I looked at my toes in the bathtub
Imagined them curling around a tree
Gave myself a shoulder rub
Thought about primal ancestry.
The dentist removed my canine teeth
They reminded me of the wolf beneath
And when insurance took me off his list
I growled like a cheetah being dissed.
Was I just a wild beast?
Like a chimp finding a feast?
Like a bird singing with a mating goal?
Like an elk at a water hole?
I ran into a hostile guy
Said I had told a lie
Said I was a snake, a skunk
So I got into a funk.
Didn't I have a spirit higher?
Wasn't there creative fire?
Couldn't I get respect
for my curious seeking intellect?
Tell me someone tell me please
that I'm not a monkey in the trees.
Though there's a white oak in my yard
Its fun to climb, and not so hard.
So I'll embrace my inner critter
I won't be angry, won't be bitter
I'll transcend it when I can
And I hope you understand:
why when I try to sing a tune
I sound like a wolf howling at the moon.
Great Britain’s famous Charles Darwin -
On biology he put a new spin.
Like Lincoln, born the exact same year, month and day;
both hated slavery and are well-remembered, by the way.
(30.4.75: the USA abandons its ally, South Vietnam:
Darwin Judge is the last American to die in Saigon)
Don't ever tell me this was dignified.
I never want to hear of heads held high,
of brothers-in-arms, or marching out with pride.
Just take the pain. It's how it was. Don't lie.
On Wednesday April thirtieth, we ran.
We scurried from the post we should defend,
abandoning the flag, the 'wife', the plan.
We scrambled out, and didn't take our friends.
They washed up all around us, thick as kelp.
To linger here was worse than death. They knew.
Whom else but us could they beseech for help?
We climbed aboard without them. Off we flew.
"White Christmas" played bizarrely, over again,
and big white guys with guns backed from the line
where squatted cooks and cleaners, handymen.
Our time had come to go. This was the sign.
We were their only hope. But, on the sly,
(John Wayne we weren't. Not even Dennis Hopper.)
so no-one would wise up, we - Semper Fi -
snuck sheepishly aboard the final chopper.
The tears catch themselves in my throat,
and do not spill out of my eyes.
He's laying in the warmth of my bed,
and I know his hands will go cold,
I think back to the time I've wasted- no- cherished.
The grief of sickness flickers in my husbands eyes,
Still I do not cry.
His research stirs in my head,
And I laugh sadly,
Thinking: God will not wait for him,
And still my cheeks stay dry.
God, how peculiar, how he makes my mind wonder
Of all the thoughts his data might bestow.
his chest spikes in pain,
I see it in his eyes- then across his face,
And our family's faces twists
as if our hearts are the ones failing,
Maybe they are in some way.
The conclusion that maybe meaning isn't in the pages,
But in their memories,
Makes my chest heave,
But no sob comes.
I see him smirk,
And turn,
And whisper,
“I am not at all afraid to die.”
Then, with a shaky hand,
I lay my hand across his face,
and close his eyes.
Knowing he lives on in books,
and in me.
Statues of Darwin
David J Walker
Cayotes claim what they can of
The daylight hours hounded by the
Windblown November sun
Below the Mesa
No better than the
Blazing days of the summer
Only colder
Every rock looks the same
Every plant a chameleon
Every insect a meal in a race for
Its life
Here the world is cruelly honest
About its business and
Indifference to death
Here, life is recycled
Without ceremony nor prayer
Language needs no interpretation
Reading is seeing and reacting
And each species erects its own
Statues of Darwin
having missed
the sunday sermon
barring nature
from self-organizing
believed to be a sin
against the law of entropy
unstable air mixes
bitter cold with warm
moist masses collide with dry
forming in the closet of night
and breach of day
an ephemeral sign
forming a why
where heaven never shows
and no Word appears
but a humble messenger
without trumpet or salutation
now descending
in silence drawn
by mass of earth
From chaos
order increases,
out of thin air
new information,
symmetry of design
by nature's hand,
bearing little weight
upon the sacred
edifice, but
challenging,
by yet one more
fell blow,
Darwinian
denial:
a crystal
of snow.
DARWIN WAS RIGHT, THE FITTEST WILL SURELY SURVIVE
THE WEAK, THE SICKLY, THE OLD WILL NOT STAY ALIVE
THE FOOLISH, THE GAMBLERS HAVE A SLIGHT CHANCE
THERE’S NO GUARANTEE THEY’LL BE HERE ABLE TO DANCE
THE SMART, THE CLEVER, THE LUCKY WILL BE ABLE TO SAY
WE USED PRECAUTIONS SO AS TO LIVE ANOTHER DAY
HUMANS ARE GREGARIOUS THEY NEED OTHERS AROUND
WELCOME THE NOISE, THE SPEECH OF INCOMING SOUND
OUR EYES ARE RESTLESS WE NEED NEW SIGHTS TO SEE
OUR SENSES NEED CHALLENGES, WE NEED TO BE FREE
WE NEED TO SUPPRESS OUR USUAL HABITS, JUST FOR A WHILE
ACT SMART, DON’T GAMBLE, GET TOUGH, WEAR A SMILE
TIMES OF UNCERTAINTIES, DON’T ADD TO DARWIN’S LIST
AVOID GATHERINGS, WEAR A MASK IF YOU PLAN TO EXIST.
