Friday, 4 September 2026

You have drawn a girl

In 78,759 BCE, in the Nile Valley,
near present-day Cairo, a girl was born
whose name is lost to history.

Her band was about 30 people strong.
Her dwelling was a brush or grass windbreak.
She was the sixth of six children.
Her father died when she was 22,
her mother when she was 38.

She ate largely wild sedge tubers,
wild waterfowl, Nile catfish and tilapia,
and wild greens and reed shoots,
with wild figs in season.

She stood some 159 cm tall (5 ft 3 in).

Of the twelve children she had, four boys
and a girl survived past childhood. Her journeys
took her no farther than 6 days' walk,
to the far edge of the band's seasonal range.

She spoke an unrecorded prehistoric language
and followed animism and shamanism.
She spent her days as a gatherer of
wild plants and small game.

She lived 54 years, dying of
a respiratory infection.
Her line came to four grandchildren.


Nile Arabic Female 50-64










https://anyhumanever.com/

Eruption during the cleansing ceremony

Did you see
the vivid, prolonged twilight glows
    long-lasting twilight colours
   deep, fiery red sunsets

Did you see
    stratospheric dust stripes
    a volcanic aerosol haze and
the sunlit illuminated, visible
bands in the twilight arch

A brilliant arc of lavender, pink
    and fiery orange
would rise from the west

And well into the night
light was strong enough to cast
distinct shadows on the ground 

Did you notice how
    during the day
the sky simply did not look right.
Losing its crisp, deep blue appearance
turning more milky 
    chalky, some say turbid
    sometimes, a Bishop's Ring

An early indicator
   of the aerosol blanket
   which cooled the planet for a year

Do you remember
those months when
global winds spread a veil
around the world




Mount Agung eruption 1963


Thursday, 3 September 2026

Round, oval, square, heart

A fringe will help
  raucous laughter not but
a fringe will cover up
  a prosecco clock multitude
red no I want to say auburn

  Americans are wary
    maybe a parting will help
what if I'm on the telly
with my fringe will it
make me look
  with their bangs
younger or older
  they became the Bangles

I think a fringe could help
  but what if I'm 40? will
    what then how will it help
 call my stylist Jacques he
   can work wonders

Eight million spirits

And everyone of them lol'd
or is it lolled at Hugo when he
took a tumble
when he went a over t
by the O-torii Gate
and ended up splashing down
into the muddy sand but

the best part was the crab
they absolutely peed
theyself at that
the old Yaoyorozu

with poor Hugo lay there soaked
and this raging crustacean nipping at
his nose now you're
embellishing if not out
right inventing, like the boy

wasn't a laughing stock
before he even got off
the boat

Tuesday, 1 September 2026

Losing the will to live

They said he had idlers disease
but chronic fatigue and
fatal weakness
was as real as the atomic bomb

He was genuinely ill and exhausted
    radiation sickness
he was treated with cold disdain
    derogatory treatment

Suffering from
invisible effects since the flash
that changed the world

Profound psychological
and physical distress

He would writhe in unbearable
agony; an endless, vicious cycle

Destruction of your family, your
work, your city followed
by discrimination and
rejection from your
own people

Every hospital sent him away
classified him as a mental patient

    a hundred scars

Lung warfare

Take a picture now zoom in
on those delicate scarlet blommers
filling a corner of the post-
event reception

Impossible spores calculated to infect
and occupy my specific lymphatics

Foreign agents, reagents
somehow they knew my latent
susceptibility
to the trumpet particulate

I was a man on a mission
arousing suspicion
I really did complete
the marathon but now I would struggle
to finish my sentence

Monday, 31 August 2026

Ethical concerns

The crab he destroyed his packaging
yes
he tore through the plastic wrap
with his claws
YES
the crab is free

- Can he be our pet now?

- A crab is not a pet.

- But we can't cook him now.

- I suppose not.

- Not now he's exscaped.

- Escaped. But he - or she - 
    has earned its freedome.