Best Microbes Poems
You, unfeeling creatures
Who call yourselves human,
You, fleeting bubbles of reason,
Accidental parasites of time,
You, filthy microbes of cancer,
Ephemera of invincible eternity,
You, who try to fill your vanity
With abominable crimes,
You, insensible butchers of animals,
Notorious destroyers of pastures,
You, contaminators of oceans,
Deleterious polluters of rivers,
You, menacing beings of harmony,
Transgressors of universal laws,
You,
Who have deliberately put me through
The tormenting agony of dying
By
Strewing your treacherous dark web of
Your unworthy ambitions, all over my face,
Shadowing my generous fertility and
Rendering me sterile,
Behold,
For the time has come for you
To feel my wrath and my fury
Boiling lava over you
To flow every day,
Kneel,
Your tiny mortal beings
In front of the immortal cosmos,
For the shiny heavy sword of
Universal justice,
Avenger of transgressions, guardians of
The eternal laws,
Over your thoughtless heads to fall
With vengeance and rage
Decapitating most of you and
Those who would survive
Shall feel the torturing pain in
Their hearts
For
Uncountable years!*
© Demetrios Trifiatis
20 March 2020
* This poem I wrote in 1985 in Montreal, Canada, when, as a co-founder of a peace movement, I was making efforts to raise consciousness to save Mother Earth. "THE MOURNING OF MOTHER EARTH." THIS IS A STERN WARNING TO ALL OF US WHO DESTROY HER: REMEMBER, NOT MUCH TIME IS LEFT TO SAVE OUR PLANET AND OURSELVES!
Our supposed modern scientific genius
May in fact just be our last fatal weakness.
This technological house of cards we've made
Left humanity walking along the edge of a razor blade.
How much could you buy or sell using debit or credit
If someone or something wiped out the internet.
A computer virus, terrorists, hackers, or an E.M.P.--
Will wipe out our hard-earned wealth eventually.
Killing beneficial insects is almost like fratricide.
Think really hard again about ever using insecticide.
How many fields of vegetable plants and fruit trees
Will ever bear fruit if there are no more bees.
Rather than organically producing more living topsoil,
We're killing what remains with chemicals derived from oil.
As chemical contaminants follows their downward motions,
Choral reefs and plankton are dying in the oceans.
As a species, we've all become germ-o-phobic neurotics,
Religiously trying to kill all microbes with antibiotics.
But pharmaceutical medicine will never defeat every bug,
So one of these days there's certain to be a super plague.
So will we all starve because we cannot buy or sell,
Or because the oceans and farmlands have all gone to Hell?
Will we be extinguished by some invincible virus?
What ever it be, the fault will probably lie in us!
I wish I could offer some brilliant inspired solution,
But remember that extinction is also a part of evolution.
You may write me off as some kind of nutty alarmist,
But people that know me consider me to be an optimist.
Perhaps I’m facing pogonophobes?
Apparently wore the wrong face.
Age-hardened wiry wisps forge
post-pubescent platemail -
protect strangers
from my truest fleshy pores, protect me
from the xenophobes of the Winter Conference.
It’s all pitching and coffee breaks
In a hall too grand for these meager mergers
Silent hecklers - likely clean-shaven -
likely Twitter-blasting about
an awkward pitch
and bitterness.
A beard grows opacity over my ebullient disinterest,
feigns sophistication amidst sophists,
and harbors microbes – an entire ecosystem –
Bored, I wonder;
Do they hold conferences as well?
Share stories around a follicle?
How uncomfortable
the itch of capitalism,
This profit pilgrimage
huddles us together
for that sickness to spread.
Free meals, networking with the estranged -
connect vacuously over downed drinks
and political action.
Shallow words spread thick
on the biological superhighway
bacterium feast freely.
The Winter Conference;
a microscopic windfall.
CONTEST ANNOTATION:
I’ve attempted to employ alliteration (‘post-pubescent platemale’), ambiguity (‘…for that sickness to spread’), double entendre (‘free meals’ and ‘bacterium feast freely’), imagery (‘my truest fleshy pores’, ‘Age-hardened wiry wisps’), paradox (‘ebullient disinterest’, ‘networking with the estranged’), and parallelism (‘likely clean-shaven – likely Twitter-blasting’). Not sure I’ve nailed every aspect of these devices - love the contest format as a way to force us in new directions!
Sanitize your hands before
You open up the door.
Grab a tissue to protect
From germs left there before.
Purell spigots on the walls
Everywhere you turn.
Still, despite these offerings,
Most people never learn.
Hospitals are breeding grounds
For every type of germ.
Even if you’re visiting,
You may wind up infirm.
Years ago, before we knew
How microbes make us sick,
We’d take our medicines and hope
That we’d feel better quick.
Now we have preventive tips
That help us, there’s no doubt;
But if you’re in the hospital,
Then hurry and get out!
