"pangaea" poems
Two billion years ago
the river we call Colorado
opened a **** in the Kaibab Plateau
sculpting sandstone, granite, and limestone spectra
on the rugged canyon walls -
reflecting the seering Arizona sun.
Millennial torrents scoured the surface.
Juniper and Aspen, torn from the expanding banks,
****** into the river's red-stained vortex.
All the while the restless Colorado,
obedient to gravity's law,
scoured its bed a mile below the rim.
The last dinosaur perished - choked by volcanic soot.
Pangaea rumbled, groaned and split
and an eye-blink ago our African parents
stood to take their first faltering steps.
Their progeny crossed the Bering bridge
roaming south to build stone shelters
tucked against these canyon walls.
Did the Havasupai huddle in fright
of the jagged firelight searing the skies -
pounding the air across the hollows?
And emerging at storm’s end
did they gaze at the rainbow mist
spread over the buttes and valleys?
After dusk, with fires withering to embers,
did they rest supine,
heads pillowed on their arms,
pondering the jewel case universe above?
November, 2006
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 10:51 AM UTC
Chatting cold conspiracies from across the coffee table.
Pangaea on the rocks - sweet, sober, civil silence.
When did the degradation become so severe?
Time ticks down and friendships fade to acquaintances.
Spine tingling tempo of the pitter-patter rain drop percussion.
Galloping triplets trickling down from the temples of thunder.
Hands of the clock clap in celebration of another hour killed.
Two o’ clock Coca-Cola to crown the king of carbonation *****
Naming off artists to impress the drunken temptress.
Taunting the room filled with glimmer-eyed, lovestruck libidos.
All the kids are struggling to remember the horoscope they skimmed.
Brains drained to the point of puking in mouths, poisoning the passion.
With whiskey laced erections, this night chants a swansong.
Illegal lane changes and tiptoe key turning roustabouts.
The Hubble eye can’t detect the silent thoughts left hidden.
Dreams within dreams, lost in a cloud of exhaled acceptance.
Tonight, you fizzled, and tonight, you sleep alone.
These are the danger days. Timber!
Aug 20, 2013
Aug 20, 2013 at 2:43 PM UTC
Can we talk?
I'm new to town
and I'm certain that you and I
have not yet met.
Are you a stranger too?
It's rather soon to say
but I caught a beacon in your eyes
(or maybe hoped I did) -
wanting down those
Frosted walls of unfamiliarity.
Who knows what tales
we soon may say
of overlapping circles
of shared community -
of parallel victory and loss.
It's so soon to say,
but for now, accept this hand
as a token of mutual membership
in Pangaea's beneficent sanctuary.
Can we talk?
© 2016 by Robert Charles Howard
Dec 13, 2016
Dec 13, 2016 at 1:59 PM UTC
I’m praying for Pangaea so I can run to the ends of the earth for you. Mixed signals are cancerous so I swallow yours down to keep you safe. Sure, souls like fire in my bloodstream burn on the way out but they’re streaming for you into this chest cavity missing a heart, my own Judas, betrayed me for your eyes. Even saints can be lost causes, darling, but you’re neither. You’re a superhero, all technicolour capes and dollar-store disguises and you’d think I’m the damsel in distress but I’m your nemesis. Why else do you think I’m burning Earth to the ground, for my own perverse enjoyment? I’m pulling your hair, putting tacks on your seat because I’m too afraid to say I love you, which is a truth, which is a bomb to defuse before our bed becomes ground zero. I laugh at your jokes and offer myself up for slaughter but you’re not biting so I’m walking home in the snow, alone. I’m cold, I’m frozen. I’ve gone home to a Heaven of ice, heads in the freezer like a good luck charm, your words carved into my palms so I won’t forget. Back to the lab, back to the drawing board. Maybe I’ll close the warplans for tonight.
I know you belong to her but I’m jealous, baby, I’m so jealous. I’ll tell you to bow down, defer, sing a hallelujah to lull me to sleep before I remember how much it hurts to love you. And tomorrow when you’re gone I’ll plan death: hell, maybe the world’s. You might love me then. I’m not too hopeful.