For five years the illustrious and regal
Charles Darwin, sailed on the Beagle.
A surveying ship,
Notebooks all a’rip,
Soon in battle with Wallace, so legal.
This bloke said, ‘Hi,’ but we nearly passed him by
My mate said, ‘You should listen, he's a scientist guy.’
He uttered lots of nonsense but it stuck inside my head
And now I rarely go out cos I walk the streets in dread
He said, ‘ What if the ostriches never could fly
and a bit more evolution sees them take to the sky,
you’d better make a bee line to a market seller
and ask him if you might procure his biggest umbrella.
If your coffee is alfresco when you’re shopping in town,
you sit there and you sup it but the level don’t go down.
Better put a hand or saucer over your cup
but whatever you do, don’t ever look up.’
Might we then discover Darwin got it all wrong
The evidence apparent in the god almighty pong
I hope it doesn't come to pass till after I’m dead
That elephants and hippos circle over our head
I cannot help but think about the prehistoric era
And the reason for extinction which could not be any clearer
No cosmic collision killed the beasts that came before us
They were smothered in the output from an airborne brontosaurus!
If I shave with Occam’s razor
I will only grow a gross beard;
And all my scientific friends
Will think that I am truly weird.
If I want a small feline pet,
Should I adopt Schrodinger’s cat?
Will its fur be real, soft, and smooth;
Or will I only think it so?
If life, Darwin wrote, rose random,
And that is how I came to be,
If I sought to recreate me
Would I find that I had no chance?
If I find Yogi’s fork, in road,
And take it to get dirty rice
Would I find a place so busy
Nobody goes there anymore?
If I saw a Mobius strip
At a past midnight burlesque show
I’d see each curve, inside and out
‘Til my dazed mind went off the edge.
If I race up Max Escher’s stairs,
On his twisted angular trail,
In search of Babel’s pinnacle,
Will I ever reach his roof top?
If I muse, did Thinker find love
In the Venus de Milo’s arms
Before Rodin cast his great mind
Into a nude body of bronze?
Theory of evolution
is mocked by God
Lamb and wolf sleep together
Isa. 11:6
From ancient blackened earth our lives emerged
Affirming eon's cycling through soil's time
But in the end all creatures had diverged.
Though ash and cinder oft contributes grime
To rising zephyr souls whose breaths are numb,
The weathercock and vane, when tossed by clime,
Expel arrays of song with cogent thrum
And sweep away gray residues to place
on this sad groaning land a laudanum.
Our tingling bodies rise and fall with grace
At measured rates and epics of no date
Hold myths instilling dramas to embrace.
Each moment burns a candlewick of fate.
Our nurture and our nature maybe blurred
Yet our atomic cells that did not wait.
From slime to flesh and blood genetics stirred.
Man's science know what brought each life to birth
But not the why existence had occurred.
Now we are stewards tending to our Earth.
This we must do with highest care and worth.
The Darwin Awards are a posthumous honor, recognizing those who have improved the human gene pool by removing themselves from it by their own foolish actions.
In a robbery way out in Long Beach
Elliot's handgun misfired in the breech
Down the barrel he took
A quite scatterbrained look
Then made it more than a figure of speech
There was a foolish fellow named Gary
Who gulped gasoline over near Cary
The fuel made him gag
So he fired up a ***
And now smokes in the state mortuary
"Look, no helmet!" Phil proudly decried
In the headgear disobedience ride
He stood for his rights
Then put out his lights
When he flew off his Electra Glide
An impatient Korean got miffed
And was ramming the doors of the lift
Then went a bit daft
When he got the shaft
But his ride to the bottom was swift
References:
http://jdgroover.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/the-2013-darwin-awards-are-out/
http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2012-03.html
http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2011-03.html
http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2010.html
Charles Darwin
was a margin
off his rocker when he, ashamedly,
got caught swinging from a tree.
The Darwin Awards are based upon Darwin's theory
regarding the survival of the fittest and elimination of the weak.
The less intelligent die off and are eliminated from the gene pool
and it is to they that the Darwin Awards are awarded to.
The Darwin Awards are awarded tongue in cheek.
Awards are given to they who died due to their own stupidity.
Paul Stiller, 47, and his wife Bonnie
were bored just driving around at about 2 A.M.
so they lit a quarter stick of dynamite to toss out the window
just to see what would happen.
Someone should have told them that the window was closed.
and so to Paul and Bonnie Stiller this Darwin Award goes.
However, they don't truly qualify for a Darwin Award actually
because both of them miraculously survived their injuries,
but I'm sure that a Darwin Award will be granted in their future inevitably.
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.