Best Mammalian Poems
Sail most by north, by west the least,
until the moon sets in the east.
There, in a sea the colour of custard,
ye'll see the Ile de Deux Sans Mustard
where locals speak like buccaneers,
calling you ‘me dirrr' and us ‘me dirrrrs'.
Their pirate accent's quite inexorable
though, than ours, their grammar more is flexible.
They appear to verge on being mammalian,
a little bit like South Australians
(I'd never for the sake of mirth
deride the folks who come from Perth).
Hard left, first manatee you see,
or right, your choice, you're free as me
(it's nix to do with politics,
a pox on all elected plicks).
Sail till the sea turns sweetest violet
and there you'll spot the cutest islet
(had we to rhyme with ‘sweetest red'
it'd be a continent instead).
Here, when poetry is long dismembered,
lies the place of rhyme remembered.
Yes, you have come upon a land
that any poet would think is grand,
where almost everybody aint
any kind of ffffflamin' saint,
but seldom use the worst of curses,
when they converse in freeish verses,
or communicate in playful rhyme,
pretty much whenever they feel like it.
The wind moves us
Even if accidentally or unwillingly
I love a great slab of life along with an extended slake of thirst
I love that there is an intense need to curl into a shell
When others spell out life by computer chips
I am the antediluvian agency
I occasionally get mobile via bivalves
Or tricuspid consistency
Only
Due to my mammalian genetics
As I watch the kinetic possibilities of moss
Determined as a scientist with fingers made of air
Now the trees sing in a special aria
I love your face
It's ridiculous with all its perfections
And
You simper
At the thought of this
Which makes you even more free and worn comfortably
Around the edges
I join in when possible
Landscapes reheat me to the core
Love Watts Geothermal and Kernels of the 5th dimension
Before I stepped into this brave new Valley of The Tears,
My mother used to sing me songs of Knights all brave and fierce.
She told, as she was herself told by her own mother dear
That they came from far back in time, some millions and a year.
These Knights, I've never seen but with my closed eyes in her womb
And in those days, they rode in holy circles in my room.
The circles went all up and down like in a whirling pool,
With lights and fires everywhere and seats as soft as wool.
These nights of sleepless nights, as I played witches with a broom,
I never knew the lights I saw were real witchcraft and gloom !
'Twas like a fairy tale to me, with engines swirling 'round
And angels white and brilliant surrounding holy ground:
The pearls of white and blue beryls and stones as red as wine,
and the gemstones, and amethysts and crystals so divine !
I used to travel back in time with windows open wide,
But one day, the Knights came and brought me to the world outside;
That's when I was born to my mother as a mammalian,
Until the doctors discovered I was a reptilian...
which means that for the human race, I am THE ALIEN...
by Voahanitriniaina Rabary-Andriamanday
from Madagascar
(Antananarivo/ Ambohimalaza)
9/27/2012 - 6: 13:00 PM
Sgt. Bedlam of heavy artillery reporting sir
Bedlam I want you to pick the runt of the litter
and turn him into an agent assassin
with the clandestine power of hypnotism
yes Generalissimo I am here to obey
decked out like a burlesque revue warlord
his Mauser cigar lighter on his belt
a curlicue mustache and a pie tin helmet
Opal his opium fiend gun moll squirming in his lap
was our Generalissimo
Bedlam weighed the coming abrasions
concluded we are our scars and furthermore
if adaptation is survival so is parasitism
cleared his throat noisily and bowed an exit
later that fate laden candle lit night
he made a deep study of his globes and charts
Europa Asia Oceana the Steppes the Savannah
the Scorched Hills of Malibu
a map addict re-educated in the cleanup of '89
his bell-shaped curve insisted love me
server and served a beautiful thing
if one enjoyed giant jungle arachnids and leeches
and centipedes that crawl up your butt
to lay millions of eggs when you sleep
where the laws of physics become
a tumbling burbling retinal stew
geysering steam and sulfur and mud and
where was I oh yah
yet a thing of beauty was Opal to Bedlam
he heard scratching and purring at the door
it was she incognito in an iguana skin
we must escape this hideous circus of shame
she coo coo rooed as her tongue dove into
the holy fissure in his brain
and he threw caution to the feral hogs
forgetting good posture he oozed upon Opal
I bet you think you make your own decisions
she cloyed and again he tossed caution
into a cauldron of grunting mammalian rut
for several hours perhaps the entire weekend
it's easy to rewire a human
you just give them a little epiphany
and bingo ownership
his hypnotic gambit paid off in ducats
the Generalissimo slept like a corpse
the pet centipedes concluded their labors
his ex-kingdom rejoiced at their new liberty
and that's anarchy for ya
From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon
Artist Portfolio: http://walteralter.byethost32.com/
Nature, Friend and Foe
Speak out the words to the soft petaled plants,
that grow wearily in the distant corners
It is there that the scrub jay alights,
squawking and gorging on berries.
