Gaia's Revenge consists of thirteen sections - seven Haiku with six longer works interspersed between them.
The work is intended to be a quirky history of time from the birth of universe through to the current parlous state of planet earth (Gaia).
You, the reader, may wish simply to scroll down - admiringly read, wade, trudge or otherwise progress - through this account.
Alternatively you may take advantage of the links conveniently placed between each phase to facilitate your journey, to dwell, re-visit or skip as your rapture or disgust may demand.

 

HAIKU I

Everything's made from

Microscopic particles:

Bread, water and bombs.

 

| Haiku I | Bob's Vision | Haiku II | And by the Sixth Day | Haiku III | The Descent of Man | Haiku IV | Perspective | Haiku V | A Smaller Pie and Thinner Slices | Haiku VI | Legacy - A Space Odyssey | Haiku VII |

 

A

BOB’S VISION

Metastability I

14 billion years ago –

Give, or take, an eon or so -

Was the beginning.

And the beginning was the void

And stillness was in the void

And in the stillness was

A dormant singularity -

Anorexic but – paradoxically –

Grossly overweight.

And a whisper stirred the stillness,

And, goaded by some mystic mate,

The singularity grumbled,

Was roused from its slumber,

Uttered a primeval growl,

And declared itself to be

Bob the Cosmic Builder,

Before exploding into itty bitty

Smithereens, in an act of

Self reconstruction.

 

And Time began.

 

Latent energy burst

In a pyrotechnic

Son et lumiére display.

Rumbles and ripples and whispers

Echoed and pulsed,

Hissed and screeched

Outwards.

Ever outwards.

 

 

Metamorphosis

And energy became matter.

And matter took form

And the form was good.

After his act

Of violent martyrdom

Bob gathered his wits,

And bits, together,

And in less than a second

He fashioned Bobzillions

Of tiny building blocks:

The neutron, the proton,

The electron and photon -

On and on -

Bob mixed and stirred,

Scattered and swirled

Whorls and clusters of elemental dusts,

From which emerged

Galaxies and stars and planets.

The celestial and the terrestrial.

 

It all took longer than that

First frantic femto-second flurry.

Much, much longer, even,

Than your six-days-on-

and-one-day-off malarkey.

 

Throughout that time Bob was searching,

For somewhere to settle down in.

10 billion years after his Big Bang

He found a place for Animal and

Vegetable to join his Mineral collection ….

 

….. and someone to care for it.

 

Bob genetically modified, and oddified,

Diatoms to oaks and Venus Fly-Traps,

Amoebas to zebras and vampire bats

And the serendipitous

Duck-billed platypus ….

 

Metastability II

…. until, at one minute to midnight,

Relatively speaking, there was Man.

Sentient, thinking, reasoning being

Imaginative, caring, creative being,

DIY expert – no need for Bob anymore –

Devious, cynical, duplicitous being

Ruthless, violent, warmonger.

 

In the blink of an eye

Bob’s prodigy opened the Box

Releasing all things good –

And all things bad.

 

Fire, the wheel, the Pyramids,

Astronomy, printing, gunpowder,

Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Rembrandt,

Mozart, I K Brunel, airplanes,

Shostakovich 1^st Violin Concerto,

Adolf Hitler, penicillin, nuclear fission,

Computers, Margaret Atwood, Osama bin Laden,

Tracy Emin, i-PODs, 9/11,

George ‘Dubya’ as well.

 

Bob’s vision of heaven

Turns out to be Hell.

| Haiku I | Bob's Vision | Haiku II | And by the Sixth Day | Haiku III | The Descent of Man | Haiku IV | Perspective | Haiku V | A Smaller Pie and Thinner Slices | Haiku VI | Legacy - A Space Odyssey | Haiku VII |

HAIKU II

HAIKU II

Nights in the garden

Fragrant jasmine on the breeze

Binds scents with senses

 

| Haiku I | Bob's Vision | Haiku II | And by the Sixth Day | Haiku III | The Descent of Man | Haiku IV | Perspective | Haiku V | A Smaller Pie and Thinner Slices | Haiku VI | Legacy - A Space Odyssey | Haiku VII |

 

A

AND BY THE SIXTH DAY ….

…. after the tumult of creation’s birth

Away from that frantic climactic burst

Dividing heaven and earth

Here was Bob’s haven

Where tranquillity and harmony could reign.

