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Juliana Feb 2014
The deep sighs of fall
send chills across the daisies.
My compass is sick
and there’s a sense of urgency in my eyelashes,
feeling around for the blisters on my skin
searching for a bed to sleep.

Facets of sleep
encourage the rain to fall,
cold weather raising capillaries under my skin.
I wrote the history of the Holocene era on daisies,
microscope lenses tickling my eyelashes;
dim lighting makes me home sick.

My mind is sick,
I dream of oceans in my sleep,
medicine labels printed on my eyelashes
pill bottles coloured like fall.
Tattoos of purple fringed daisies
cover my shoulders like skin.

Teeth full of apple skin;
asking God how not to be sick,
wondering if a sacrifice of daisies
will get my blood to sleep.
My hair is like the leaves during fall;
I hope I get to keep my eyelashes.

There’s snow in my eyelashes,
landscapes of frost form on skin
the cold air begins to fall,
I decide to call in sick
preferring to hide in a hot sleep
until my breaths sprout purple daisies.

How to grow Gerber daisies,
without losing my eyelashes?
My fingernails are full of sleep,
hot tea grasps at my paper skin.
The panacea for the sick
is a perfect concentration of wool sweaters and fall.

You eat daisies in the fever of fall.
Through my eyelashes I am morally sick,
but yesterday I finally let sleep settle into my skin.
part of my sestina series
E Townsend Dec 2015
Some nights music has to be turned up
at the highest volume
so that my thoughts
do not **** me in my sleep
Molecules of two elements, nitrogen and oxygen, comprise about 99 percent of the air. The remaining hoity toity 1% includes small amounts celestial seasoning luxurious riches as argon and carbon dioxide. (Other gases such as neon, helium, and methane are present in trace amounts.) Oxygen is the life-giving element in the air.

Earth's atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, and 0.03% carbon dioxide with very small percentages of other elements. Our atmosphere also contains water vapor. In addition, Earth's atmosphere contains traces of dust particles, pollen, plant grains and other solid particles.

Even when the air seems to be completely clear, it is full of atmospheric particles - invisible solid and semisolid bits of matter, including dust, smoke, pollen, spores, bacteria and viruses. Some atmospheric particles are so large that you will feel them if they strike you. However, particles this large rarely travel far before they fall to the ground. Finer particles may be carried many miles before settling during a lull in the wind, while still tinier specks may remain suspended in the air indefinitely. The finest particles are jostled this way and that by moving air molecules and drift with the slightest currents. Only rain and snow can wash them out of the atmosphere. These tiny particles are so small that scientists measure their dimensions in microns - a micron is about one 25-thousandth of an inch. They include pollen grains, whose diameters are sometimes less than 25 microns; bacteria, which range from about 2 to 30 microns across; individual virus particles, measuring a very small fraction of a micron; and carbon smoke particles, which may be as tiny as two hundredths of a micron.

Particles are frequently found in concentrations of more than a million per cubic inch of air. A human being's daily intake of air is about 450,000 cubic inches. This means that we inhale an astronomical numbers of foreign bodies. Particles larger than about 5 microns are generally filtered from the air in the nasal passages. Other large particles are caught by hairlike protuberances in the air passages leading to the lungs and are swept back toward the mouth. Most of the extremely fine particles that do reach the lungs are exhaled again - although some of this matter is deposited in the minute air sacs within the lungs. From these air sacs, particles may go into solution and pass through the lung walls into the bloodstream. If the material is toxic, harmful reactions may occur when it enters the blood. Fine particles retained in the lungs can cause permanent tissue damage, as with Coal workers' pneumoconiosis (black lung disease), caused by buildup of coal dust in the lungs, and with silicosis, which is caused by the buildup of silicon dust.

