The Geologic Time of Your Life

 

I.https://cdn.britannica.com/s:700x450/66/131666-004-E06E3168.jpg

evolving, thunder-struck

amino eventualities

and bio-potentialities

in the muck

re-group, protoplasmic and joyful

singing in the proverbial soup

of circumstances

and random cosmic chances

a song of differentiation

loose ends / ragged strands / loose lines

of poetry: DNA spiral dances

Precambrian time, period of time extending from about 4.6 billion years ago (the point at which Earth began to form) to the beginning of the Cambrian Period, 541 million years ago. Precambrian time encompasses the Archean and Proterozoic eons, which are formal geologic intervals

II.

the wriggling one-celled poet decides

to become complex

takes its time:

geologic / astral eons

twitching and failing

into the fabled tadpole of adaptation

to a godless universe, diverse

in its variegated futility

this idea has been summarized in the mouthful, ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’, which means the development of the individual embryo repeats its alleged evolutionary history. The first thing to say about this dictum, is that ‘law’ it is not!

III.

our fish, now fowl,

proclaims its Archaeopteryx manifesto

standing on Precambrian banks

demanding a return on its investment

in sedimentary overlays:

Ernst Haeckel ! shrieks the avian jokester

The Imaginary Monera: the eating habit and reproductive cycle of an alleged Moneron to which he gave the scientific name, Protomyxa aurantiaca 73 pages of his speculations more important than facts and evidence.

IV.https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Haeckel_Anthropogenie_1874.jpg/330px-Haeckel_Anthropogenie_1874.jpg

into the long long corridors

of time’s bad poetry

sleeping off the tadpole nightmare

sprouting flippers, legs, digits, wings

deciding to fly, smashing antediluvian cedars with trilobite tail

upright biped sporting body-hair you shall prevail

descending from trees in African dreams

misanthropologically erect

gracile / robust (that’s us)

Hey turn that shit up ! yells Piltdown Man

from his evolutionary window

He believed that the only major difference between man and the ape was that men could speak and apes could not. He therefore postulated a missing link which he called Pithecanthropus alalus (speechless apeman) a woman with long lank hair suckling a child.

V.

falling for the lies

of the Lord of the Flies

Zinjanthropus asks quizzically

How much more of this

are you prepared to take ?

misbegotten centuries glimmer:

light years of bad poetry

captive eons of incoherent free verse

as we wait

for the Bronze Age Myths

to begin

 

PROMPT #3: a poem that takes time. It takes its time getting where it’s going, and the action of the poem itself takes place over months.
[…] a story or action that unfolds over an appreciable length of time.

 

Honestly, this is the type of modernist poetry I dislike.
I wrote it in about 25 minutes, edited and formatted it
with found text & images for about 40 minutes and VOILÀ:
cutting-edge modern dullness
. It was still fun though.

TEXT/IMAGE CREDITS: creation.com
wikipedia
britannica.com

 

 

More March Monkey Merchandise

fallenmiasThe Selection of Sex and Descent in Relation to Man

…in every visible character man differs less from the higher apes,
than these do from the lower members of the same order of Primates.
Charles Darwin, 1871

The Other claims descent from apes
then acts like a violent monkey.
It pillages, it loots and rapes
performing as Satan’s flunkey.

Its actions bear the mark of Cain;
brandishing cameras, smashing things.
We feel its proto-human pain
yet dread the urban woe it brings.

It justifies, through monkey-word
its primal carnage, childish rage.
With anthropoid designs deferred
it struts the Darwinian stage.

The higher primate government
rewards them well with ripe bananas
for wrecking their environment
(jungle as well as savannas).

Their mate selection, naturally,
a semi-simian solution:
intercoursing sexually,
to hasten their evolution.

The wombs enlarge—they drop their young
then text their friends while getting high.
They swing from treetops, fling their dung—
while down below the humans sigh.

 

Painting: Fallen Mias, 2000. Walton Ford (b. 1960)
Watercolor, gouache, ink and pencil on paper, 60 ½” x 119 ¾ ”
New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT

Marching Toward the Simian Front

I am re-posting previous work during March.
Since 2014, I’ve published 30 original poems
for National Poetry Writing Month every April.

You can read more by clicking the NaPoWriMo widgets to the right

 

Aping Our Apologist
darwin-monkey-2

Jane of the Jungle (she’s all good)
charmed our world as Darwin’s daughter.
Anglican primates notwithstood,
her leaky theories held some water.

Streams of ngombe, sacred cows
were celebrated. What were these
to which the simian cosmos bows?
Irrelevant hypotheses.

Selecting great apes (naturally)
Miss Misanthrope researched, with love;
her theories, stated factually,
were hailed as truth from God above.

Hoping for reason, shadowing Man
the graybeards came for tempting fruit
unaware of their part in the plan:
to be used, like tools (but more hirsute).

Termites on a slender stalk
delighted hungry primate souls.
Her ripe bananas were the talk
of primatological controls.

Peeling off; mzungu starkness
starred the Tanzanian night.
Chimping out, she lit the darkness
claiming scientific right.

Sweating out the Tarzan fever,
naming names while hugging apes,
let us, laughing, love and leave her
to her anthropoid escapes.

chechimp

King Kong was to film
as bananas are to fruit:
not yet deemed racist.

 

Aping Our Apologist

darwin-monkey-2

Jane of the Jungle (she’s all good)
charmed our world as Darwin’s daughter.
Anglican primates notwithstood,
her leaky theories held some water.

Streams of ngombe, sacred cows
were celebrated. What were these
to which the simian cosmos bows?
Irrelevant hypotheses.

Selecting great apes (naturally)
Miss Misanthrope researched, with love;
her theories, stated factually,
were hailed as truth from God above.

Hoping for reason, shadowing Man
the graybeards came for tempting fruit
unaware of their part in the plan:
to be used, like tools (but more hirsute).

Termites on a slender stalk
delighted hungry primate souls.
Her ripe bananas were the talk
of primatological controls.

Peeling off; mzungu starkness
starred the Tanzanian night.
Chimping out, she lit the darkness
claiming scientific right.

Sweating out the Tarzan fever,
naming names while hugging apes,
let us, laughing, love and leave her
to her anthropoid escapes.

chechimp

King Kong was to film
as bananas are to fruit:
not yet deemed racist.