From Prey to Liberation

[Bobby Francis]

From Prey to Liberation

“There is a time for everything…”

I. Savanna

Australopithecus chased,

hyenas’ cackles ride the savanna winds.

What is distant nears and nears.

Hides in a bush of thick thorns—

pray their vicious snouts can’t sniff out.

II. The Door at the Inn

At the Inn, Greenwich Village,

the door slowly creeps open,

an eye peeks through—

a cautious ear quiet listens.
A brave step out, knowing the night’s romance

abandons the instant mocking catcalls

curdle your way.

Can you retreat to the Inn

before the footfalls are beside you?

III. Despair as Gravity

Australopithecus, gnarled hands,

scruffed face of eons, scars everywhere—

face, back, arms from numerous struggles—

barely alive, toddler-hungry, despair.

“…a time to refrain from embracing.”

Perhaps a time that lasted too long.

Oppression bruises, packs densely insults,

fears, humiliations.
You think you cope—

you don’t.


Despair, a dense singularity,

sucking you inwards;

gravity never lightens.

IV. The First Tool

The southern ape, curious about a piece of flint,

nicked her fingers. Blood dropped.

The rock dropped. Sharp shards.
V. Big Bang of Freedom
BANG! It all explodes—

the creation of liberation!

“A time to reap…”

When the cops raided the Inn,

they expected docile submission to subjugation.

But the singularity bangs when it bangs!
The timing is chosen when it is chosen,

only noted in unclear memories
born of chaos.

V. Lucy and the Leopard

Lucy—
as she’d come to be called,

known now only by chirps and whistles—

hears no calls of friends.
While chipping the flint, 
she finds a perfect piece,

and she knows it is.
 

But a leopard in stealth stalks Lucy.

Still no familiar calls of friends—

silence rides the savanna.
She reaches for that perfect piece of flint.

The leopard pounces! Screams! Chirps! Blood!

Lucy struggles, fights; her eyes still see it—

the piece of flint that fell and chipped just so.

She stretches her free arm, while the other locks

against the leopard’s closing jaws.

“A time to kill, a time to heal…”

VI. Stonewall

Gloom.

Two black-and-grey

satin-clad drag queens

sat pouting, smoking long tobacco

cigarettes side by side along the bar,

facing opposite directions, cast down.

The artist at the other end

is paying no mind but to his

martini and dark ruminations.

A dyke that rode in on a bike—

on her high horse—
is the obvious

Empress of the Defiance Corner of the Bar.
A brighter corner of the bar,

a blonde twink in a flower-printed shirt,

fire-red leather pants,

is screaming at a leather man.

Nearing now, sirens wail.

Silence falls at the Inn.

Feet scramble, pulses rock.

This time the submissive, docile patrons

of the Stonewall Inn threw bricks.

Marsha swings back, high heel in hand—

it’s now a projectile!

They barricade the cops in the gay bar.
“How does it feel
 for your only safety to be your prison?”

VII. Singularity

Though her arms were long, they seemed

much too short to reach the beautiful piece of flint.

But singularities don’t follow the usual rules.

Her fingers seemed to grow—
her arm, by force of will,

grew longer. She got it. 
No thinking, just instinct.

Lucy stabbed the leopard in the neck

and ripped it open, blood spewing,

leopard and her own, mixed—she’s free!

“A time to tear down,
and a time to build.”

Our tools spark
don’t just free us now
they let us build up 
and strengthen
and bond us in solidarity
securing liberty for new ages 

VIII. Coda

Flint, brick, shoe,

by blood or

barricade.

Claw, arm, leg, 
jaw, human 
animal—

to live, to love, to be free.

“As for humans,

God tests them so that

they may see

that they are like the animals.”

[TheCryptCreeper]

Heya Bobby, thanks for posting the poem! I'm going to offer a critique now if you don't mind, please let me know if I've missed something!