I. The ground fog that rises from dappled fields
Full of the scent of the earth and all living things,
Musky like dirt and fragrant like flowers,
Floating like wedding sheets,
Layers of microbes and dust, pollution too
Reflecting sun’s heat back into space,
Saving us all from death by global warming,
That ripple, unashamed in the morning breeze
If only you had eyes to see as I do,
The passion of the night rekindled
In dawn’s earliest light with ghostly echoes
Of the sacred and the profane,
God Himself, blessing both outcomes,
As ground fog gradually disperses
With the sunrise, day’s holy light.
II. The hot-air balloon that penetrates
The temple scented clouds that frame earth itself,
Earth as God sees it, the blue planet
A crown jewel in the house that God built.
Clouds whose sharp boundaries seem to vanish
As you approach them, more like, in fact,
The mist of lovers’ imaginations
Than something that can be pinned down
And displayed in a glass topped box
As one might store bought butterflies,
A cruel mockery of nature for impatient spectators
Who carry their dreams in a bag on their back,
As if they might otherwise fly away, or perhaps,
They fear that they will never come again.
III. The drops of moisture that condense
Around particulate matter we barely notice
Thinking the sky especially clear today,
As we shamelessly burden Mother Nature.
Snow flakes too form in this same fashion,
All life dependent on pollution of some kind,
Natural processes do clean the air given time,
And yet it may still be that
Earth itself is skating on thin ice.
Pardon me if I suggest that we first do no harm,
If we all live beyond our means today,
What future waits our unborn heirs?
I, for one, feel quite uncomfortable wondering
If the only reason I am not dead from global warming,
As seems possible, is air pollution from jet planes.
But unanswered still my poem’s quest,
‘If I could I would be’ ground fog, rain,
Or bright red balloon, but why?
One answer sure is poetry is born
In images like these and I would please
A heart that grasps what image tells,
Though mine be poetry’s most flagrant verse…
IV. The one you notice…
Brian Johnston
February 7, 2015
What makes you human without your limbs,
Human without your nose and toes –
What makes you human without your ears
Makes the unborn me human without your form.
Yes, it’s my essence, not form, which counts:
Be not liberal in defining gender yet conservative
in defining life.
By one sentence do mass killings in the world
and womb begin:
“They don’t look like us and don’t act like us:
they’re not human.”
Today, I heard hushed voices say so – then
came a sharp pain.
How I wished sweet mum or the doctor would
come:
I little knew they were here and directed the attack.
“Et tu, mama? Et tu, doctor?” Dying words, I uttered.
“Your life is not good for ours,” they said.
Out of my cradle they forced me and whisked me
past the world into the grave.
“It’s my body, my choices,” I heard mum say.
Yet I challenge not what she does with her body but
with mine:
It’s “my body, my choices” after all, in this her world.
My flesh is aborted but not my voice; lend it your lips,
for mine are gone.
Then, perhaps, the unborn shall like the dead rest in
peace some day:
Not belittled, not assaulted, but shielded with concrete
and taboos…
Behind me gut microbes swarm and play where side
by side we formerly lay.
Now mum’s cuddly flesh they enjoy better than me --
They must think they’re her babies and me the
intruder.
Confounding Paradox
Are there exoplanets evolving, terrains for the living?
Living forms upon rivers, microbes drifting in the air?
Do they breathe oxygen, a unique concoction of gen?
Primeval human questions borne out of conceit unveil apprehensive curiosity
Antiquated they must be encapsulated inside the boundaries of mortal frailty
Beings are ephemeral and aged galaxies yield their jewels in a fiery embrace
Breaking then merging with brilliant mystical islands in the vastness of space
Life propitiously ubiquitous weave throughout obscured mazes encompassing
The most confounding paradox is existence and to probing souls enlightening
Penned: 4:17 P.M.
10/27/2016
Aboard cruise liner:
Vision of the Seas
Argostoli, Greece
Nature of Life
Are you able to discriminate
between living and inanimate?
Can you draw definite line of demarcation
displaying ‘Life’ and ‘No-Life’ distinction?
Is there any boundary which
non- living can never reach?
Beyond that can life originate,
spread, flourish and terminate?
Earth, Air, Water, Sun: so-called non-livings
are responsible to initiate living beings.
Senses are hidden in inanimate more or less
to be shown by life in continuous process.
Microbes show little sense; plants show better sense.
Animals in full sense and humans in conscience.
In Nature, eternal chain of life cycle continuous flowing
through inanimate, microbes, plant, animal, human being.
05/15/16
SPRING STANDARD CONTEST by Brian Strand
Teetering on a tangent this pearlescent dew drop
Balancing midrib, it is but
A breath away from oblivion's slide, yet
Held in place by Mother Nature’s lace
A globule of life
An ocean full of microbes surfing its globe
Pirouetting with life’s balance it quivers in its emerald valley
Blinding sunrays bleeding colourful apparitions
From this tiny orb, a disco ball
Where butterflies ballet
A Sundance in glitter
A glide to nature’s symphony
A waltz upon a leaf
19 Aug. 2014
How to keep microbes from souring alcohol?
Submit them to pasteurization and kill them all!
Want your ale sweet when it is done brewing?
Destroy all the bacteria with heating and cooling!