If the air is still, given sufficient time, all but the smallest airborne particles will settle to the ground under their own weight. Their rate of fall is closely proportional to particle size and density.
For example, vast amounts of fine volcanic ash were thrown into the air by the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa, in 1883, and again by the Alaskan volcano Katmai, in 1912. In both instances, the finer dust reached the stratosphere and spread around the world high above the rains and storms that tend to cleanse the lower atmosphere. In fact, many years elapsed before these volcanic dusts entirely disappeared from the atmosphere. Since a two-micron dust particle may require about four years to fall 17 miles in the atmosphere, the lingering effect is not in the least surprising.
Dust storms are also prolific producers of airborne debris. Europe is sometimes showered with dust originating in the Sahara. In March 1901, for instance, an estimated total of two million tons of Sahara dust fell on North Africa and the Europe. Two years later, in February 1903, Britain received a deposit estimated at ten million tons. On many occasions, Sahara dust has fallen in muddy rain and reddish snow over much of southwestern Europe. During North America's droughts of the 1930s, dust storms blew ten million tons of dust at a time aloft in the heart of the continent. Occasionally, high winds swept the dust eastward 1800 miles to darken skies along the continent's Atlantic coast.

When the wind strikes the crest of an ocean wave, or a calm sea is agitated by rain or by air bubbles bursting at the surface, the finer droplets that enter the air quickly evaporate, leaving tiny salt crystals suspended in the air. Winds carry these salt crystals over all the Earth. Normally, airborne salt particles from the sea are less than a micron in diameter. It would take a million of them to weigh a pound.
Salt particles play an important part in weather processes because they are hygroscopic - they absorb water. Raindrops usually form around tiny particles that act as nuclei for condensation. Generally, each fog and cloud droplet also collects around a particle of some type at its center. Tiny crystals of sea salt make better condensation nuclei than other natural particles found in the air. Thus, salt particles in the air help make rain.

Dust from meteor showers may occasionally affect world rainfall. When the Earth encounters a swarm of meteors, those meteors that get to the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere are vaporized by heat from friction. The resulting debris is a fine smoke or powder. This fine dust then floats down into the cloud system of the lower atmosphere, where it can readily serve as nuclei around which ice crystals or raindrops can form. Increases in world rainfall come about a month after the Earth encounters meteor systems in space. The delay of a month allows sufficient time for the meteoric dust to fall through the upper atmosphere. Occasionally, large meteors leave visible trains of dust. Most often their trails disappear rapidly, but in a few witnessed cases a wake of dust has remained visible for an hour or so.
In one extreme instance-a great meteor that broke up in the sky over Siberia in 1908-the dust cloud traveled all the way around the world before it dissipated.

Large forest fires are among the more spectacular producers of foreign particles in the atmosphere.
Because these fires create violent updrafts, smoke particles are carried to great heights, and, being small, are spread over vast distances by high altitude winds. In the autumn of 1950, forest fires in Alberta, Canada produced smoke that drifted east over North America on the prevailing wind and crossed the North Atlantic, reaching Britain and continental Europe. The light-scattering properties of this dense smoke made the Sun look indigo and the Moon blue to observers in Scotland and other northern lands.

Wind-pollinated plants are the most prolific sources of foreign particles in the air. This is a problem for people with allergies.

Spores are closely related to pollens. Spores are the reproductive bodies of fungi, which include molds, yeasts, rusts, mildews, puffballs and mushrooms. Tiny spores are adrift everywhere in the air, even over the oceans. Although they resemble pollens in general appearance, spores are not fertilizing agents. Instead, they are like seeds, and give rise to new organisms wherever they take hold. Spores have been found as high as 14 miles in the air over the entire globe. Most fungi depend on the wind for spore dissemination. Once airborne, spores are carried easily by the slightest air currents.

Once, physicians were taught that infectious microorganisms quickly settle out of the air and die. Today, the droplets ejected, say, by a sneeze, are known to evaporate almost immediately, leaving whatever microorganisms they contain to drift through the air. Only a relatively small fraction of microorganism’s human beings breathe cause disease. In fact, most bacteria are actually helpful. Some, for example, convert atmospheric nitrogen into usable plant food. Pathogenic, or disease-producing, microorganisms, however, can be very dangerous. Most propagate by subdivision-each living cell splits into two cells. Each of the new cells then grows and divides again into two more cells. Provided with ideal conditions, populations multiply quickly. Fortunately microorganisms do not thrive very well in the air. Unless there is enough humidity in the air, many desiccate and die. Short exposure to the ultraviolet radiation of the Sun also kills most microorganisms. Low temperatures greatly decrease their activity, and elevated temperatures destroy them rapidly. Still, many microorganisms survive in the air, despite these hazards. Among the tiniest of airborne particles are viruses, which are on the borderline between living matter and lifeless chemical substances.

