Paranthropos Poem by Patrick Frazier

Paranthropos



Creatures with wings before ancient kings
Hands lifting a colossal snake
A mastodon's jaw with its eerily human shape
Caught in a massive hollow gaze

Minor gods trade in clay creations
They weigh hominid skulls against one another
Which will evolve an intellect?
Trauma sitting in several layers of the mind

The swift motions of violent proto-humans
Who weep through the dawn at their own losses
The waking species that faced extinction
Their half formed heads unprayed upon

Hearts locked in bone
Born in the cage
Die in the cage
The other side can't be seen
Born in the cage
Die in the cage
The dead awake in their dreams

For here we are reborn in the ground
Several ages passed before I returned
And here we are reborn in the flame
To where I slew a dragon in my sleep
The horns that become feathers
Climbing the stair of its vertebrae
Stopping to picture the beast as it once was
And the staggering number of us that fly to close to the sun

Goddesses devoted to perpetual pregnancies
Each womb a self contained matrix of energy
Created near the first breath
That is patterned individually
That is you in death.

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