May 21, 2013
May 21, 2013 at 10:36 AM UTC
I began as a spot
of mud
flipping off a comets
rushing tail
frozen in ice
I survived the fall
a few moments of
organic molecules
landing on one
vast continent
integrated
into a minuscule
whole
I became alive
alive for this time
and
all time.
But
There were forces
moving inside of
me
call it what you will
continental drift
tectonic plates
powerful forces
which fragment me
over time.
I come together
I divide
but the cycles
don't stop there
like our love
as all these
parts and particles
slam back together
in a single mind.
Pangaea! I once
called you home
it was the only place to be
I knew who
and what I
was
but I have become
divided and split
even my dreams are
fragments of scattered
lands.
My center can not
hold for long
as competing desires
beg to be known.
As eternity picks
me up and sends
me on my way
as I scatter back
to those solar
winds
disintegrate to
a spot of DNA
whisked off this
planet
and arrive on
the back of a
sailing comet
frozen for eons
long
to once again
through happenstance
fall
onto a foreign
planet -
home again to
my private
Pangaea
unity
begins the
cycle
all over
again.
Nov 6, 2014
Nov 6, 2014 at 10:31 PM UTC
A 70th Birthday Poem
My mother had a series of rules
by which we lived
And by which I think I still do
For instance,
to keep my brothers and I from fighting
fighting to cause star-shaped pain,
two-dimensional and primary colored, like on Batman
fighting to cause welts from
rising like tectonic plates heralding the end of Pangaea
fighting to bring forth blood
red blood
red blood
burgundy and green and iridescent blood
she said,
“As long as you’re laughing when you hit them,
it doesn’t count,”
and it became true
as the forced, adrenaline-driven guffaws
tumbled up and over one another
like rocks shattering one another
into pebbles exfoliating one another
into sand
white and soft and meandering
seaside to tomorrow and forever.
Know what I mean?
My mother had a series of rules
by which we lived
And by which I think I still do
For instance,
to keep from clashing
in a fashionable/unfashionable dissonance,
it’s important to remember:
“Just because two things are red,
doesn’t mean they’re the same,”
or blue or white or black
that when held together like paint swatches
each holds a different value,
and the painter tries to make the best choice
because a purple shirt can be pretty,
but . . .
“Nobody wants to live in a purple house.”
Right?
My mother had a series of rules
by which we lived
And by which I think I still do
For instance,
housecleaning should be done to a polka,
or not at all
joyfully or begrudgingly
as best suits the cleaner
and the polka,
because . . .
“Doesn’t a little accordian make everything better?”
Well, doesn’t it?
My mother had a series of rules
by which we lived
And by which I think I still do
For instance,
today is the 31st anniversary
of her 39th birthday
just as it will soon be
the 15th anniversary
of my 29th birthday
**Of course, it is.**
Jan 9, 2013
Jan 9, 2013 at 1:29 PM UTC
we imagined our bodies were continents but my
continent became an never ending earthquake,
trembling until it tears through the exoskeleton
of my body. the earthquake was panic attacks. i
learned to interact with them so i could see it coming.
i learned to appreciate the homes i destroyed, and
i helped you clean up the rubble after i obliterated you.
architect of sadness: you built an expansive house
that's always empty and chilly. you let the prettiest
flowers wilt and die. your bright colors coating your
exterior shows promise and sentiments, but even the
ones who walk through your doors notices the absence.
it's always too late to sever ties when you are given the
keys. your voice is like the dinner bell, ringing through
the west and east hallways and haunting these walls. we
were two different worlds clashed together like the big
bang, we were pangaea, a super continent exploding with
content and then continential drift split us open. somewhere
along the line, you became australia and myself the united
states, where swimming to you became an impossible
task. even at the end of it all, i asked for the keys to
enter inside the same house holding empty promises
and a foundation i knew was built from the hands of an
amateur architect. is that what love is? walking into the
scorch of hell's fire because you're willing to deal with
the permanent third degree burns and scars the fire will
leave on you? because that's how i know i love(d) you.
- kra
Dec 18, 2014
Dec 18, 2014 at 10:01 PM UTC
Illuminated by a dream.
