ******
without her I am sick
a smoldering heat of black matter and fungi
she is antibacterial soap on my soul
Lysol wipes to my tarred lungs
with one whiff I am cleansed of debris
she saturates the oxygen in my blood
she resides in my abdomen
I can feel her in my kidneys.
Oct 8, 2011
Oct 8, 2011 at 5:08 PM UTC
The fungi has started to grow again,
coming from inside, rotting within.
My eyes scan the room from left to right,
there's nothing interesting,
anywhere found in sight.
I remove myself to explore and play,
into the forest I go, around midday.
As I wander and wonder,
my thoughts twist around me, causing a fluster.
All of this just because of,
some guy.
It's not your normal fungi,
it's the kind that if you touch it,
it will rot you from your delicate finger tips
to the very light that is your soul.
The kind of fungi to ruin your night.
So as I lie here, accepting my fate,
that evil demon comes creeping,
to smile in my face.
I'm all too weak to continue on,
finally letting go of myself, collapsing like a fawn.
My skeletal remains,
shimmer in the sun-
reflecting light like the barrel of a gun.
It's hard not to notice that toadstool right there,
growing from what would be my hair.
The fungi still loves to decay,
what was once me
One,
Very
Cold
October
Day.
Oct 22, 2019
Oct 22, 2019 at 5:04 PM UTC
Now I confess, arrest me please
Though I am undeserving and completely at ease.
A quiet obsidian house, only footsteps to be heard
The fox in the backyard, a squirrel or a bird.
I am the woman of the place, you know
A matriarch of sorts
Fruitful fungi sprout from my back
They are akin to witches warts.
I was found in a dream
I awoke upset
I am all that I need
I easily forget.
Jan 14, 2019
Jan 14, 2019 at 6:52 PM UTC
In braze, silent breeze of dreams incantations,
Shiva arms sway in the forest dark, mushroom,
Cloud, lord with fungi, mosses whose clinging
Shades of branches, braids deep, forking stories
Of old, brooding cauldron Druids, sidles Eastern
Spindrift words of Sanskrit spake, told in veined
Sacred hands unfound, celestial spines, moulded
Green, in the windy monkish statutes of the fallen
And single handed claps of the missionary leaves.
Aug 13, 2014
Aug 13, 2014 at 12:25 PM UTC
A scintillating ocean.
Refracting light across the spectrum,
colours beyond white, black, and red;
Mirror to the universal spirits.
Crystalline forms growing
like families of fungi across the horizon.
A mycological configuration
of salts and waveform reflectors.
A frisson of diamonds.
Seizures of globular light, elliptical rainbows.
Twice-reflected hollow moonbeams.
Creating.
Cubes in the molecular structure,
Silent carbon and quartz,
as from some distant caverns
unseen by any eye.
May 22, 2012
May 22, 2012 at 3:11 PM UTC