Earth to Earthlings
The dinosaurs were shuffled off
My crust with gusto as I grinned,
Yet shamelessly you scheme and scoff—
You claim you’ll tame my waves and wind,
You’ll temper tempests, freshen air.
Your cocky folly makes me curse.
Hush pious pieholes! Spare your care!
Like dodos you will come off worse.
I’ve dodged the fist of Father Time
Whose hands have crushed hubristic kings.
I’ve seen heroic chickens climb
To heights where windmills mangle wings.
I’ve sniggered in the Reaper’s face.
I shimmer in this universe.
You pipsqueaks need to know your place.
Like dodos you will come off worse.
I’ve spied Goliaths rise and fall
With not a soul to mourn their death.
Extinctions—I’ve survived them all.
Your weeny feet and wisps of breath,
Mere motes that float beneath my gaze.
You’re here to mingle then disperse.
So titchy with such lofty ways—
Like dodos you will come off worse.
You are my guests. I am your host.
I entertain as I see fit.
Some days I chill. Some nights I roast.
Your pity matters not one whit.
I’ll watch your fortunes fade to dust.
I’ll glare at every grave-bound hearse
Conveying saviors—fools who fussed.
Like dodos you will come off worse.
L’Envoi:
Remember you are skin and bone.
My whim makes ash of stone and throne.
Should you progress or hit reverse—
Like dodos you’ll still come off worse.
The Clap Trap
—a triolet
Beware the ever-clapping seals
Who pat the fat cats on the back—
Applauders of the hawks and heels.
Beware the ever-clapping seals
Endorsing fire-and-brimstone deals
To keep the seraphim on track.
Beware the ever-clapping seals
Who pat the fat cats on the back.
Susan Jarvis Bryant is a poet originally from the U.K., now living on the Gulf Coast of Texas.
Susan, these are both amazingly good! “Earth to Earthlings” is a great idea — having the Earth herself speak to her foolish inhabitants. disabusing them of their delusions and hubris, is a striking conception. And you pull it off without a single weak line or off-rhyme. You’ve taken the fixed form and have supercharged it with electricity. This is the kind of superior poem of which I can truly say “I wish I had written that.”
The triolet’s title is pure impish playfulness — “claptrap” is an older slang word for nonsense, balderdash, hokum. Making it “the clap trap” is a way to suggest that the brainless applause and celebration that many rich and powerful types receive is a kind of trap both for those who receive the fulsome praise, and those who give it. Also, the term “seals” for those who do the praising is a good way to denigrate them, in the way that we sometimes use the phrase “trained seals” with contempt for those persons who thoughtlessly express their allegiance to whatever is “the current thing.” They jump through hoops and catch fish in their mouths, as a way to signal their obedience and conformism.
These two comic-satiric poems do exactly what Aristotle argued should be done in literary composition: fictive mimesis of the real world and all that is in it, sinewed with vivid imagery of what we generally know, what we suppose might happen, and the very best choice of diction and syntax that we can manage.
Susan, you are one of the most accomplished formal poets writing today, in the entire Anglophone world. I’ll put my signature to that.
You’ve come up with the perfect way to skewer, boldly and hilariously, the pious pieholes trying to temper tempests! This poem reveals how the efforts of people who need to know their place, make them into the dodos they truly are. Well done, Susan!
Susan, Dr. Salemi sang your praise, and I can do no less. There is a category for your otherworldly art and that is genius. I am honored to read your magnificent poetry and marvel.
Your ‘bite’ is definitely worse than your ‘bark’, dear lady – and I can’t help but wonder what you’re nipping as you build these wonderful A-bombs! ‘Earth to Earthlings’ is a brilliant concept and, for me, evokes deep concern about just how long it will be before ‘MANKIND’ brings it all to an end.