This habitat has brought the wildlife to the garden,
in an endless search for food stuffs,
always glancing over their shoulders heads turned 180 degrees, ears taut,
translucent eyes peering, fright, flight,
an evolved history, chiseled in practical instinct.
I am speaking to you dear nature,
from me you will learn exactly nothing,
it is from that which you are that I will learn.
Listen to my plaint though it fall on deaf ears.
Though you hop or walk, fly or scurry, crawl, swim or slither,
movement is your the essence, your vitality, your survival,
which appears to invite you to take the life that animates and live it to any and all ends.
Is there no loss for you, do you not care or bother for condition?
If we as a race of evolved mammalian beings were once like you,
how is it we've fallen so far from the tree and yet continue to survive?
Did you dear nature reject us, are we a sullen body of flesh
unaccustomed to following the laws that govern your being?
Are we but a rejected group?
Fires that burn forests and wastelands,
ignited by the thunderbolts from Jupiter's hand
both cleanse and rejuvenate an overgrown and tired terrain;
lava spewn out from out of the mouth of a volcano
drives itself over the land building and combing the landscape with layers of liquid rock,
cooled by atmospheric difference.
Flooding waters, ferocious winds, the whirling and swirling of earth
and its organisms of flesh and bone
thrown up and into a vortex of howling change
is greeted with impassivity.
You, my nature, friend and foe, your indifference, your beauty
and the brutality of your wrath are both vexing and compelling,
how are we to understand and continue to care?
Suey Creek
October, 2012
Cycles
by Michael R. Burch
I see his eyes caress my daughter's breasts
through her thin cotton dress,
and how an indiscreet strap of her white bra
holds his bald fingers
in fumbling mammalian awe...
And I remember long cycles into the bruised dusk
of a distant park,
hot blushes,
wild, disembodied rushes of blood,
portentous intrusions of lips, tongues and fingers...
and now in him the memory of me lingers
like something thought rancid,
proved rotten.
I see Another again?hard, staring, and silent?
though long-ago forgotten...
And I remember conjectures of panty lines,
brief flashes of white down bleacher stairs,
coarse patches of hair glimpsed in bathroom mirrors,
all the odd, questioning stares...
Yes, I remember it all now,
and I shoo them away,
willing them not to play too long or too hard
in the back yard?
with a long, ineffectual stare
that years from now, he may suddenly remember.
Photographs
by Michael R. Burch
Here are the effects of a life
and they might tell us a tale
(if only we had time to listen)
of how each imperiled tear would glisten,
remembered as brightness in her eyes,
and how each dawn’s dramatic skies
could never match such pale azure.
Like dreams of her, these ghosts endure
and they tell us a tale of impatient glory . . .
till a line appears—a trace of worry?—
or the wayward track of a wandering smile
which even now can charm, beguile?
We might find good cause to wonder
as we see her pause (to frown?, to ponder?):
what vexed her in her loveliness . . .
what weight, what crushing heaviness
turned her auburn hair a frazzled gray,
and stole her youth before her day?
We might ask ourselves: did Time devour
the passion with the ravaged flower?
But here and there a smile will bloom
to light the leaden, shadowed gloom
that always seems to linger near . . .