Balance, in place of instability.

Sense and sensibility.

All creatures great and small

Food and water enough for all.

And that dendrous college:

Fount of all Knowledge

Both good and bad.

 

Picture the scene,

That day in the Garden

Freshly-baked sunshine filtering

Through unblemished leaves

Shadows gently mingling, growing

Accustomed to their freedom.

Pure cool water trickling melodiously

Between emerald green banks

Profuse with fragrant flowers

Small fish darting hither and thither

While the clear crystal air is filled

With the humming, buzzing and warbling

Of exotic birds and insects.

A myriad creatures in peaceful

Idyllic coexistence, balanced, harmonious

The sights and sounds and odours

Of the Garden at peace.

 

Witness too a clearing with

A great tree laden

With ripening apples, and

Bitter, lonely AntiBob

Coiled upon its branches.

Beneath it two humans

Standing side by side,

Man of dust and

Cloned help meet,

Unclothed

But nakedness is a concept

Of which, as yet, they are unaware.

They gaze in wonder at

The luscious fruit

And smile with childlike glee at

The watchful asp.

 

Two humans standing on

The cusp between

Innocence and worldliness.

A cusp we know as temptation.

 

Looks of uncertainty flicker

Across their youthful faces

As AntiBob murmurs sibilant

Words of enticement.

Their pulses quicken.

They turn and kiss.

Kiss becomes caress.

Caress becomes embrace.

 

The Earth moves.

 

The leaves on the trees

Grow yellow and drop

The apples soften and fall,

Pungent with rottenness.

The river turns

Turbid and cloudy.

  The skies become hazy and darken.

 

The world as we know it

Has just begun.

 

 

| Haiku I | Bob's Vision | Haiku II | And by the Sixth Day | Haiku III | The Descent of Man | Haiku IV | Perspective | Haiku V | A Smaller Pie and Thinner Slices | Haiku VI | Legacy - A Space Odyssey | Haiku VII |

 

HAIKU III

HAIKU III

Tempted in garden

Eve takes bite of the apple

Adam steals cherry.

 

| Haiku I | Bob's Vision | Haiku II | And by the Sixth Day | Haiku III | The Descent of Man | Haiku IV | Perspective | Haiku V | A Smaller Pie and Thinner Slices | Haiku VI | Legacy - A Space Odyssey | Haiku VII |

 

THE DESCENT OF MAN

 

The survival-driven bugs

Of the primordial swamp

Struggled, divided,

Morphed and mutated and .......

............... evolved.

Whence came Plato, Chaucer,

Einstein and Newton,

Shakespeare and Mozart.

 

So how have we with our ingenuity

Our fertile minds and creativity

Let our souls be drawn

Into the cyber pit?

Why does the imagination

Fester and fuel

The compost of degradation?

 

Let us scroll the dross

Of the retro-human menagerie

Viewing the inmates

But keeping well clear.

See the sickos propping up

The cyber bars. Follow them with

Their palettes of acronyms

As they stalk the Chat Rooms of despair

 

There's 'Hunglikeanox' and 'Petesup4it'

Hiding behind their pseudonymity -

Packing the Broad Band

With their banalities.

Sending IM's to Bored Housewives.

Hoping to score a virtual fuck.

 

Here are the practitioners

Of vacuous prattle

Exchanging <WEG>, NIFOC, a/s/l, a cipher wink ;-)

(Pity those whose sophistication

Peaks at TXT MSG articulation,

Embellished with

A keyboard emoticon).

 

Look at the lonely;

Seeking Webcam soulmates

23/M /SE London - any f wanna chat?

Hi, I'm Vicki, 19 - only 3 vouchers to see me strip.

'Join our Members area, 18 and over only -

Provide Credit Card details as proof.'

 

Browse the kaleidoscope of triviality

Slake the thirst for excess depravity.

Breaststroke through the cyber filth,

The piss and shit and vomit and cum

Of twenty first century

Anything Goes culture.

 

So where's it all heading,

How will it end?

In a deluge of prurience and lust?

Are the triumphs of our forebears

Destined to drown in

A Googol-burst Big Bang?

 

Is this the Descent of Man?

 

| Haiku I | Bob's Vision | Haiku II | And by the Sixth Day | Haiku III | The Descent of Man | Haiku IV | Perspective | Haiku V | A Smaller Pie and Thinner Slices | Haiku VI | Legacy - A Space Odyssey | Haiku VII |

 

 

HAIKU IV

My universe is

not vast and limitless, it's

A fading planet.