I. Savanna
I personally think you could improve this movement with tightening up the lines to make them shorter, more punchy and descriptive to really capture that feeling of panic and chase! I also did not know what an Australopithecus was and had to google it, so found it to be disruptive to the reading, and didn't quite find a reason to use it over something more punchy and quick like 'ape' or something similar. I am also not quite sure what is referred to in the line "What is distant nears and nears." is it the ape, the hyena or the leopard mentioned later?

II. The Door at the Inn
I think this movement is a pretty straight forward description, and is pretty toned down in way of action compared to the previous movement, and so I think you could improve it by restricting your syllable count for each line, and also using a form of rhyming scheme; a few weak points stood out to me in that lines "a cautious ear quiet listens." and "curdle your way." are unclear to me as to what they mean. For the 'cautious ear quiet listens' line it does not make sense to me grammatically, and I am not sure what is meant by '(to) curdle your way'. Additionally "A brave step out..." I'm unsure who or what is stepping out, so you could further strengthen this movement by characterising or fleshing this person out more.

III. Despair as Gravity
So for this one it appears we're returning to the scene from the first movement, and so you could keep in theme with it by trying to maintain that same panic/ motion that was in the first movement (and if you decide to format it to make it tighter and more compact, you can do the same with this one also in order to further strengthen that theme). There are a couple lines which are unclear to me: "barely alive, toddler-hungry, despair." -- This might just be a limit of my knowledge but what is meant by toddler-hungry? Were these animals known for eating their young? and the second line: " “…a time to refrain from embracing.”
" Who is speaking here? Or what is being referenced to? The quotations almost break immersion (at least to me) of the scene as it appears to be set in a time before speech was developed and so feels out of place.

IV. The First Tool
This one is more about the overall structure of your movements -- I feel it would be stronger if you kept to a format of changing the perspectives in a repeated way i.e. I: follows the ape, II: is modern day, III: follows the ape, IV: is modern day, and so on and so on. I don't have much to comment apart from this, it is pretty short and concise as I recommended you should do with the other movements from this perspective.

V. Big Bang of Freedom
Looks like a formatting error, but the movement title is not spaced away from the previous movement. My main critique would be wondering what the purpose of including allusions to the big bang are, you have a solid structure flicking between ancient time and modern time perspective and this referencing back to the big bang could be cut to better build overall cohesion between the two perspectives.

V. Lucy and the Leopard
Appears to be a formatting error, but this movement is also numbered as "V". I think this movement is pretty decent, I would recommend some tightening to try and make the imagery stand out, with the weapon fallen to the ground and the leopard bounding through the air onto the ape I think the imagery could be pretty striking with some description and a faster pace.

VI. Stonewall
This is my favourite movement out of them all, I feel like I can actually imagine the bar in my mind very clearly and think you have done a very good job of describing the scene in this one. There's plenty of colour, smells, sounds and motion-- all of which build for a very vivid description almost like a classical tableau. The only critique I'd offer is that I'm not sure what the police are there for, it doesn't seem to have been built up to from what I can tell; and if it is built up to in previous movements from this perspective, I think you could create quite a compelling narrative. (I know that the police are referenced in the big bang movement but to me this seemed kind of random, and did not have a build up at that point either).

VII. Singularity
I think my comments for "V. Lucy and the Leopard" would also apply to this movement, but with one additional comments -- the reference to the flint as 'beautiful' and a 'singularity' is interesting and unusual, but is also ambiguous. I think the ambiguity harms the strength of this movement, which could be a straight description of a life or death fight, filled with emotion and intensity. If you build upon what you mean by a 'beautiful singularity' I think it could become more novel.

VIII. Coda
Your structure for this movement is interesting to start, with three syllables for each line of the first two stanza, I think this structure could work really well for your movements from the perspective of the ape, though would definitely be a challenge to use it put across novel ideas! An interesting quote at the end again, I think if you allude better to whom this voice belongs to, it could strengthen this last movement.

--
Thank you again for posting the poetry Bobby, this has been an interesting exercise as I have never really tried to extensively critique a long work before so thank you for the opportunity and I hope my comments can be of some help to you, and no worries if not! Peace.