Cro Magnon Man Explains His Culture

Our first art was engraving of a sort.
Deep underground, in caves as dark as sin
we chiselled walls with beasts we craved as kin:
brothers in nature, maybe, soul and thought.
We conjured those we hunted, feared or fought,
and in such closeness traced our origins.
All flesh was then as one beneath the skin,
made so in charms the sorcerer had brought.

So what did we bequeath to you and yours?
A rock or two with paint and shallow scores?
Some poor graffiti buried in the stones?
A scattering of shards and a few bones?

But what a surge of spirit, mind and soul!
How close we came to simple, strong and whole!

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And here is one I made earlier...
(Posted in April 2010, to be precise)

Early man tells of a rite of passage


The shock of it went with us to the grave,
a long crawl down through Mother Earth, limbs raw,
some torn to shreds; thoughts brief, confused; in awe
of phantoms in that dark arena, cave
of altered states (induced, adrenal, brave
or oedipal), its contours stained for boar
and aurochs; childhoods blown away like straw
in ghostly lampsmoke, light and flambeaux, wave
and strobe. Horse notions whinnied through our skulls;
wolf, fox and bear sang anthems in our souls.

Long gone from dyes dabbed on with lichen wads,
they thrive beneath your hemispheres, those gods.
Entrenched in dark, illiterate, mute cells,
they dream old dreams and cast archaic spells.