It’s hard to add to the foregoing comments, but I shall try. Rush Limbaugh once remarked, back when he was doing his radio show, how arrogant the Global Warning fearmongers were to propose the idea that mere men could overcome the immense self-regulating, God-created system we call Earth. Now, this might not be the best way to approach this issue, but one notices that, due to Doomsday’s failure to arrive, that they have moved the goalposts to Climate Change. In other words, anything that happens that seems a bit unusual is proof of their pseudoscientific theory. The Earth is older than we are and, presumably, wiser and more powerful.
“My whim makes ash of stone and throne” should soon be cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
I’m proud that you’re now American.
Of course, I love “Earth to Earthlings” and its message. But Susan, I especially want to highlight these lines:
Your internal rhyme and alliteration are always great, but your pairing of “feet” and “breath” here is particularly inspired.
The “weeny feet” brings to mind the whole “carbon footprint” fraud — CO₂ is no more carbon than HCl is chlorine. It’s a rhetorical trick meant to make people feel dirty and irresponsible.
And those “wisps of breath”… the CO₂ from all human exhalations amounts to a rounding error beside what the oceans and volcanoes release daily.
One small curiosity — why capitalize “Earthlings”? LOL
As for the second poem, I understand the motives of the Al Gores and Greta Thunbergs of the world, but I’ve often wondered about those who aren’t profiting from the crusade. You’ve answered that perfectly here — pure gullibility and pious posturing!
(Every human being on Earth would easily fit into the Bingham Canyon Copper mine in Utah… TEN TIMES!)
I don’t want to hijack Susan’s discussion thread, but I want to give an answer to Mike Bryant’s question. Mike, we are living in very unusual times. We are sitting in front-row, ringside seats for something that does not happen frequently. That unfolding spectacle is this: THE BIRTH OF A NEW RELIGION.
It’s here right now, but it has been in embryo for more than a century. It is now coming to full fruition and birth. It is taking the place of inherited religions in the minds and hearts of countless persons. The name given to it varies: left-liberalism, cultural Marxism, activist progressivism, Woke-ism, or any number of other labels. But the huge problem that we — its sworn opponents — face is that we insist on seeing the situation as a political dispute. This new religion is NOT political, although it uses politics ruthlessly to advance its agenda. It aims for a complete cultural paradigm shift.
The best way to understand this new religion is to look at some of its key doctrines. Here are a few:
Environmentalism – deep, green, totalitarian, and verging closely on the anti-human and anti-civilizational.
Compulsive, Reflexive Leftism – on every single issue, bar none.
Anti-White racism – this is so widespread that even whites have been programmed to accept it.
Feminism – this is no longer some mild suffragette annoyance, but a worldwide raging fever, with a profound anti-male animus.
Gender Dysphoria and Mutilation – a way to geld and denature ordinary people, and drive them to self-destruction.
Anti-Western Culture prejudice – this manifests itself in an unthinking worship of “the Other, the Alien, the Unassimilated, and the Hostile” in every political argument.
Total Hatred of Israel – slowly morphing into full-blown antisemitism.
State Worship – the religion sees a vastly expanded State as necessary for the establishment of its doctrines, and the marginalization of those who oppose them.
Corrupted Education – the new religion’s stranglehold on what was once our educational system is now frozen in place. The goal of this is to keep working-class persons in the working class, and inarticulate, while maintaining the schools as a well-paid clerisy for the new religion’s elite.
I’m sure others could add more to this list. But my main point is that these goals and beliefs are NOT RATIONAL. They are dogma, held by religious commitment and fanatical faith. The partisans of this new religion are not changeable by argument or debate or the weighing of alternatives. Argument on these subjects is simply not allowed, just as questioning the tenets of Islam is forbidden in Saudi Arabia. You can’t convert someone who is passionately committed to an ideology or a Categorical Imperative.
The greatest weakness of conservatives is that we keep thinking our opponents are sane, and we refuse to deal with them the way we would with raging lunatics and mad dogs.