Drawings on the wall
Writings on your back
Hiding away in abstract thought.
Pastel colors and vintage photographs and Levi Jeans ads.
Dusty records on the floor of your room with the slanted walls
Hibernating on the roof
Looking over the city
Like the hero of Gotham
See the world through someone else’s eyes.
See the way you live.
Merge. Connection.
Binnocularing into the future.
Bird watching peeping tomming.
Conjoining what’s real and what is just what it seems.
Edgar, it is just a dream.
Earth, Moon and global Pangaea.
The world is my canvas and now so are you.
Why do you look at me like that?
You make me want to write.
I can’t stop looking at you too.
You have rendered me useless
All I’m focused on is those blue eyes
Staring so intently at me
Fixated on me and only me
Hey, I’m talking to you,
Cowbell tamboureen percussion section cowboy.
You burn with a fire from the sun.
Feb 7, 2013
Feb 7, 2013 at 6:03 PM UTC
Bring together.
Tear apart.
(SIMULTANEITY)
Command or be carried,
be free or be ferried,
believe or be bleary,
wear on or be weary.
The bedpan of old age,
the deadpan of expression--
at the end
before beyond,
inward evacuation
/
outward ingestion,
a life lived to die--
but life exists, after all.
The "pan" of Pangaea,
the pan of a camera--
at the start
before tectonic cataclysm,
localized catastrophe
/
universal symphony,
indifference until perception--
but perception exists, after all.
Either
/
Or:
equal opponents at one moment
until chosen.
It could be said no dimension is parallel.
-LP
Nov 26, 2013
Nov 26, 2013 at 10:04 PM UTC
Imagine,
Imagine, heaven and earth,
Earth and hell.
Heaven?
It's up there.
Ionosphere, maybe.
Or maybe, Exosphere.
Think of Pangaea and Panthalassa.
Imagine, the lost world of Atlantis.
Geography students would know better.
Imagine,
Imagine good, and bad,
Bad, and worse.
Imagine, if your name were not,
What it is,
Imagine, if you were not,
What you are.
Imagine, delivering fantastic speeches,
Craft out, mesmerising poetries,
Look for topics,
Like you look for alloys,
In your wallet.
Everyone's a poet,
Poet, in their hearts,
They do write poems,
But the designer styli,
Defy to converge their thoughts.
Summarize life,
Felicity, will obviously be wrapped up,
And so will be your bad.
And try, and minimize your bad,
To the least,
Like you do with your savings,
On a rave.
And try, and amplify your bliss,
Like your cells multiply,
In every thirty minutes.
Imagine,
Imagine, and fall.
Fall, for every beautiful face,
Fall, for every beautiful day,
And moment.
Imagine,
And spread love.
Imagine,
Imagine, and fall,
Into an abyss,
Of thoughts,
Every single day,
Every single time.
Imagine,
The bald guy,
On our currency notes,
Smiling, at whatever number there is by him.
Smile, at whatever is given to you,
Smile, for whatever is given to you.
Smile,
And just that.
May 23, 2016
May 23, 2016 at 11:28 AM UTC
It’s evening. Isaac walks to the beach as if he’s lost.
He climbs through artificial dunes, through false ramparts
pushed hard against the ocean’s erosion—cliffs of sand.
So let’s call him Clement Cliff and let’s say that he’s
an actor and distant cousin of Montgomery Cliff—
that he’s a stage of sand, a progression of the beach.
Blind, he walks to the beach each evening now
because I make him walk. He hates the water’s soul.
He feels its fear. He goes because I make him go.
He does this now (we do this now), so I can walk;
walking, it seems, is very bio-mechanical.
So-bio, so-mechanical: the brain’s music.
We call this beach Pangaea, for it looks to be
a map of early earth; it looks a plan for earth cut by
the tides before the continents were torn
asunder. (My, how Biblical, my dear, ‘asunder’.)
It looks that way when I stand on the cliffs—
like lands formed in jest. I love the air up here.
I love it that these cliffs are not a place
for sacrifice or suicide. Jump and you will
take a tumble. Jack fell down and broke his crown
and Jill will land on the soft sand of Pangaea.
