In times gone by, now recondite,
Neanderthal, *****, upright,
spoke softly, tones so lily-white,
and tried to put the world aright.

He taught us how the flame ignites
that wearing furs will warm the nights,
just why the rolling wheel excites,
and how the beveled flint stone bites.

Before the days of dynamite
he fought his foes with spit and spite,
and swung big sticks with all his might,
and rendered death with stones in flight.

Engaged in never-ending fight
(arenas were a global sight)
he forced his forces to unite
to sate his oily appetite.

To quell rude thoughts that may incite
he ruled the realm with fly-by-nights
and culled the winds of words in flight,
and darkened minds to anthracite.

With fairy tales of evil sprites
and how the fist of freedom smites,
he washed the world with flames alight
to vanquish hoards of parasites.

Each dawn the damage brought delight,
the foe was bent, a bit contrite…
yet battled on with no respite
until the dusk and evening light.

Encamped beside the firelight
Neanderthal, that shiny Knight,
awaited morn while sitting tight
assured the end would be alright.

Yes, conquest seemed his sacred right…
Forevermore?… well, no, not quite…
Neanderthal's extinct tonight
and lies beside the Trilobite…


MORAL
The Oreo is round, not bright:
while rolling near the candlelight
at first the searing seemed so slight,
the molten cream an oversight…

If I were a trilobite...
well wouldn't that be great?

Suspended in plankton waters
Penetrating silence renders neutrality
This shell, a cloak that covers me
I sometimes wish could not be seen

A drifting vessel
I seek peace behind formations
Ominously engaging, yet silently stand.

Crashing waves roll above
The bravado of Mahlerian timpani
Perched yet unassuming
I am the unthreatened spectator
In this subaquatic symphony

Illusory projections
Inverted medusas glide past
Graceful tendrils in tendu
Ballerina specters
Synchronized in adagio and ballon

A momentary desire overwhelms
To move within their majesty
Omnisciently connected by design
But mine is a different course

A willing and solemn stride
To waters of another intention

i never would have dared
to dream that here upon
this rival's stoop i'd perch,
discussing the theoretical
forces that affect and create
and effectively create the
world surrounding us, and
never would i have guessed
it'd be you with whom i'd speak.
the red dragon symbolizes
man, you said, angular,
linear, power, strength;
the yellow dragon bears
the fruit of the feminine,
with spiritual compassion
for all and sanctuary.
and in the collisions between
the gentle and the forceful
by accident, or intention,
we find genesis.
you carried on to talk
about a belt of silent
asteroids from whence
we supposedly came,
our progenitors massive,
with trilobite heels, but
that theory was a little
too astral for me to grasp,
and that bothered you,
i could tell by the sighs
and frustration that
spilled from the leaky
faucet of your lips.
so i changed the subject
with a splash of tea,
and washed the remains
of last night away in the
soft waters of whimsical
conversation.

I.

evolving, thunder-struck

amino eventualities

and bio-potentialities

in the muck

re-group, protoplasmic and joyful

singing in the proverbial soup

of circumstances

and random cosmic chances

a song of differentiation

loose ends / ragged strands / loose lines

of poetry: DNA spiral dances

Precambrian time, period of time extending from about 4.6 billion years ago (the point at which Earth began to form) to the beginning of the Cambrian Period, 541 million years ago. Precambrian time encompasses the Archean and Proterozoic eons, which are formal geologic intervals

II.

the wriggling one-celled poet decides

to become complex

takes its time:

geologic / astral eons

twitching and failing

into the fabled tadpole of adaptation

to a godless universe, diverse

in its variegated futility

this idea has been summarized in the mouthful, ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’, which means the development of the individual embryo repeats its alleged evolutionary history. The first thing to say about this dictum, is that ‘law’ it is not!

III.

our fish, now fowl,

proclaims its Archaeopteryx manifesto

standing on Precambrian banks

demanding a return on its investment

in sedimentary overlays:

Ernst Haeckel !  shrieks the avian jokester

The Imaginary Monera: the eating habit and reproductive cycle of an alleged Moneron to which he gave the scientific name, Protomyxa aurantiaca 73 pages of his speculations more important than facts and evidence.

IV.

into the long long corridors

of time’s bad poetry

sleeping off the tadpole nightmare

sprouting flippers, legs, digits, wings

deciding to fly, smashing antediluvian cedars with trilobite tail

upright biped sporting body-hair

you shall prevail

descending from trees in African dreams

misanthropologically *****

gracile / robust (that’s us)

Hey turn that **** up ! yells Piltdown Man

from his evolutionary window

He believed that the only major difference between man and the ape was that men could speak and apes could not. He therefore postulated a missing link which he called Pithecanthropus alalus (speechless apeman) a woman with long lank hair suckling a child.

V.

falling for the lies

of the Lord of the Flies

Zinjanthropus asks quizzically

How much more of this

are you prepared to take ?

misbegotten centuries glimmer:

light years of bad poetry

captive eons of incoherent free verse

as we wait

for the Bronze Age Myths

to begin

I am 14.6 billion years old. I am energy traveling at the speed of light,
I am a single proton with one orbiting electron, perfectly balanced
With quarks and bosons and higgs inside
And pieces of matter yet to be understood by man.
I am every star, every atom of Hydrogen fused to Helium.
I am a massive object of molten rock, cooling and fusing.
I am trilobite knee and dinosaur tooth,
Wooly mammoth hair fiber.
I am Permian Extinction, I am Ice Age, I am all surviving species.
I am most distant brothers of man, I am first language and first songs.
I am Bubonic Plague and Death
And life out of new molecules from old.
I am the Industrial Revolution,
I am Depression and Holocaust and oppression.
I am titanium and assembly line.
I am Perseid meteor shower and Halley ’s Comet.
I am every black hole,
Inside, another whole universe of me.