And here we find a single tear:
it shimmers like translucent dew
and tells us Anguish touched her too,
and did not spare her for her hair's
burnt copper, or her eyes' soft hue.
Published in Tucumcari Literary Review (the first poem in its issue)
Keywords/Tags: youth, puberty, teen, teenage, teenagers, teen love, sex, sexy, lust, desire, date, father, daughter, chastity, virginity, abstinence, hormones, photograph, photographs, effects, ghosts, phantoms, time
Bet You Did Not Know
Several mammalian species
When dropping their mammalian feces
Just before the big push
Will align their tush
Or so says this researches thesis
He watched 70 dogs of 30 plus breeds
Out in the woods completing their deeds
For each doggy sample
Through the woods did he trample
Until at last he did concede
At each defecation
And each urination
The researched noted the stance
And how each dog aligned
With his magnetic sign
And decided it was much more than chance
It seemed dogs did prefer to align their fur
Along the axis north to south
If the axis was stable
They always were able
To point to due north with their mouth
Just what did this gain us?
Just what did we learn?
When doggies took dumps, which way they did turn?
No we learned that in nature the magnetic field
Did something to some that to date was concealed
Maybe we’ve magnets buried deep in our brain
That someday, somehow we could possibly train
To give us directions when we’re lost or confused
I know that is something that I could sure use
And maybe this proves what they say with feng suhi
When designing our bathrooms, toilets and bidet
Our bowels will feel better, our bladders rejoice
If we let mother nature express her own voice
Uncle Mike
By studying ontogeny (the micro development of embryos), scientists can learn about the evolutionary history of organisms. Ancestral characters are often, but not always, preserved in an organism’s development. For example, both chick and human embryos go through a stage where they have slits and arches in their necks that are identical to the gill slits and gill arches of fish. This observation supports the idea that chicks and humans share a common ancestor with fish. Thus, developmental characters, along with other lines of evidence, can be used for constructing phylogenies (the macro evolutionary history of a kind of organism).
Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny
Haeckel’s embryonic thing
The reflections of life
Micro and macro stages of change
Placenta fertilization
It's the origins of growth
Recapitulation of the species
DNA manifest and begins to takes hold
Fish gills - Reptilian
Mammalian hair
The development of consciousness
Would evolve us to contemplate and care
This micro macro theory has been rejected
The Haeckel proposal denied
But to believe the earth is 6,000 year old
Is to ignore Einstein's theory of relativity, space and time
So, when people say “it's just a theory”
It becomes very clear to see
If you don't understand the scientific method
How will you ever understand the reality?
Some of the scientific principles
Maybe hard to accept
But when you're not interested or dismiss the facts
It's the beginning of an intellectual death
I'm not saying that faith and beliefs aren't important
Culture and curiosity provides the way
But to ignore scientific information
Is a choice to remain ignorant in modernity today
Darwinian evolution
The most incredible creation story unfolds
It reveals the language of God - science
Now the true beauty of life is told
How does a mom feed her triplets?
By getting some kinda griplet
allocating teat to liplet...
….I guess. Seems the math
suggests that this path's
more suited to bats.
For the first time
since the end of Summer,
Mr. Nobody wears his socks to bed,
a sad admission that
things were going to get worse.
Can't count on the
warmth of mother nature's breast
to keep his mammalian nature intact.
When he wears his socks
and he pulls the thin duvet and the
extra purple woven Dacron blanket
up over himself he feels
warm enough to sleep.
The cat, Missy, who sleeps on his bed
wants to go out. This is Mr. Nobody's worse fear,
like a fear of urination
a fear that keeps him from resting.
Mr. Nobody throws off the blankets, rises,
swings his legs over the side of the bed
and rests his feet on the cold wood laminate floor.
He shuffles to the door
Missy follows.
Opening the back door, he feels
the dread of the betrayal.
Missy scoots out.
Now, before he can sleep, Mr. Nobody has to remember
to find her and let her in again, realizing now that
William, the male cat had been let out earlier.
He will have to recover them both.
