Proto Poems | Examples

List of Member Poems

Premium Member Pterodactyline

With features pterodactyline
and scales that gave a greenish sheen,
she swooped down from above,
thinking, she, of love.

Below, a mousy proto-mammal,
teeth chattering away enamel,
didn't have a chance,
and had to change his pants.

Sea Change

A tusked wolf dips its paw into the brine
the sea is its restless mother.
A proto creature, its bones already growing
razorback fins and horns, it must seek a shell
to hide beneath. The fanged manatee dies for love.
Before the porpoise leapt, before the whale shipped
its gray prow,
Jekyll and Hyde clawed each other
through a gibbosity of flesh. Where the skin flew,
rat tails grew gills and jagged jaws, while
blind behemoths burst out from small pods.
a saline transitioning that even now
wave-washes my naked feet, as the sea
plows me deep -
and does this cold moonlight reveal
the hidden talons of my ever-flowing father?

The Ice Breaker Maker

I've invented this device you see
with idio-syncronicity.
So please feel free to visit me
that's if you are in the vaccinity.


I will compress these buttons
stock piled with dials and log into
its docket files
to put it through its proper trials.


Four quarters water not too much
for its nature
now stand by and watch how "The
Ice Breaker Maker" as no proto-type
gets to smile with the waiter
who loves the machine but might
not like its creator
who sits in his seat in a flight simulator.


Premium Member i went into a book shop and asked, 'where do you keep the bibles?'

yeah, i went in
and i picked up a novel and took it to the counter
she said, "oooh, i do like this one. so heartbreaking and inescapable.
it's about being dislocated from friends and numbing routine and desire."
i said, "it's not for me, it's for my mate, bill."
the bloke behind the counter came over and whispered to me, 
"before death, i will be recognised
as an expert fencer. all we have left is fantasy or the examination of the self."
his name badge read 'peter'
he had the phlegmatic charm of a proto-slacker
he handed me the receipt and 
i ate it in front of him

Premium Member FOU FU clerihew

Tsuguhuru Fujita tagged 'Fou 'Fou
cultivated  distinctive look so new
A proto John&Warhol
publicity always his goal

The Cycle 1: Proto

Dark Matters burn; a new age will beckon
Ancient plans turn; with creaking tendons
providence a blight, hidden in questions.
Made of the aether; not of the heavens.

Coalescing tangles and connections makes.
Spinning an eon; the darkness breaks
Shadows cast in the gleaming wakes.
Gravity pulls into endless space.

Eruptive remnants of eons past
a common core of bonded ash
come together to form, at last,
a brand new cycle from circling gas.


Premium Member Pat Robertson Don't Try It

Don't try to make me just like you
I must cherish my free speech and thought
If I just clung on to your point of view
I’d relinquish a right which cannot be bought

LGBTQ people are dancing, spitting on, and defiling your grave
Well because ding dong, yet another witch is dead
Christian Broadcasting, you founded to minister and save
Condemned feminists as devils whom we should dread

We speak of religious right pundit Pat Robertson
Avowing 9/11 attacks as divinely ordained
The Queen is dead, but perhaps not gone   
Because his small minded thoughts have remained

Nothing says Pride like the death of your proto-Hillsong
They won’t miss that homophobia which you did awake
So here’s to you Mr. Robertson
And your accusing gay men of a spiky HIV handshake

Soft Tissue Attached

After thousands of years
due to global ice melt in the permafrost
my carcass has been unearthed.

Not surprisingly I was hairy and
proto-Slavic.

Some idiot named me ‘Derick Specimen 974.2’,
My spirit watched as they soaked me in warm water
then froze me up again.

How many times must my remains
be poked about like this?
For centuries I have been interned,
exhumed, washed away
and bulldozed into dust,
leaving my genetic footprints all over
their dumb brains

and now some fool
looks upon my preserved remains
and names me ‘Derick’!’

Just wait until I dig one of you up
ten thousand years from now.

I won’t care how bald and scrawny looking you are,
I’ll name you: Aphrodite
even through your flaccid popsicle of a scrotum
is clear for all to see.

One Word Can Be a Dictionary of Meaning

Let’s agree that our words mean something;
words like Ma and Pa, all those proto-vowels,
but also ‘prestigious’ and ‘disambiguation’
they also are layered with insights
for the perceptive.

Words can be as layered as Damascus steel,
more so,
they many even have roots
as deep as earth-time itself.

All interesting words have a winding history,
their meanings are associated,
linked with many more meanings.
Such words are symbols for myriad realities.

This kind of inquiry is never ending.
interpretation cannot be superficial,
poetry demands a deeper seeing.

Some words have no inner-life of their own,
such words have a paucity, a dearth,
they are derivatives of a shallow concept
given unsustainable implications.
From the very start they were everlastingly
empty.