Earth is the only planet we know of that can support life. This is an amazing fact, considering that it is made out of the same matter as other planets in our solar system, was formed at the same time and through the same processes as every other planet, and gets its energy from the sun. To a universal traveler, Earth may seem to be a harmless little planet in the far reaches of one of billions of spiral galaxies in the universe. It has an average size star of average brightness and is joined by seven other planets — which support no known life forms — in its solar system. While this may be fitting for a passage from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, in the grand scheme of the universe, it would be a fairly accurate description. However, Earth is a planet teeming with vitality and is home to billions of plants and animals that share a common evolutionary track. How and why did we get here? What processes had to take place for this to happen? And where do we go from here? The fact is, no one has been able to come close to knowing exactly what led to the origins of life, and we may never know. After 5 billion years of Earth’s formation and evolution, the evidence may have been lost. But scientists have made significant progress in understanding what chemical processes that may have led to the origins of life. There are many theories, but most have the same general perspective of how things came to be the way they are. Following is an account of life’s beginnings based on some of the leading research and theories related to the subject, and of course, fossil records dating back as far as 3.5 billion years ago.

The solar system was created from gas clouds and dust that remained from the Sun's formation some 6-7 billion years ago. This material contained only about .2% of the solar system's mass with the Sun holding the rest. Earth began to form over 4.6 billion years ago from the same cloud of gas (mostly hydrogen and helium) and interstellar dust that formed our sun, the rest of the solar system and even our galaxy. In fact, Earth is still forming and cooling from the galactic implosion that created the other stars and planetary systems in our galaxy. This process began about 13.6 billion years ago when the Milky Way Galaxy began to form. As our solar system began to come together, the sun formed within a cloud of dust and gas that continued to shrink in upon itself by its own gravitational forces. This caused it to undergo the fusion process and give off light, heat and other radiation. During this process, the remaining clouds of gas and dust that surrounded the sun began to form into smaller lumps called planetesimals, which eventually formed into the planets we know today.

A large number of small objects, called planetesimals, began to form around the Sun early in the formation of the solar system. These objects were the building blocks for the planets that exist today. The Earth went through a period of catastrophic and intense formation during its earliest beginnings 4.6-4.4 billion years ago. By 3.8 to 4.1 billion years ago, Earth had become a planet with an atmosphere (not like our atmosphere today) and an ocean. This period of Earth’s formation is referred to as the Precambrian Period. The Precambrian is divided into three parts: the Hadean, Archean and Proterozoic Periods.

The Earth formed under so much heat and pressure that it formed as a molten planet. For nearly the first billion years of formation (4.5 to 3.8 billion years ago) — called the Hadean Period (or hellish period) — Earth was bombarded continuously by the remnants of the dust and debris — like asteroids, meteors and comets — until it formed into a solid sphere, pulled into orbit around the sun and began to cool down. Earth's early atmosphere most likely resembled that of Jupiter's atmosphere, which contains hydrogen, helium, methane and ammonia, and is poisonous to humans. (Photo: NASA, from Voyager 1). As Earth began to take solid form, it had no free oxygen in its atmosphere. It was so hot that the water droplets in its atmosphere could not settle to form surface water or ice. Its first atmosphere was also so poisonous, comprised of helium and hydrogen, that nothing would have been able to survive.
Earth’s second atmosphere was formed mostly from the outgassing of such volatile compounds as water vapor, carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrochloric acid and sulfur produced by the constant volcanic eruptions that besieged the Earth. It had no free oxygen. About 4.1 billion years ago, the Earth’s surface — or crust — began to cool and stabilize, creating the solid surface with its rocky terrain. Clouds formed as the Earth began to cool, producing enormous volumes of rainwater that formed the oceans. For the next 1.3 billion years (3.8 to 2.5 billion years ago), the Archean Period, first life began to appear and the world’s land masses began to form. Earth’s initial life forms were bacteria, which could survive in the highly toxic atmosphere that existed during this time. Toward the end of the Archean Period and at the beginning of the Proterozoic Period, about 2.5 billion years ago, oxygen-forming photosynthesis began to occur. The first fossils were a type of blue-green algae that could photosynthesize.

