Best Gills Poems
Silent steps I take
Across the ocean floor
Cool abyssal plain
Bluescape peace
Gazing up
At the sunlit surface
A false freedom
Beckons…
The air above
Polluted with urgency
Foul with anger
Not so sweet anymore
Enveloped in briny womb
No longer ashamed
Submergence forever
Lungs back to gills
Options Underwater: The Song of the First Amphibian
by Michael R. Burch
“Evolution’s a Fishy Business!”
1.
Breathing underwater through antiquated gills,
I’m running out of options. I need to find fresh Air,
to seek some higher Purpose. No porpoise, I despair
to swim among anemones’ pink frills.
2.
My fins will make fine flippers, if only I can walk,
a little out of kilter, safe to the nearest rock’s
sweet, unmolested shelter. Each eye must grow a stalk,
to take in this green land on which it gawks.
3.
No predators have made it here, so I need not adapt.
Sun-sluggish, full, lethargic?I’ll take such nice long naps!
The highest form of life, that’s me! (Quite apt
to lie here chortling, calling fishes saps.)
4.
I woke to find life teeming all around?
mammals, insects, reptiles, loathsome birds.
And now I cringe at every sight and sound.
The water’s looking good! I look Absurd.
5.
The moral of my story’s this: don’t leap
wherever grass is greener. Backwards creep.
And never burn your bridges, till you’re sure
leapfrogging friends secures your Sinecure.
Originally published by Lighten Up Online
Keywords/Tags: amphibian, amphibians, evolution, gills, water, air, lungs, fins, flippers, fish, fishy business, bird, birds, nature, natural disaster, natural disasters, environment
I. Gills
The tide of hatred never ebbs;
The isle surrounded sinks and drowns;
While we, the natives, scale the trees
As Gills emerge upon our faces,
Gaping—like fresh, opened wounds.
II. Palms
The floor of faith shall never shift;
The sea above shall soon be calmed;
From islands covered, yet undrowned,
Long trees vault upward to the surface,
Cradling us on outstretched Palms.
What I told Bill
My voice unchanging and shrill
Was about life in water necessitating gills
And the ones on fire, grills
The left spaces for man to fill…
And it should be mainly about his will
But not less intensely his zeal
The same I had disclosed to Jill
But it didn’t him at all thrill:
On some angered bottle spending a dollar bill
And glumly ascending a closely bill
From his valley-sited vacant mill
Always life depicting as The Still.
Apache Prince
and The Wisdom Of the
wise.
______________________________________________________________
Da Capo Accent
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prompt Bastarding
out of Context
________________________
he saw the Sale of the theater
and wondered if
her meager value
allow her to understand
the meaning of being able to
One seeks Knowledge of
the Sale of property
where a hungry cook
could of people
like his food enough
to buy it
One could wish to ruin him
by linking him to
something horrible
said the wise men
he used as a person to
speak to
They put my name on the Facey Gramm
as someone people don't like
yet should
i be worried
__________________________________________
All are cursed that he knewest thee
that he shall be deceitful in his
unraveling of you
Only Satan is able to
use hie position
to Unravel
and Cause others
to be viewed as
Cast's in his distorted
behavior.
_______________________________________________
Goeduck only Fly at Night
from the Cajain Mutta Ship!!!!!
________________________________
Trust neither the Majority
or the popular
that they might rally to deceive many
on behalf of Jesus.
Prompt Bastarding the asserts of there position
Spelching in script
that many shall seek those who are spoken
as wicked
angling the opinions of others
might they feel as he does!
Broken-hearted are the tree limbs,
General Flooding surveys the wreckage
blames a subversive sky.
Gamely, the peg-legged scarecrow
salutes the wavy navy
while they row on by
in their bathtub parade.
It's a fine day under water,
cats are stewing poems
in a bobbing blue barrel;
words drip from their whiskers.
Ducks flop their slippery wings
as oily drums grease
their oily bones.
Rowdy are the gulls
that pipe the rain ashore,
it's as if the blocked-up
boggy landlubbers
had Mackerel eyes,
or as if the sky had gills
and needed more.
After "Being a Person" by William Stafford
“suddenly this dream you are having matches
everyone’s dream, and the result is the world”
the synchronicity, perfect
beating like a heart in a box
the ticking of a metronome
swing, swing, tick off into the air
it’s a moment you can breathe when you had been drowning before
except now everyone, everyone, is drowning with you
do you think I’ll grow gills, mom?
learn to breathe in an unbreathable space
maybe we can all grow gills at the same time
and nobody would need the air
we could survive, happy, with mutual understanding
but the world is a single second
it passed already when you read that line
the space in the breath that happens
before you plunge into the water again
you’ve got a taste of it now, the air
did it stick between your teeth like taffy?
did you like the taste or did you like it better when you were suffering with them all?
that combination of right place, right time
when everyone is linked
and a whole world is gaping in one swing of a pendulum
so don’t lose it, don’t wait
for the swinging to go out of sync
you lose all of the wonder
you missed the timeframe, the ocean’s closed
the continents have formed how they have, you’re done!
growing gills is only possible if we make it that way
the clarity you see while dreaming
of what the world can be
in such a limited space of a moment's pause
a warning of what we cannot waste
it rises up higher than anything has ever been
dissipates into the air, gone
the ticking is too loud now, too intermittent
its synchronicity is now unheard of -
never again seen or replicated
gone too fast, too soon
the water is too deep to breathe in.