"Two:
Chameleon
"eye am ten, raised to the power: minus forty-three
seconds ago
eye am sixteen billion—Big Bang—years of sunsets since
call me Eastern Stardust Time
'fore eye was a cell, a clam, a crayfish
'fore eye was a frog, a turtle duck billed Dodo bird a
Platypus,
a dragon fly, a pollywog
'fore eye was a heron shy, a swallow full of sky, a
trilobite, a fire spark,
a meadowlark, a grain of sand, that grew into a stone,
a breath of air, & 'fore eye was a bone, eye was a
shadow:
a protozoariferacoelenterata,
plathyhelmintheaschelmenthemykindyourdermata
mollusannelidoidanthropodointegumentarychordata,
remember me, my flag it purple flowers fly:
forgetmenots my color
'fore eye was a bone, eye was a shadow,
dangling chromosomes of genus: You Know
oh swarthy Ethiopia, recall my own aunt Lucy
quand nous sommes: mille-huit cent-soixante quartorze
dawn Riot aegyptopithecus,
skull intact two million tears ago
sharper than mosquitoes "petahs"
32 teeth in Miocene Time
one prospector bone jumping Sapien
they never got it right,
but called us by another name
when no tail grew,
thirty thousand years of snow would go
dubbed 'em dignop-ragmop Rasta-Pongid-Missing Link
Big Foot, Yinee shot dice on a gene splice & Neanders
thawed
frostbite feet froze off Ice Age
stone flecks come the Peking man
then dropped like fire sticks
grew me & you & all the shades of them no one has seen
'em since
‘****** dice don't roll’
still Aunt Lucy says to say hello
Eyeball am here to testify: a Sapien,
a sole survivor, sweet Aunt Lucy's kin
come not she your aunt Lucy too
what solar system sky?
please tell me who? as what ? by how?
or whence? from where do your own ancestors fly?
whose jaws with skulls
the carbon dated bones back when?
you see, my friend
we are the spawn of saurs
no count tribes, whose thoughts grew out of grunts old
nods,
hand jive & screams--no word, odd signs,
engirdling tones the bread defined
the mantra said: yo-kee gee-ring-ho yo-mee-nam
our silence sings The Dream Time
to Ghaghaju-griot hearing aids
Sangria gun-gun great uncle juju Bushman kindled fire,
gathered roots his horse who rides me still
up a mountain-down the Belladonna shade
a million five ago & ashes
when the no name Mhamha's
announced us kin to cousin Taung's child
petrified like magma swirls
the garnet gleans a snowball stone
where once eye lay chameleon raw,
preserved in time, a lump of coal,
my jelly shook in oyster shells,
the progeny of apple cores--because:
'fore eye was a cell, a clam, a crayfish,
'fore eye was a frog,
a turtle, duck billed Dodo bird, a Platypus,
a dragon fly, a pollywog,
a trilobite, a heron shy, a meadowlark,
cyanogenic drop of rain, a fire spark,
'fore eye was a grain of sand that grew into a stone,
a breath of air 'fore eye was a bone,
eye was a shadow:
a protozoariferacoelenterata,
plathyhelmintheaschementheyourkindmydermata,
mollusannelidoidanthropodaintegumentarychordata
remember me, my flag, it purple flowers fly:
forgetmenots my color, 'fore eye was a bone eye was a
shadow."
#