Washington.
What a name (and fame) to muse upon!
He’s Mount Rushmore’s oldest mastodon.
Oh, I believe in Washington.
Slavery.
Owning humans came so easily.
Handed ten while still in puberty,
Oh, George was into property.
He had rotten teeth
(underneath, the gums were good):
and his dental plate
(so ornate!) was made of wood.
Dish the dirt.
Fifty years it took to deconvert:
Redcoat George decided to desert,
as British as the mini-skirt.
I remember the grief in Samuel
when Saul failed,
like the grief in Nile
when blood crept into it —
just like it creeps into the bones of
this earth.
The rage in grief is distant but distinct,
escorted by bits of frozen nuts
and wizened grains of desert sand,
white assembly of killing spectres in
a background of black eclipse with
lunar talons
and swords of claws
and jars of cold tears.
Oh, how Samuel grieved for Saul!
The mourning is immense . . .
Sempervirence fossilised
along abbeys forayed with hot silt
and Dane guns of lewd hunters
Pulsations and acrid fever,
with the disease of camels, are frequented by
a recrudescence of the mastodon,
In liaison with his extended kinsmen the dinosaurs.
We are livid with mourning,
for the soul of a toothless one
gone from us
this grey day of elegy
and season of potent grief.
Fetters exist, and persist, swinging in
our faces like treasures of hell
where we hear that bug-ridden mats
are spread for us;
there, chants of elegy
hoot,
and black furnaces boil
and smelt
the repast we are to devour.
What explains Trumpenstein’s command
That the U.S. borders expand?
His withered small shaft
Needs a bigger graft
Of mastodon parts from Greenland
As a child, men of science warned me
about the coming of a second ice age.
They flashed pictures of stomping mastodon
hungry saber tooth cats
and giant sloths with enormous claws.
I listened closely and was frightened
but I was all in and took quick action.
I learned how to build an igloo
by stuffing snow into hollow plastic blocks.
I sharpened the end of dozens of sticks
to battle the giant cats and mastodon.
Now, Bill Nye, Mr. Gore and Hanoi Jane
are warning me of imminent global warming
and biblical flooding rarely seen.
I'm taking them seriously.
So, I'm stockpiling tuna fish, beer and seed.
and building a tiny arc just for three
as I'll never have two of everything.
There's only the cat, an olive-eyed dove and me.
O, how will we ever cope
The dreaded meteor is on its way
The weather mavens say ‘No hope’
that those dinosaurs will live another day
What will we tiny little mammals do
without our super-sized friends
btw: They’re also predicting an ‘Ice Age’ soon
Whoa is us, inevitable is our end
But wait, what’s this I hear
Wooly mammoth and Mr. Mastodon
Grown large of a sudden
Surely we too can overcome our fear
*****************
Millenia later, Charles Darwin wrote that all species must
change their ways from time to time...
To survive, we adjust
having accumulated too much ‘climate convenience rust’
Let me take it back to the Old School where Courage was Virtue
Heart Strong, Fearless, I'm Resolute
Peep This
I Got This Feelin, Like a Burnin Torch I'M LUMINOUS!
Head High through the Crucible
Wings Wide, The Flights Exuberant
Light Bright
My Hearts a Goliath,
Soaring Up High, Golden Born like a Mastodon
Ever Rising, Ever Glowing, Burning Bright like Saffron
Turn the tables on those
haughty bosses you wait on
Turn on them aggressively
~ like a mastodon
Grandma! Your talking to a fiery dragon.
Yes, one of my many talents I didn't know I
Possessed. I will not be impolite. It's standing
There in all its fiery splendor talking from the
Other side of the fence illuminating the
Darkness.
I'm honored to finally have met, seen, and
Talked to an incredible phenomenon.
Would you say your bigger than a mastodon?
I must be under a spell. Where is the sorceress?
Grandma! Your talking to a fiery dragon.
When you use your imagination John
Anything is possible and it is bottomless.
I'm honored to finally have met, seen, and
Talked to an incredible phenomenon.
Do you eat tarragon?
We are making progress.
Grandma! Your talking to a fiery dragon.
I wave my hand and said Soon all this will be
Gone
Back to lifelessness.
I'm honored to finally have met, seen, and
Talked to an incredible phenomenon.
A bonfire gave me the key to once upon.
My grandson is still talking about my
Childishness.
My grandma talked to a fiery dragon.
She was honored to have met, seen, and
Talked to such an incredible phenomenon.
I had supposed all this was closed to me.
The age of miracles was long since gone,
no wisp of wonder left to dwell upon.
I had assumed that I was doomed to be
leaf-litter underneath a winter tree,
about as in-demand as Prester John,
as of-the-moment as the mastodon,
all middle age and mediocrity.
I ache to watch her putting up her hair,
alone before the mirror, unaware:
I love the God-sent perfume of her skin,
the olive oval of that perfect chin,
the way she graces, not just sits upon, a chair.
She came, that life-in-earnest should begin.