Pretending flight, they fall. Don’t cry, honey. It’s just
a bruise. Give it a kiss. Isaac, he laughs.
It was right that he should die before me.
Every night we stand right here among the cliffs.
(Prominent among the bluffs.)
We watch and listen as the ocean sings.
The ocean is alive. Pangaea is where sun and sea
must meet. Pangaea, the sea, the soliloquy.
We go down to the sea in ships.
A thousand must set sail every day.
(All launched by your face, my dear.)
Tonight we sit and listen.
The ocean makes its music.
I leave on a singing ship.
May 22, 2010
May 22, 2010 at 10:56 AM UTC
Honey,
no matter how many indie songs I listen to
or how many times I think about
telling you I'm angry,
I still love you.
No matter how many times I get mad
and sit being my passive aggressive self
I love you.
Despite the fact that I connect with pictures about loss
and still use depressed in my description of who I am or
how I feel in counseling sessions or
that I make statuses about **** stigmas
I love you
and you have changed me.
So don't leave just because I tell you I feel lonely
or scared or sad.
Because baby, you cannot move away the mountains between us
or change the way Pangaea separated.
I'm here and you're there
and I have not yet found
a song about how passive aggressively angry
that makes me.
May 27, 2013
May 27, 2013 at 2:39 PM UTC
You were my beautiful urgency
Your lips promised the world onto the fragmented map
left in me
A beautiful Pangaea sealed together
The world stopped for us- the naive mapmakers
While everything else spun into beautiful chaos
The madness of the tectonic mountains
stop for none
Not even the innocent promises forged across the continents
They laughed as their rifts
battered our beating hearts,
Until their was nothing left but a single pulse
Memories flood me, brutally constant, like the tides angered at the shore
When your laughter stretched across the ocean
But somehow only seemed to reach me
Pulse
When we picked out the life our children would have,
Like it was some neat and concise future picked from a catalog
Pulse
When our world went up in smoke, it had never been
clearer
Pulse
When our hearts started beating for someone else
Someone else besides for you and me
Pulse
When you walked away
Pulse
And I realized it was too late
Pulse
When I knew in that moment your brokenness would forever
Cut sharply at my heart, etching those four words left unsaid
Until I was as broken as your ghost
Pulse
When
Pulse
I
Pulse
Realized
Pulse
You
Pulse
Were
Pulse
My
Pulse
Everything
Pulse
And I was just your side thing.
Pulse
What can be said about your beautiful urgency when your time has run out?
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 3:01 PM UTC
I heard I could tie all my veins and arteries together and they would circle the earth so I thought if we laced ours together we could reach the moon
and watch stars blaze like one hundred billion cigarettes in the dark
skinny dip through purple orange green supernova explosions
curl up in a crater and watch the world spin like a cumbersome ballerina then we’d dive back down from the moon to the mothership
and unbraid our veins, separating mine from yours.
But without those vascular knots we’d start drifting apart just like Pangaea.
We’d both begin forgetting how we ballroom danced through constellations together how our fingertips wrinkled like walnuts outside the atmosphere
how we sunbathed under the incandescence of blue supergiants
Mar 24, 2016
Mar 24, 2016 at 2:33 PM UTC
Once upon a time
There was a kaleidoscope of colors
But I only longed to see the white light
I was waiting for grace
Soon it was med-time before bed-time
And a bunch of pills under the mattress
And an insatiable *** drive
Coupled with a sweet tooth
Speak now or forever hold your vices
Dream of the wise men, the stars and the spices
The promises we keep even after death
As everything breaks down in a red bubble bath
Pillow fights and report cards
Off-white lab coats and crazy blondes
Only the end of the book knows best
Even God needed rest
Slit vertical and split the scars
Go and begin your journey to the stars
Sweat out your demons or pray that they beat you
Hope that the friendliest shark will eat you
Ride the wild horses into the darkness
Gaze at the twisted Mandela on the ceiling
Fight the minister in a wrestling match
Self-destruct once more, this time with feeling
My Pangaea ultima is falling apart
As the plate tectonics inside me collide
The craters on my skin outweigh the Grand Canyon
With nothing to lose, pain is a landslide
A chemical imbalance, a childhood trauma,
An improper diet, heterosexual drama-
It might seem dysfunctional at the end of it all
But some were meant to fly, I was meant to fall
May 2, 2015
May 2, 2015 at 12:43 PM UTC
The Planet Earth was a wasteland of destruction from the race that lived there previously..
Seven Life Lancers were sent from Mars over 1000 years ago to clean and repair Earth's eco system.
We lost contact with the Life Lancers 52 years ago but were very hopeful as Earth has once again turned blue in our night sky..
A once dead planet of sand has gained back its majestic color of ocean azure blue alongside the stars..
I am sad that Mars has become dead and we had no solution to solve the destruction of our planet..
I had been chosen by our people to migrate to Earth and start our race there..
I am unknown to how well the Life Lancers fixed the eco system of Earth and if it will be able to sustain life..
Its when I arrive I finally see how Magnificent it was!
More blue than the Mars ocean Soren..
There is a massive piece of land I can land on.
Seems this is the only land that exist here on Earth..
I will call this land Pangaea..
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 2:18 PM UTC
It’s been one month since I’ve started over,
two years from the initial breakup of pangaea,
and even though I’ve been doing things wrong,
in the morning I always find myself breathing.
(Why am I not invincible yet?
I still let doubt and indecision lead me down twisted alleys
that I don’t ever want to see again. Why am I the only one who feels like this?)
, , there is no more time to waste asking these questions
when you realize that everyone has cracks they are covering for
with their eyes or speech or faith.
No more
from this moment forward I will write however I want
Oct 15, 2012
Oct 15, 2012 at 2:19 PM UTC
Young
hurt,
Sear.
paced.
pangaea.
paisley.
swollen.
Run
Away.
Jul 1, 2011
Jul 1, 2011 at 7:58 AM UTC
I use to think
That writing really fast
Would get my poems across
I use to think
That love
Was something
That could never be lost
I was wrong
And the more wrong I felt
The more I struggled
In here
To define it
I just felt
Like I wasn't wanted
And then I knew why
They weren't judging me
For being me
They were judging me
Because they were just like me
Only opposites attract?
But gravity
Attracts all
Big and small
Nothing and infinite
And it's so weak
We almost
Don't even know it's there
Like our hands touching
And slowly
Drifting away
Into seven
Pieces
Of
Heart
Pangaea
Dec 7, 2014
Dec 7, 2014 at 8:21 PM UTC
No man is an island
but you are a continent
cartographers cannot map your shores in their complexity
pioneers risk death and drowning just for the chance to see your coasts
in your expanse there is the potential for life
and death
and in your valleys and ridges there is beauty
each blemish a vista
each freckle a point of interest
each scar a historic site
no one looks at the earth and calls it ugly.
Jul 1, 2014
Jul 1, 2014 at 1:16 PM UTC
September 10th is National Suicide Awareness Day.
Every year, every day that we spread further from the other in time is like the continental plates leaving each other’s coast lines after Pangaea found out it would no longer exist.
On this day, every year, I find myself thinking of you.
You were the first suicidal case for me,
the one where a midnight call to the mental hospital would become something routine.
You constructed a noose so perfect that it matched the image upon Google,
What kind of sick creature puts instructions for nooses on Google these days?
Last time I checked, hanging others was a crime.
Hanging yourself is a bigger one,
because the death penalty ALWAYS applies to you when you **** yourself.
This year, you’re throwing a party. I’m delighted to know as my stomach churns its illness away that you are consuming liquids that will give you the same bitter feeling tomorrow morning.
I’m lucky to know that you survived.
That she and he and her and him and they lived.
That the noose didn't work,
that the blade wasn't sharp enough,
that the hands around the neck gave up,
and that the window was locked.
The broken souls up in Heaven will forever watch our lives,
as we so desperately attempted to save theirs.
Sep 10, 2014
Sep 10, 2014 at 9:44 PM UTC
When you left, it made me think about the way geologists had to come up with words for how the continents broke apart.
Jul 20, 2014
Jul 20, 2014 at 11:17 PM UTC