The astute choose words
that mean more than can be said.

Meteor

When you fell to earth
did you bring death or life?
Were we first base or a rock too large to miss?

Dead planets are everywhere.
Fire and ice spin around
a deadly vortex
with nothing mild enough
to be just enough.

Did a dragons eye capture creation
a vision seen at its destruction?
If you killed the lumbering reptilians
who brought them forth?
Was it the fire and Ice?

Some say earth is much older than we think,
some say it is younger,
only a simple unicellular proto-being
of a simple-minded creator knew
but had no eyes to see.

There is no memory,
and if humanity is to be extinguished
by a loose space pebble 
there will be no history either.

Premium Member Violence of Mind

Once a nation
Supremely white as driven snow,
Singularly Christian, white and male,
Purely untarnished, and aglow,
Grandeur unparalleled in fairytale.

Hence a grievance
Punitively bold as bloody hellfire, 
Potently prosecuted in seats of power,
Oppressively waged against objects of ire,
Prisms of nonwhites seeking justice in the hour. 

Now a leader
Colossally void as sterilized weaponry,
Glibly sanctions white phobia and rage,
Lethally enflames this proto-fascist fancy,
As corporations provide aid to the rampage.

Thus a faction
Devoutly for leader, they stand down,
Steadfastly ready for the order to kill,
All woke-ish elitists, and enemies black and brown,
That white men reclaim their rightful place at the till.   

Violence of mind
Shocks no one in America,
Where thugs are part of romantic lore.
With our ascendant authoritarian replica,
Are we ready for what washes ashore?

Published in Dissident Voice: 01/09/22

How the World Got Colorful

Green was the theme, mainly green and blue
then came you
in your floral dance and open mouths,
red insect-eating lips. snaky tongues
big, bold, and subjectively pretty,
objectively fleshy,
lushly, lustful, lapping at life.
The sun adopted the new
grey turned greyer next to you.
Blooming bouncing behemoth begonias
yet uncultivated, all hungry to suck the soil,
burst breeding seeds, pollinate, infiltrate,
dominate, habituate, inflate.
Then when the small ape-like manikins
(proto us),
began to populate
they picked you.

The Body Personal

The body-personal will be achieving little today.
Today is a too tight T-shirt.

Bloat and insomnia
have measured and found soft round toads
croaking in the swamp of being.
There are squawky
oral articulations in dry joints.

A fate has made its presence known
revealing pre-set mousetraps
strewn upon the path of well laid plans;
it warns obliquely of dentures mechanically
nibbling on stale cheese.

Knowing the hours will belch
and empty-out air that could have
breathed new life into words,

Perceiving that chattering mind-children
will cross the distracted mind
without a crossing guard,
be bowled over, squashed, spread
over neural highways,
their scant electric membranes
dissolving and denuded
leaving a sticky residue
over the body personal...

then that body
must retire and regroup
into a proto-cognizance,
a glow of phosphorescence 
too primal to be snared,
yet able to predict
when it can get out of itself -
hopefully.

How It Came About

(a turtle creation story)

Turtle flexed his jaws
as hard as secateurs.
Monkey-See saw
flew up the slippery trees
mimicking
the snapping sound
above the mealy ground.

It was the first Saturday night
and most of the good things,
and most of the mischief
had been sown hours before
but monkey-see knew there would be more.

Fishnet Tights,
the first last-born lady
was crying softly
not knowing why she was weeping and wet.

Her buttery bosoms heaved – we the proto
air-breathing zoo-lings all saw
and most of the swarm grieved
through their embryonic nostrils.

Turtle explained her woe
by opening wide his scything mandible.

When she looked down in it,
Fishnet-Tights saw, red and chortling,
in that ancient maw
his bobbing Adams Apple.

It was then that she became with kids
those troubled knuckle-heads,
the fabled Cain and Abel.

Monkey-See let out a howl
that flew from tree to tree top.

All the scaly birds knew
something big was up.

Turtle winked,
then slept for an eon or two
until all the zoonotic creatures
plumped up - and grew.

Listening To Russian Poetry

The odor of turnips,
of seasoned cabbage water - borscht
flushed through musing kidneys.

Listening to Zhukovsky, Vysotsky, Tyutchev,
not comprehending a word of it.
Working my way backward
through an alphabet that echoes
proto-Slavic roots and chugs.
Muses that are a gloved slap of love,
an aching tooth,
a fondness for black-ice
words that gnaw wet socks and fingertips.
Suspicions wriggle like long dead Popes –
the smell of tobacco and damp sheets.
A dusting of earth shaken from chilled rhizomes.

Words simmer like sleeping Cossacks.
Whiffs of green water, grain, and potato,
the anguish of bruised beets.

A poetry that peels onion,
a crop used
in the pickling of cucumbers,
and other forever preserved romances.

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.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace