A Race

Fleet of foot, we rose up on new legs
And crawled from the ocean,
Found caves by the shore more secure,
But ambitious, precocious, we wanted more.

Overtaking the bones of dinosaurs
Forging weapons of our bodies
We set out to outsmart competition
Surpass them with strength and speed.

It was not easy. Some fell early
To malnutrition; attrition rate high,
But we were stubborn, focused;
Too intent on growth to die.

Hurdled germs on our own terms
Through the darker ages, lettered pages
To illuminate and illustrate
Our superior ways, our mind, our fate.

When prayer for days fell out of fashion,
Revolution wrought new passion
Choosing sides and burning towns:
Spoils to victors, death to clowns.

Bloodied our hands in War and Peace
With the drawing of borders and global police
Such inventive solutions to building new homes
That we thought we were Gods, not flesh and bones.

And now we have entered a digital age
We find new forms of life engaged
In fights for supremacy, violent rage
Evolved to the glare of a flickering page.

But we haven’t forgotten our primitive roots
For one, in anger, aims and shoots
To rid this world of other tribes
Ensuring only “ours” survives.

Naturalism

Considered cleavage, crimson pout
We advertise the goods to sell
With careful maintenance when out
Avoid descending into Hell

Of pheromones and mating calls
Preferring genteel falsehoods to
The crack of heads and sweaty balls
As suitors fight to fuck anew

And propagate genetic lines
Where charmless boors have oft struck out
By brutal force, return those times
Before our race had rules to flout

We wave away old Darwin’s hook
To pick and choose on likes alone
Replace his theories with a book:
(Creator’s love; Proof; Tombs and Tomes)

High heels, vajazzles, hair dye looms
Upon horizons clouded by
Illusion – we are not baboons
Yet find bright colours draw the eye

In praise of email

The art of writing letters to us now seems to be lost.
In part due to the postal strikes, and also to the cost.
For stamps are hard to come by, and envelopes expensive
And as we know delivery at times can be extensive.
Instead we have a new thing, an electronic toy.
So we can keep in touch despite the obstacles ahoy.
But somehow through the changes, our language has evolved.
Now we don’t spell our words out, but only write in code.
So now ‘I’ll c u l8r’, we often read out loud
Since spelling became optional, secrecy’s not allowed.
Thus I know all your business, even on the train,
In order to get the message, we need to make it plain.
Tis not the done thing these days to refuse an invitation.
By the time you’ve writ ‘washing my hair’, the train has left the station.