And when your yeast is done with fermentation,
Use germ theory for vaccinations!
His work led to prevention of anthrax and rabies,
But also the whole field of stereochemistry!
Although being paralyzed probably stunk,
It was probably bearable being always drunk!
hehehe
hehehe
hehehe
you forget us
we never forget you
u neglected your health
never clean after being dirty
it will be fine you thought
will you be fine?
you followed your gluttony
eating atrociously
Unknown kinds of animals, you ate
it will be fine, you thought
yes you did
here we are
Years after years
we claimed thousands of you
with different names
death plague, Ebola, Spanish flu and cholera
are just some of our names
we might be different
yet we will always
be there for you
when you least expected
Such death tolls
from epidemics to pandemics
caused by such
teensy weensy microbes
no, nano microbes
you cannot see us,
does not mean we are not there
Hehehe
be wary, be wary
we are watching you always
hehehe
hehehe
Making the world
using it all in a
transforming dance of life.
First to appear
in the primeval soup
they grew to
fungus connectors,
glue sticking us all
in a criculating web.
Microbes that chop up remains
then bear new things again.
I am a wheatfield becoming.
Regenerating burned forests
and the flood plains
or feeding the ocean
five thousand species in a
single teaspoon of soil ...
enable my breath.
Creator of color, creator of light,
You've given us both to shine day and night.
Your garden of flowers, all species of fish,
in all arrays of hues, what more could we wish?
Exquisite white snowflakes, volcanoes fire red,
Coral sandy beaches, new horizons to tread.
Your delicate mighty insects, we observe with geat awe,
In all shapes and sizes, they fly, creep and crawl.
Shiny fruits and veggies, succulant to the core,
and microscopes reveal stunning microbes galore.
Your artistry is prevalent in every single thing.
We thank you, Jehovah, to you praises we sing.
The Rage of Mother Earth
(Warning those who destroy HER)
You, unfeeling creatures
Who call yourselves Human,
You, fleeting bubbles of reason,
Accidental parasites of time,
You, filthy microbes of cancer,
Ephemera of invincible eternity,
You, who try to fill your vanity
With abominable crimes,
You, insensible butchers of animals,
Notorious destroyers of pastures,
You, contaminators of oceans,
Deleterious polluters of rivers,
You, menacing beings of harmony,
Transgressors of universal laws,
You, who deliberately have put Me
Through the tormenting agony of dying
By strewing your treacherous dark web
Of your unworthy ambitions, all over my face
Shadowing my generous fertility
And rendering me sterile,
Behold!
For the time will come for you
To feel my wrath and my fury
Boiling lava over you
To flow every day,
Kneel, you tiny mortal beings
In front of the immortal cosmos
For the shiny heavy sword
Of universal justice,
Punisher of transgressions
Guardian of the eternal laws,
Over your thoughtless heads to fall
With vengeance and rage
Decapitating the most of you
And those who would survive
Will feel the torturing pain
In their hearts
For thousands of years!
© Demetrios Trifiatis
A cosmic clash of epic force
Split Tiamet like brittle thread
Nibiru hugged its distant course
Propelling moons to gnaw and shred
Kingu marveled at what was formed
Asteroids shed from that vast orb
The watery giant was transformed
Leveling as third to absorb
Many long elliptic passes
Tugged Nibiru over ages
Until those once noble gasses
Failed to impede starlight rages
Over this time the shard revolved
Taking shape as the oceans churned
The sun ensured the rock evolved
Microbes cracked until life returned
Expelled from the Nibiru throne
Alalu jumped to explore Earth
While he ventured the slice alone
He found metal of precious worth
At last the solution was found
To save them from the harsh daylight
Fragments of gold if spread around
Would shelter Nibiru’s grave plight
The new king Anu sent his son
To work his wisdom to flourish
Igigi ships loped as they spun
While miners jabbed deep to nourish
The Anunnaki soon rebelled
Their fate of hellish work and toil
A plan was hatched to force them quelled
New primitives should pull the coil
Enki tripped the genetic gun
Splicing the double helix code
Our ancient line had just begun
Demanding that we haul their load
At last the life goddesses tired
Of the chore of birthing the clones
Genetic changes were required
To allow our own labor moans
The Igigi succumbed to lust
Swooping down to mate with the slaves
Enlil pondered their breach of trust
This threat shall be deluged by waves
Graciously Enki warned one man
To gather the seeds of all life
Nibiru yanked our fragile span
Tossing the seas with driving strife
Once the flood waters receded
Kingship descended from the stars
Eager gods learned we were needed
Sinai rebuilt upon the scars
Marduk groaned with greedy power
Seeking to build a rival port
Enlil grasped this Babel tower
Condemning them in holy court
The gate of god was crushed outright
Striking our enlightenment down
Forcing Marduk to flee from sight
Till he seized his Egyptian crown
Sinai hungered the jealous god
With hopes to steal the path to space
So they launched a fatal petard
Baalbek wiped out without a trace
At last the minions awaken
To crush the repression they face
Amen-Ra remains unshaken
Even by our haste to erase