Author Archives: gsrbtn

Earth

the floating stone

we call our own

the blue spot argonaut

the snag in the wool of gravity’s pull

sustained by the grace

of the perfectly placed

Life

the spark in the dark

of the protozoa ark

biding its time

on destiny’s dime

stuck at the Stop and Go

of the never know

Unpropelled and single-celled

with no map or design

or intervention divine

mad as a hatter

and twice as sublime

The lone chromosome at

the slim-chance dance

of happenstance

For billions of years

we hobnobbed

in murky Jurassic tide pools

and heated ocean vents

above us

scalene shadows

of pterodactyl’s gliding

their featherless wings

warmed by a thuggish sun

the emergence beckoning

of our divergent reckoning

to that unguided moment

when we planted

a finned foot with no input

on the iffy shores of dinosaurs

tilting our thin-lipped

reptilian face towards

that acid-orange sky

Arrival survival

pockets of luck

worried, we scurried

from out of the muck

we crawled on our belly

for millions of years

dodging extinction

overcoming our fears

turning our backs

on oceans and seas

crisscrossing the plains

and carousing in trees

time shoved us along

without out any say

so, along we all went,

slowly making our way

Now look at us,

we’re a civilized mess

in the land of the more

we’ve never had less

Less kindness, compassion,

wisdom, and mirth

a desire for heaven

and disdain for the Earth

we guide planes into towers

and poison the air

we know what the fix is

but turn blindly to prayer

Danish Fatwas and papal decrees

we can’t reach the stars

when down on our knees

If we don’t break the chains

to the Gods we invented

if Batman’s and Banes

are the only incentive

then the fools will be ruled

by the vane and demented