I am seconds young, and I have much to learn of
The multitudes of the universe, myself.

-Trampled Under Hoof-

Thick dust kicks up from this sulfur tar,
Suffocating the fools dim enough come near,
Ultra violence breeds screams from afar,
Thunder Puncher gored on a topaz field.

Trampled under hoof,
No escape from this fate,
Wishing he was saved,
Filling up with hate.

Even mutilated by nature his fists rose high,
Thunder Puncher still has the will to fight,
Standing as the warm blood still escapes his thighs,
Bloodied and muddied, fists flying with all his might.

-Trilobite-

Ripping and tearing,
Scorching and staring,
Never with bearings,
Always out scaring.

Who is he to fear,
Violently attacking all,
Sharp as a spear,
Hand held in a ball.

Now they've all fallen,
Trilobite the victor,
Blood falling like pollen,
Death the constrictor.

Collaborate with Society, By Chris.
                  In the world of our benefactors or such, others calling
                        Others collaborators.  As if such a term were,
                             Shameful.
                            I ask you, what greater endeavor exists than
                                That of collaboration?
                            For example in our current unparalleled enterprise
                               Refusal to collaborate is simply a refusal to grow
                                Which some insistence on suicide if you will.
                                       Did the lungfish refuse to breathe air?
                                              It did not,  
                                    It crept forth boldly while its brethren
                                                            rema­ined in the
                                             Blackest ocean abyss.  
                                     With lidless eye forever staring at the dark.      
                                         Ignorant, is it not? Doomed despite their
                                                       internal vigilance.          
                                            ­ Would we model ourselves on the
                                                                ­trilobite?
                                        Would that mean all accomplishments of
                                                       humanity
                                         Could fade, nothing more than a layer of
                                                     broken,
                                          Plastic shards, thinly strewn across a fossil
                                     Bed, sandwiched between a burgess shell, and
                                              Eons worth of mud? In order to
                       Be true to our nature and our destiny, we must aspire
                                                 to
                            Greater things we have outgrown our cradle.
                    It is feudal to cry for mother’s milk when our true
                                        sustenance
                        Await us, Among the stars!  Therefore I say yes! I am
  a collaborator! We all must collaborate, willingly, eagerly, if we
                 expect to
              Reap the benefits of unification. And reap we shall!  Civic
       deeds do not go unrewarded,  and contrary wise complicity
                          with people's cause  will
      Not go unpunished. So please, be wise… Be safe, be aware.
              We have plunged humanity into free-fall...
Now, is the moment to redeem ourselves.

©  Chris .B 2017

Confuse make meddle break a sound, trilobite in the stucotto field merely music but a standing drum with handles Holden. Gold blast in shriek; titanium white in Marshal mopey: Messages of Mediums and a hearsay scald goes galactic, rain pallet wide and knows no planet reducible. Feel and then reel, I zing liquid quality crank, and crack has bountless laden, knows nuggets, and with fact falses out loosely, bound with bark a brain a fusion dance like rotoscope rigid. Has it with faces, and a carouselling cherub sizzles like defiance in. No more marks congratulate dumb-dumb, and have the false equivalency of like. A future has to fade fast, make room for jesty jocular, and a ride with census no love for the dark she’s seen in it.

The Way of Things

Things start out simple, plain,
Get more complex.
All things start out minus blame,
Get more corrupt:
[It is] the way of things.

Non-beings, beings,
Gases, minerals, to stones
To seas become-an-earth
With complex life forms:

Trilobite,
Shells carbonate and calcium;
The oldest animal
That swam, then crawled,
That walked, then talked → become-the-us!

Take note and make a list:
Life, rocks so meshed, entwisted
They transformed the whole: this planet.
**** to hut to trade and product;
Industry and change of climate
(As we’re doing now, this minute)

Down to up and down again!
A long way either way. But then,
It is the way of things.

The Way Of Things 8.29.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

something
about the water
just the right temperature
the earth dreams and
proteins coalesce
life, out of unlife
i dip my big toe in
a trilobite comes up to bite it
from the sun touched silt
poor thing, i think, stroking its back
poor thing to be unmoored in time
poor thing, suffocated because the earth
changed her mind, tried again,
words erased on a page,
skittering legs going still,
belly up,
silt bed,
sand grave,
dark sleep without dreams

Aren't we the same as the ancient trilobite... That no longer exists but still found in fossil memories?

For we may perish upon the face of the earth...

But our essence remains in the soil in the form of tender shapes carved in the rocks of yesterday...

We will be found in the hearts of all who loved us and still love us...
Inspite of our surrender in the ever flowing river of time!

When men love they move slower
than dawn rolls onto day. Arms
turn toward each other as if to
grasp their beloved as raindrops
grasp the stalk of a flower,
melting around tender shoots
like silk wrapping. They whose
feet have always left sound
behind them, their prints
evaporate in whispers.

Men gather in bundles the
persons they have been, select
the best, the finest moments,
to plant by the porch of the
adored. They go through the
weather of their passion focused,
translated into a language as
sharp, as clear, as cries in
blue sea-gulled air when
nothing but nothing stands
between nature and desire.
The goal of movement is charged
across a world lost to all
desire for choice.

Men love with a kinetic so deep,
so intimate, it is movement inscribed
on every breath.

If then the moment should
come of the crack in the bell of
the heart, when daylight rips
the landscape, they fall, as a
rock falls, to crash along a
beach utterly void of life, to
become trilobite in noiseless
water, moved by the purposeless
shift of time and stone.

Caroline Shank


(This is the best I could glean about men in love. Being female may not have helped.)