Time Of The Tubers Poem by Stan Petrovich

our thinking tribe
hands sandy from digging yams
compelled to fight the mesomorphs
who captured women and girls
came upon the white carcass
of an alligator

the Bald One rubbed his head
and tasted a string of raw flesh
it was when we first
invented cooking

then we faught
crying sputtering wrenching gutcrunching
in a short gulch that resounded
they with their brawn
we with our forethought
and longer staves
so handily we triumphed
getting back the women and girls
we did not eat the fallen ones
for a change though they
were pulled apart all

and we came upon a wall
a crystalline unclimbable wall
but we could by the light
of the moon and the turning stars
peer through it
so then we bagan to wear clothes of leaves

our hands begat a city
using the wall as had been hinted
which kept the enemy at bay
for centuries
as we developed this iconography
and mulled upon great questions
such as why the gods ad become angered or had died
and left us pain famine chagrin dissimilitude drought
and that encroaching mountain of ice
that depleted the game

who were the one like us
but not the same
the ones fed all the time
and claiming territory
over the water to the east
they were not only men
but partially beasts

they took women and girls in droves
and beheaded many a man
until scattered we
essentially became them