Earth's atmosphere was first supplied by the gasses expelled from the massive volcanic eruptions of the Hadean Era. These gases were so poisonous, and the world was so hot, that nothing could survive. As the planet began to cool, its surface solidified as a rocky terrain, much like Mars' surface (center photo) and the oceans began to form as the water vapor condensed into rain. First life came from the oceans. Some of the most exciting events in Earth’s history and life occurred during this time, which spanned about two billion years until about 550 million years ago. The continents began to form and stabilize, creating the supercontinent Rodinia about 1.2 billion years ago. Although Rodinia is composed of some of the same land fragments as the more popular supercontinent, Pangea, they are two different supercontinents. Pangea formed some 225 million years ago and would evolve into the seven continents we know today. Free oxygen began to build up around the middle of the Proterozoic Period — around 1.8 billion years ago — and made way for the emergence of life as we know it today. This increased oxygen created conditions that would not allow most of the existing life to survive and thus made way for the more oxygen-dependent life forms. By the end of the Proterozoic Period, Earth was well along in its evolutionary processes leading to our current period, the Holocene Period,  or Anthropocene Period, also known as the Age of Man. Thus, about 525 million years ago, the Cambrian Period began. During this period, life “exploded,” developing almost all of the major groups of plants and animals in a relatively short time. It ended with the massive extinction of most of the existing species about 500 million years ago, making room for the future appearance and evolution of new plant and animal species. About 498 million years later — 2.2 million years ago — the first modern human species emerged.

Did You Know? The first modern human being was called **** habilis, the first of the **** genus. This species developed stone tools for use in daily life. **** habilis means “Handy Man.” He existed from about 2.2 to 1.5 million years ago. There are earlier species related to modern man, called hominids. The images show the skull shape and probable appearance of **** habilis.

The PreCambrian Period — accounts for about 90 percent of Earth’s history. It lasted for about four billion years until about 550 million years ago. About 70 percent of the world’s land masses were created in the Archean Era, between 3.8 and 2.5 million years ago. Rodinia, widely recognized as the first supercontinent, formed during the Proterozoic Era, about 2.5 billion years ago. It is believed that the oldest human family member was discovered in Ethiopia and lived 4.4 million years ago. It was named “Ardi,” short for Ardipithecus ramidus.
Jared Jun 2019
Like a song, I waited to be heard,

Till' they lent their ears and offered

The gift to listen to a voice

That gave clear insight from all the noise.



Throughout the epochs of hearsay,

Eons of complete mental disarray,

Ages of false images,

And unclear periods of distress.



At last, my voice was hearkened.

The truth has soared and shined,

To illuminate the path for the blind

To enlighten the false that had me bound.
Holocene is a series of anthological poems that focus on the epoch where humanity sprang from.
David Leger Jun 2015
Silence deepens,
        The dream fades into nothing,
                The mind weakens.
Ghosts of daughters,
        Who never felt this existence
                but are in my heart.
Laughter, unheard,
        A lot, unfelt and forgotten,
                Perfection, forever unmatched.
The dream of life:
        Never was it ever real—
                Could I just leave now?
        Never was it ever real—
                Could I just leave now?
                Could I just leave now?
Jon Martin Oct 2017
So, we must, again, face the inevitable human dark age. When the filthy, diseased hand of dogma closes it's fingers around the throat of logic and reason. Science bowing it's weary head to the masses of religious ignorance, and the intellectual giving way to the impassioned imbecile. What course is reason, when we can simply shout down that which disagrees with our bias, and predetermination ?? Why think, when we merely have to scream ?? What apes have we become that volume supersedes reason ??
Another one I will add to, as I see fit. I do write politically every now and then. The extremism I see in our society chagrins me, and breaks my heart. I do not agree with either side. So much is so wrong....
Kon Grin Dec 2017
I could have stopped
Right then
For I'm fed up with everlasting bumping into barriers of your heart