 

| Haiku I | Bob's Vision | Haiku II | And by the Sixth Day | Haiku III | The Descent of Man | Haiku IV | Perspective | Haiku V | A Smaller Pie and Thinner Slices | Haiku VI | Legacy - A Space Odyssey | Haiku VII |

 

 

PERSPECTIVE

 

 

| Haiku I | Bob's Vision | Haiku II | And by the Sixth Day | Haiku III | The Descent of Man | Haiku IV | Perspective | Haiku V | A Smaller Pie and Thinner Slices | Haiku VI | Legacy - A Space Odyssey | Haiku VII |

 

HAIKU V

More people, more oil

Pumped for higher demand by

More people; less oil.

 

 

| Haiku I | Bob's Vision | Haiku II | And by the Sixth Day | Haiku III | The Descent of Man | Haiku IV | Perspective | Haiku V | A Smaller Pie and Thinner Slices | Haiku VI | Legacy - A Space Odyssey | Haiku VII |

 

A SMALLER PIE AND THINNER SLICES

 

We live in a world of finite resources

Being consumed at a frightening pace

When the gas and the oil have all been exhausted

What is the future of our human race

 

It's not only fuels that become ever shorter

For many are starving, with too little food,

And thirsty as well with not enough water

The prospect for billions is not looking good.

 

Think of resources - oil, gas, food and water

As things that go into a weird sort of pie

And each time we make it the pie just gets smaller

But we all need a slice - or tomorrow we die.

 

Each day we have more and more mouths to feed

So we tighten our belts and cut the pie thinner

Until one day soon it won't cover our needs

Thenwe end up as losers with no one a winner

 

We live in a world of expanding nations

Ever greater demand on falling supply

Will surely lead to increased confrontations

With everyone wanting their fair share of pie.

 

We live in a world of the grossest extremes

Millions of people with bellies unfilled

While others have riches beyond wildest dreams

The outcome one day will be 'kill or be killed.'

 

For these scarce resourceswe'll fight tooth and claw

Collapse of society's a real possibility

It's started already - the breakdown of law

And what that'll mean is complete ANARCHY.

 

| Haiku I | Bob's Vision | Haiku II | And by the Sixth Day | Haiku III | The Descent of Man | Haiku IV | Perspective | Haiku V | A Smaller Pie and Thinner Slices | Haiku VI | Legacy - A Space Odyssey | Haiku VII |

 

 

HAIKU VI

When it's all finished

Will anything grieve over

Our arrogant race?

 

| Haiku I | Bob's Vision | Haiku II | And by the Sixth Day | Haiku III | The Descent of Man | Haiku IV | Perspective | Haiku V | A Smaller Pie and Thinner Slices | Haiku VI | Legacy - A Space Odyssey | Haiku VII |

 

 

 

LEGACY - A SPACE ODYSSEY

 

Unlike Homer's ancient hero

I shall not return -

My journey is forever outward

 

No siren voices will divert me

Though pause,

I may,

When so directed

By programmed pulses from Mission Control.

 

Precision bytes across the ether,

Minuscule nudges,

Burn one, burn three,

Veer half a degree, burn two,

Fire retro, slow down,

Burn two again,

Lock in orbit,

Start to monitor.

 

Beam back results:

Atmosphere, surface, check for water,

Carbon, methane, double helices.

 

Start booster,

Onward,

Ever deeper

Till my digital whispers become

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo too faint

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo to detect,

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo my antennae

too feeble

to receive.

o

Released then from

My structured wanderings,

I will drift forgotten for eternity

Bearing greetings

And icons

Of a race long dead

 

No thing will savour man's dubious wisdom

Unless by chance some alien life form

Crawling the kerbs of a distant galaxy

Picks me up, and -

o

Having probed and analysed -

Spits me out.

 

| Haiku I | Bob's Vision | Haiku II | And by the Sixth Day | Haiku III | The Descent of Man | Haiku IV | Perspective | Haiku V | A Smaller Pie and Thinner Slices | Haiku VI | Legacy - A Space Odyssey | Haiku VII |

 

HAIKU VII

HAIKU VII

Pollution, famine

Global warming, genocide:

Revenge of Gaia.