So, it is not simply that the adherents to stupid ideas are gullible and posturing. That might be partially true. But the deep and most powerful reason is that they are mindless adherents to the claims of a new religion. They don’t care about what’s good for them personally and privately. They are only concerned with their new-found Faith.
I wish, Joseph, that I could say that you are wrong, but I can’t.
Joe, I agree that a new secular religion has taken hold. The reason it is flourishing is that the churches have sold their soul by trading holiness and awe for government billions, social programs, and political relevance. The churches have ceded moral authority and lent legitimacy to the government-sanctioned ideologies that now claim the ground they’ve abandoned.
Abdication, accommodation, and entanglement with power created fertile soil for all the modern secular “faiths” you list… and many others.
The Pope now blesses ice… what was once sacred has become a ceremonial footnote to spectacle and politics. All that is left is for the New Righteous to completely replace what passes for Christianity these days.
Susan has been reading Solzhenitsyn and Wurmbrand, lately. They make clear that the only honest church is the underground church — the faithful who bear witness quietly, refuse compromise, and uphold holiness under pressure. It is in these hidden communities, living the Gospel at cost to themselves… that moral and spiritual authority will survive.
Why not capitalize “Earthlings,” Mike?
Why would The Earth capitalize earthlings… Earth is so far above mere earthling conventions…
“Some days I chill. Some days I roast.” Heck yea.
Wonderful poems Susan, brilliantly executed; your line “Who pat the fat cats on the back.” is assonantal genius! You go from strength to strength.
Lovely work, Susan.
We are each, indeed, just a dust mote compared to the majesty of this planet which somehow still sees fit to sustain us ( despite the contamination, pollution, destruction, bombardments that humanity has inflicted ).
Susan, while I much enjoyed Clap Trap (superbly loaded title), it is Earth to Earthlings which has captured my attention and admiration. This is a masterpiece of satire which is both funny and yet deeply thoughtful – even profound.
There is much to unpack here, but let me start with the form you have chosen. I may be terribly off, but I see this as a nonce form which is inspired by the French forms – most likely the ballade. You have an essentially ABAB rhyme scheme, however, which is much more relaxed that the constrained rhyme schemes of the ballade or chant royale. You don’t have the same repeating rhymes (which usually quickly run out) so that the piece doesn’t sound stilted but is, rather, expansive. That being said, you DO repeat the “D” rhyme – curse, universe, disperse, et al. — which rhymes with your one repetend involving the dodo who will come off (with variations) “worse.” What you’ve come up with presents the sense of form of a ballade but breathes and allows for communication which is neither too informal nor too stifling. You then crown the piece with a traditional envoi. An envoi so formal and at odds with the hilarious come-down that it almost sneers.
I have to confess that this final nod to the traditional form made me smile. I sense that you identified “l’envoi” (specifically highlighting its “Frenchiness”) to make a point about pomp and pretension. The very structure you choose – I’ll call it a Jarvis-Bryant Ballade – exudes a formality which is at odds with the comic title (cosmic title?) and so much of the language and imagery in the piece. A formal piece is not likely to talk about “pious pieholes” or use the dodo bird (with its derogatory sense) as its unifying symbol. The personified Earth is talking down to us and, with the formality of the form, mocking our pretensions. In the end, you’re creating a masterful tension between formality and comic condescension which simply humiliates the stuffed shirt or self-important liberal human “mote” who cannot conceive of the possibility that Earth is simply “too big to fail.” From the standpoint of Earth, we are indeed motes who have been here for the blink of an eye and will be gone just as quickly. The Earth, however, “abideth forever.”
The very conceit of the piece – Earth deigning to converse with us, fully aware of our feebleness and gently rebuking us for underestimating it – is sincerely brilliant. I agree fully with all of the praise that you have been given for this masterpiece with two additional thoughts: 1) this is a poem for the ages; and 2) how fervently I wish I had written it. I can’t think of a higher compliment, Susan.