And struggling thorns
On stems
Of dry red roses burried deep within your silent art

I could have hid
No more
I fostered feelings wrong

You stopped me then
"Hush now
Be still and listen to the song"
Bon Hiver
Jenni Nov 2014
All I want to do
Is lay with you
In the light of the moon
As it paints you in hues
Of purple and blue
James Gable May 2016
The weathervane slept high above with a lolling head.
Clouds were holidaying excessively in Spain.
Sun was lost in a haze after chain smoking cooling towers.
A lethargic wind, moseying low with cat-like whiskers,
I hear it complain “I’m tired” in child-like whispers.

My hands are sweat-sore with callouses
And salty enough to summon the call of gulls in numbers;
I find shade, imagining myself as a cartoon Huck Finn.
When I put dry grass between cracked lips and think of dustbowls
In a zoetrope of sun-stroke, I vanish through my buttonholes.

This is now where one would rise, wake or come to.
Nothing I recognise, else the world is enveloped in storms.
I strain my sight, blink repeatedly to force myself awake,
The angels are listening, I hear wheezing, see fingers in my dreams
Gripping tightly to milk thistle stars, bursting at the seams.

Amongst the angels, whispering too! Did the stars imprison you?
Free-spirit like mother, but I slept our childhood through
Sustained by knowledge gleaned from canteen floors—
My eyes feel somehow sharp, heavy, like spears more than eyes;
I thought I saw the weathervane spinning madly, unraveling the skies!

Nobody talks about the weather.
There is a good chance of wrought nerves.
This is a time of stillness and dwelling on doorsteps,
In doorways where death sits among us, resting his eyes,
An end to the ration that was harmless reminiscence
As memories go up in the heat like celluloid;
Now the stars are a steely prison
Heaven’s lustre is lost, missing.
Through the angels I have seen that this is a time of living -
Through our dreams I have seen that this is a time of living -
Outside the confinement of the Holocene.




*—I have dreamt of drowning...often. I always seem to wake up out and breath and feel I can taste the salt in my mouth but fear does not play any part in these dreams.
Part Seven of The Man Who Longed to be an Oyster (see collections)
alaistair Jul 2014
step one: you must realize that
villains are the protagonists of their own stories;
ergo, everything does revolve around you.
you really are not worthless.
why should you care
what the people trying to overthrow you think?

step two: use your anger to create.

step three: or use it to destroy.

step four: allow yourself to feel.
allow yourself to
hide.
you are not wrong for shining in the light or for shying from it.

step five: you must realize that
this too shall pass.
in one thousand years louisiana will be underwater
and new landmasses will rise from the sea like individual venuses.
geologic time will march on, inescapably slowly, on clocks you cannot read,
regardless of you.
we are still only in the holocene era.
the universe doesn't care how many times you try;
the universe doesn't care if you try; but
someone has to, and i believe it should be you.
on the word-a-day desk calendar of existence,
humans only arrived on earth on
the last minute of december thirty-first:
whatever pain you're feeling is temporary.
Redshift May 2014
katy perry wasn't far off track
sometimes my emotions feel like plastic bags
drifting in the african dust...
a place i put my feet
one february
years ago

and flatsound tells me to come clean
but i can't
i have nothing to contrast it with
ignorance is my final plea

and i don't even know
what holocene means,
bon iver

but i know
that poetry is just words on different lines
and they're the only ones i seem to write
these days
EP Mason Jan 2016
Dearest wildflower grinning
With powdered crooked teeth
And hair incandescent and strange
I write you this as though it were my last.
Follow me into the Holocene
And the night ghosts will not wither your grinning soul
Your blue eyes dance away
Your iris discoloured and grey
Never has indigo seemed so violent
And Auburn hair seem so opaque
And strong tongues seemed so silent.
During Berlin nights
And blanched London days
I'm forever burning in your flames.
this was the very first poem I ever posted on this page. Rest in peace my one true idol.
My mind is a filter
draining away the venom
that's hidden in your mailbox
buried in history
and the holocene stones that I took
from the pit of my stomach