Mr. Nobody doesn’t know why he cares so much
about the discomforts of the cats.
He doesn't know if they suffer the terrors
of the failing pact with nature as much as he,
probably they do not.
Mr. Nobody returns to bed, pulls the cover-sandwich package
over his legs then over his chest. He rests,
planning to rise in an hour to go out and find the cats.
Mr. Nobody is certain that when he calls the cats
after an obligatory time
they will agree to follow him,
almost as if they know what's
good for them.
Poets often loose their groove
When entities dearest to them cease to be
when their natural instinct
to think wayward
fades away
and the remedy for artistic loss is unheard off
Life loses its jazz thereof
I was at cross roads some times back
on a pilgrimage on horse back
as told of by Robert frost
We play with words and bake love
but are we to also have the cake
we affix novels on single scripts
but are our conquest worth a headline
We decode the language of love
to those alien to mammalian emotions
find meaning to each ripple
of the saline seas of a humane pupil
I had my third eye plugged out
My endowment, my gift, my artistic touch, my woman
the whole subscription, cut off
She wasn't your average Cinderella
no, she was rocked in blue jeans
nothing close to a face portrait
she barely graced any make up
her face undefiled
Her scent sweat and pure passion
Lips of a new born, only hardened
Buy the equatorial rays of the suns glare
She was an endorsement of true beauty
at the threat of double standards
this century swor to alianate
Took just a stare
Fate on two feet
To heal a brocken pen
A wave plays upon a liquid canvas,
in colors of brown, gold, aqua glass.
Globules mingle in 4/4 time
chiming songs, a crystal voice, sublime.
Somewhere in a distant keep,
are echoes of that briny deep.
Ingrained in oceans memory,
mammalian song is mimicry.
Dive down into the aqueous abyss,
you’ll enjoy a crystalline bliss.
Ride a dolphin into the sunlight,
they are personalities of delight.
An expedition to the coral reef,
gleans the beauty you may seek.
Aesthetic marvels, can be found,
among the corals, that abound.
This kindred of separation
this breed apart
this top of the food chain
and its self distinction by the manipulation of thumbs
This arrogance of intelligence
with its pocket-sized reasoning of knowledge
and by default applies its logic
this incongruent species of taking everything for granted
These nations of waring factions
and the tyrannies of their religions
and all their obsessive obsessions with death
and all their cognitive dissonance of life
All the distractions
the desperate intentions
to impart some measure of meaning
some inkling of purpose for a life they have never really lived
Predisposed to elitism
by their own sense of division
this bipedal predator of vertebrate mammalian
assumes all of creation was only created for them
And in their frustration
and with their playground experience
they build all manner of weapons
to beat the crap out of the people living with them
Still the sun shines
and only by its grace do they continue to exist
all the quantum theories and universal singularities
do not help them with catharsis
they survive only by the elements of a planetary symbiosis
Gaia’s womb the ocean,
births her children with aqua love.
Mammalian heartbeats intermingle with
The sound of the tides;
harmonic echoes are recorded in
every abandoned shell.
The wisdom of those who traverse
this entire world amid the waterways…
immense and timeless; borne of eternal-mind;
the consciousness of the universe resides in every soul.
A spiritual connection deeper than life
each grain of sand holds the magic
drawn from the cosmos.
I reach to touch a conch, Lifting it my ear;
listening to the wisdom it provides
in the language of surf.
I hear the voice of a dolphin,
“We are one and the same”.
The spirit of the Manatee asks,
“Come swim with me.”
Wading into the surf, I feel the cool
of ocean embrace and dive in;
a rubbery touch of manta says
“Hello, let’s race.”
I find myself among friends.
When confronted with a panic or fright,
We think - OH NO! FIGHT or FLIGHT!
But we're deficient in counting the signs,
Given such politically charged times.
There are two other responses besides these,
Most commonly... scared people will FREEZE!
But whether you're a neocon or a lib,
The fourth is the safest - just FIB!
Wow! you thought it couldn't get stranger,
Totally fake bravado Trump's danger.
All those deferments will carry a cost,
As we mourn for those we have lost.