I love the roots, my heritage
And though I have a trace of others,
This Anglo-saxon parentage
Goes back in time, in praise of mothers.

Chants around pre-historic fires
The past: caucasian celebration;
Collective history inspires,
Born of God: bright incarnation!

Our tribes and nations have resisted
Brutal empires and oppression—
Other peoples were assisted
By our yet imperfect mission.

Since I identify as white,
I search my roots and find delight.
If you despise our varied color,
You are free to choose another.

Some find a lot to criticize.
(Blondes admit there’s something there…)
But it comes as no unbound surprise:
It’s obvious— you love our hair.

PROMPT #15
write your own poem that muses on love,
but isn’t a traditional love poem
in the sense of expressing love
between romantic partners.

image: Saint John Pentych,  Mati Klarwein (1962)

PROMPT #14:
write a poem that bridges the seeming divide
between poetry and technological advances

From our earliest infancy
Ancestors, thuggish,
Chest-thumped and knuckle-dragged—
Simian, sluggish . . .

The ancients were brutes
Barely down from the trees,
When the species was stirred
By a Darwinist breeze:

Some brilliant hominid
invented the Wheel
And it’s been uphill since then.

(We are not created
In the image of progress.)

In the primitive past
Humans were limited
To hunting and gathering
Reading bestsellers
Navigating by celestial markers
Chipping spearheads
Grabbing fish by hand
Downloading tribal apps
And building massive edifices
Of seamless stone slabs
Which survived earthquakes
And millenia
To mystify us.

(Being unintelligent, our forebears
developed no smartphones.)

The myth of an ignorant past
Shall be shown as an error at last
Were our ancestors dumb?
No. That’s what we’ve become.
Homo Sapiens proving it fast.

When wickerwork whirled and turned itself into pottery, obsidian, chip off the old block, set its filial face like flint and with iron will, sparked the powderkeg of progress. Still smoking, Gutenberged into vapor, railroaded across the continents, we forded rivers of internal combustion, petro-chemicaled ourselves into particle board and plywood paradises. Atomic pharmacologies lit the way to our current zenith of global brilliance. Teens twerked on Tiktok.

The forefathers, dumber than rocks
Could design neither engines nor clocks
They merely built temples
Those shoddy examples
Of dim children playing with blocks.

Yes class, we have evolved in a dizzying parabolic curve, from the walls of Machu Picchu and Baalbek, from pre-dynastic basalt and pyramid schemes of megalithic misanthropology up, up, and up to disposable diapers, unlimited data, fentanyl and ongoing drone-strikes.

History is lies because God does not exist.