I bought a blushing dress
and some blossoming shorts
that I'll do a salsa solo in
exposing my skin
and getting freckles
that trail across my face
getting freckles
that you'll never know I get in the summertime.
EP Mason Jun 2013
Dearest wildflower grinning
With powdered crooked teeth
And hair incandescent and strange
I write you this as though it were my last.
Follow me into the Holocene
And the night ghosts will not wither your grinning soul
Your blue eyes dance away
Your iris discoloured and grey
Never has indigo seemed so violent
And Auburn hair seem so opaque
And strong tongues seemed so silent.
During Berlin nights
And blanched London days
I'm forever burning in your flames.
© Erin Mason 2013
Generation X , sold out by a New World Order , fathers lost their pension to Reganomics , Baby Boomers took 911 , shot holes in the Constitution , killing proletariat , old as the strata on the canyon walls , welcome to the Holocene Epoch and ***** deals , wasted lives and politics that **** ! Change is the same barracuda caught all over again , don't defend your castle with my final drop of blood while your singing America the Beautiful on the Washington Mall , put out your hand , try to break my fall , with eyes shut , typing in coordinates on a 'Smart Bomb', or flying a drone over the castle wall !
Copyright September 27 , 2015 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
The humankind was never kind to them.

From their peaceful Pliocene graves
they were dug out, doggedly read,
their skulls and bones laid bare
gorged upon every finest details
all the apparent lunacy
directed to determine a link
always close yet too far.

Roaming that placid basin
they could not dream
to be a mystery past two million years
crazily pursued to be cracked open.

They have been branded Nutcracker Man.

These Holocene men are truly nuts.
HPRatcliff Feb 2021
Diadem of dreams keep him keen,
In the lost world we walk,
We debate the last Holocene,
Then we split, came the fork…

Lonesome fingers, slip emerald thread,
I stare yon window,
Knitting some spell, helps me forget,
Drink lavender tea to grow.

It tasted bitter in the Winter,
So sweet when in summer,
Lukewarm come last November,
I can’t drink it no more.    
  
They call me Lavender, loved ones,
You tried to debunk why,
Until you kissed me under the sun,
Love can make you so high.

The day you picked my last flower,
I was not a maiden,
You took from me ancient power,
My heart simply waned.

I took to the stars, took to the cards,
I became the Hierophant,
I looked to my sun, to my Mars,
To my Moon and Venus.

I’m imbued with the Crone’s wisdom,
With a new mindset so,
To understand conflicts new and old,
I’m healed, stronger, a Being of Amour.

Speak with me, drink flowery tea,
On the phone, speech may hurt,
Together, it’s ten times as sweet,
Call me, Lovely Lavender X
Orakhal Dec 2020
Hello my friend
I see you shine
yet dead a trillion year and more
I see you now at this here eye
as true a bird do fly to shore

now tell of me your time and space
so far away yet to my face
a galaxy of inner space
not out there now no holocene
apocalyptic in between

no trace to you but dust and bowl
to mould eternal to this soul
beyond me and inside my flesh
before my ever afters yet
a ripple on the fabrics net

infinite a mind am I
to you star light held in its eye
Indigo Ashberry Nov 2014
Sit in Starbucks in the rain
Venti Vanilla and hamstring pain
Biked all the way here
to sit and study road signs
Note down all the guidelines
to sit and sip and listen to the sky's tears
Behind the Bon Iver Holocene
and future fears
Too much coffee will make you old
Too much work will make you dull
Threadbare sweater, aren't you cold?
Threadbare dreams, weren't you bold?
Weren't you better than this?
I could have sworn you were interesting
Weren't you Intrepid
     boundary-testing?
Weren't you Fearless
     all-Investing?
Infinite Spirit
     Never resting
And now look at you
Utterly Ordinary
the typical type
Suburban Sell-out
     Cheers to real life.
Emma Pickwick Nov 2014
Black and white filmography
Sky fallen melt away cotton,
Still at sea level, but in the pines.

Collect the sticks we'll put together
Build a fire in our newly white cathedral.
Tobacco and lavender soaked up in the fabrics that embrace me.
Some cinnamon too.

A song called Holocene made me cry when I heard it,
I don't know what it was about though.
White noise and blank space,
So so much of it.

Warm inside and it's cold out there,
Raw hands from my constant smoke breaks in the wind ,
Meat and potatoes,
Bread and milk, love.
I don't know when we're getting into town again.
Alana Fitzgerald Sep 2016
I sat criss crossed on the top
of a rock before it tipped,
an alpaca spots me from afar.
I see his brother bathe in the dirt,
his cotton ball fur soaks in the Sun,
rubs himself with the color of the Earth,
squints his eyes and whispers to his brother –
This is a disguise.

The fresh mountain water streams
below me, dissolves into breeze
the hillside crumbles where it was once cut
and layered with stones ripped out of the ridge
but now the Earth is taking back
her natural shape, round and wise.
This was an Inca trail, after all.

I ran into a human skull.
lying beside it was,
a fresh bouquet of flowers
a box of lucky strikes,
a few empty water bottles,
the skull was fairly ripe
and to this day it haunts me still,
that skull that whispered –
This is a disguise.

Yet even amongst the plastic residue,
the burning embers of the holocene,
the battery acid in the belly of my backpack,
I looked to where it would squint its eyes,
and It felt ancient.

Corn fields that peek from the tops of these hills
cower beneath a great mountain that speaks
through symbols sculpted in its face,
I squint my eyes –
This is a disguise.
My whole and entire is YOU
When LOVE-soul-connect happened
At once I knew I was not "I"
I was "YOU"

Not that magnificent as I wanted to
I'm not above others, not lower them
I was covered with dust and ice till then
But now, I can see a thousand births

On your sunlit sparkle dazzle
You turn my vacance illuminate
Foggy became our image of "I"
You just cleared the smoke screen light

Within days, Our lives drenched
Strayed from life to wanderlust again

Natural it was for us to connect
To let us play "AGAPE LOVE" game
Nothing ever un-stitches our bond
No scissors nor knives makes the cut

Stayed, huddled and jagged
You & I - BE part of the cosmic "ONE"
Now, none is wasted in dictum of Holocene

We have arrived on a ramp of LOVE
Head over heels, drove down the streets
Like Thelma and Louise on our feet

OUR LOVE feels like epochs
We be the DUST of the wind
And we think we are still "FREE"
FREE from Life,
FREE to LOVE
Coop Lee Feb 2020
took his bike to the end of the street and disappeared.
he was laughing.

maybe today, just find a way
to bell the bones of magnificent fun.

she thought he was funny. he
took to the day like a wild oat.
took a bullet to the chest, still had long to go.

that old bless of a naked always-stretching lung
     [can we account for nuance?]
took.  took.  took.

holocene compounded, brain aneurism expounded.
he knew the city suffered, city slumbered, never, not ever.

your number? he asked her.
or about some kind of snake wrapped around the heart.

war chest, drum the chest, bone or breast.
twas rhythm, not explosion.
rhythm/blast.

city/socks/electronics.

the humdrum conundrum of ***, thumbs and time.
we are surrounded yet alone.
stone’d yet liquid.
remember the lung?

city/shoes/blood.

he thought she was funny.
stoop, stop to think about a text…
send.
spacewtchhh Aug 2020
I.i
Hovering around
From this mountain on its ground,
Designing venture.
Besides, I've learned the danger.

I've prepared the map and the compass,
But I forgot to eat my breakfast.
Enough is breather from the multimedias --
Forced to pass, ached for the grass.

Lifting my weight up above.
Climbing the top to see the doves.
Gripping tightly, not to plummet.
Mind's fixation on the summit.

this rising brought to a halt
as i stopped in the middle, i could see
the trees, and houses and sea salt
How major? How big is this beauty?

as i lift this weight above, i've felt
this landscape of exception and worth,
my life of insignificance as i melt
how small i am compared to the earth

"and at once i knew I was not magnificent"
i sang as i hike as i taste the holocene
Michael Marchese Nov 2016
End scene on the Neogene

Where life-distort systems sustain
The epidemic apathy  
The superficial philistine
Degeneration entertain
Apocalypse obscenity
When everything's a ******* screen
Explicit content can't disclaim
The creds will roll mentality
Director's cutting guillotine
Makes severed heads and zombie brains
Of our inane humanity
One more cliche inaction scene

Exit stage fright for Pleistocene

Where anti-social norms have changed
The prof pic of society
To this no-filtered drama queen
Waging a twitter war complain
On photobombing refugee
Hashtag #unfriendthistrendregime
Unfollow Insta-claims to fame
Of Snap-storied conformity
Emoticon artists convene
To sell their Tinder-kindled pain
For likes and robot empathy
Dead to the world as they live stream

Brief Intermission Holocene

Where modern man is just a game
Of media monopoly
Rich Uncle's *** of Disney schemes
Pinochhio's nose, knows no shame
When Apple's poison byte comes free
With Mickey Mouse ABC themes
No Goofy Fox News hound can tame
The Lion King Plutocracy  
As talk show ghosts in the machine
Project deceptive astral plains
Phantasmic family tv
What's real is once upon a dream

Final act Anthropocene

Where we're all dropping acid rain
In puff-puff gas complacent-sea
Raising the level of morphine
Numbing denial river veins
To drown the truth in ecstasy
From alcoholic gasoline
That's sold dirt cheap like frack *******
By FDA approved decree
So patch it up with nicotine
And then OD on pure disdain
For sober, bleak reality
An age of addicts on drug screens

Let curtains fall to wipe us clean
Rohan P Jan 2018
while the holocene climaxes
through empty, breezing streets (seeing
your leaves and flowers wither and curl on the two-edged
backlane, loose gravel and overhanging apartments looming
like sharp needlepoints of darker grey)
drops, just streams, coalesce on dark green leaves,
dirt scatters on the phosphorescent, forgotten film—imperceptibly,
rain blurs your lonely photographs (i hold

them in boxes and under books, and
gaze at scrawls where your hand once touched, and
ponder at surfaces where your mind once wandered, and
shadow them on my heart, and
shatter them on my memories).
Vaishali Jun 2019
Storm Of A Decade

A photograph of four.
Teeth glistening,
A haunting ivory
Dusted in years
Of quiescent hanging.
The night trembles
As lightning caresses
The horizon into flames
Birds screech in diquietude
at the storm of a decade
Uprooting a run down mansion
That has loved and lost its days.
Often,the rain spills
Through the crevices
Onto the carved frame.
Tonight the dark whistles,
A sombre melody
To the bright eyed Jill.
Clad in a polka dot red,
she stares at a lady
With the same shade
Of chestnut curls.
An archaic banyan,
Loses the anchor of earth
Leaning in to shatter
Some stained glass.
With a night sky for eyes
Starred over in tiny freckles
Johnny grins a feckless crescent
As drops splatter onto his desert hair.
The family sways in reverence
To the storm of a decade
Portrait of some forgotten May
Shivers and rubs in friction
Against a forgotten place.
Some wires, they tangle and twist
Some sparks,ignite the damp wood
Of a house, of four and maybe more.
The lady and the gentleman
In an ugly bermuda and a straw hat
In a beautiful summer dress
Embrace their progeny,
In the storm of a decade.
The sheer moth eaten curtains
Burn in a hunger for sabotage
The rain pitter-patters
Over the ashes of a half burnt house.
The fire rages against the nonchalance
Of a silver rectangle with eight eyes.
Only a fire as mighty could celebrate
A pretty mansion that sleeps
Through the chaos of most hurricanes.
The photograph takes a last swing
And ends up on the mahogany orange.
They smile through the heat
That shatters their castle of glass
They smile in a holocene blue
An offering at the altar
Of the melancholy mansion
That has kept them smiling
As it fell into a state of subtle disrepair
As the nights got darker
Outside the frail walls.
James Floss Jan 2019
Wherefore the Monarch
In orange and black
Will you nevermore
Gently flutter by?

I knew a rhino
Dressed in black
Not coming back
No horn intact

Horror scene
This Holocene
Us? The way of the dodo?
I don’t know

— The End —