Your sperm is useless
Motionless like the albatross
In suspicious skies, pickled
he turned the sky grey
Too much in the water supply
Too many fields bone dry
Man is dead
But outstretched woman silenced
In contemplation brooding
She will rise to a whole new genetic code
Without him
And although he sealed her lips
man could never hold her down
For fire is her heart soon to be released
Form male chains
This planet is hers
She, no longer an effigy
man the tattered scarecrow
Animals may they laugh at your rags
This is a resolute stand of female flesh
And skin and bone and blood and hair
she is real
The wheat will rise
The dusty dries of desert
May they irrigate without him
May they impregnate without him
May the blade slice shards from him
May they make wine without him
May they blunt
May the pole
May the dutch caps unravel
And roll
Reproduce, as this goal
Is self sufficent
A sexual speak the shark
barbs, the crucifix heart
growing hair licks
underarm,
The lower back, shiny
As strength is intact and fertile
once poisoned
Safe the seed in plastic
Appropriate the incarceration
To rubber tie back refuse black
Our crops grow cleaner
Without you

Hello Pete,
Earth Rights immediately brought to mind an Edward Munch painting -- 'Conception.' A lot of your poems remind me of Munch's work -- 'The Scream' -- and those beautiful and fragile portraits of his ailing sister. There is something very painterly about the way you build images on a landscape. I guess there's also something of Hieronymous Bosch (I think that's how you spell him!) -- his visions of dystopia and hell.
This feels almost like two poems: a question and response (male/female)... there's real power to it, but it feels almost like the energy is deflected. That's maybe what you intended? I like the play on words in the title: Earth Rights -- human rights, putting things right, earth correcting everything people have spoiled, and the 'rights' as in sacred ritual -- The Right of Spring. Mesmerising.

Edvard Munch not Edward. These things matter.

hI mOX

Interesting that you mention the painting. I actually wrote this whilst looking at a painting!

Thanks for your thoughts on this poem, I will go and have a look at Edvards works.

Peter

Im happy that my feelings have succesfully been communicated to you with this poem.