allen fisher

3 human poems

Human predation

Our change was linked more than nine thousand years ago

to the envelope of my hand a population of densities

evidenced through small game species an ecological rogation

pigeon breasts in pea sauce, a lone man down the tracks sprays round-up,

biomass-corrected data on prey-choice step-wise, apparently

irreversible shifts in human predatory niche in Mediterranean Basin

east spread westward a demographic pressure and greater

use of resilient prey populations followed by advances in killing machines

my hand juddering on a bren handle head shaken beyond insomnia

narrow behavioral responses that characterise socialised thought

locally extinct or become common in colonisation to hold gains in habitat.

Our shorter histories of existence more widespread geographically

the strategies for an evening out in shared risk and unpredictable change

in weaponry on land more connected or legislated to cooperative ties.

Human conditionsYou tread on your own handskin alive with razored seeps and necklace firesmanipulate the sores in your head’s inner band.Plants initiation of leaves with intrinsic polarity the upper and lower surfaces generated from a structure-less wind form patternedfrom warm conditions the shape of high sand dunes and sharply contoured rivers, small deviations from homogeneous distribution feedback embryonic order accomplished by a coupling of a short range autocatalytic process with a long range reaction that acts as personal enhancement in a long screama stable cell determination self-elevated as pattern a mutual activation of states locally that exclude each other assumption of a process analogous to segmentationeat this eat this eat this

Human health

Red moves forward through green and lilac laburnum interrupted

by a bicycle one into another with tipping points the loss of

high-structured ecosystems as if genes regulated by chreods

underlie the history of perception the story of knowing colours

the individual development of organised beings in nested

clutches of plants and their animal pollinators set against an anxious temperament

enclosed in acute fear and vigilance in the predated

from an increased activity deep in the head’s almond.

We tour the laboratory in hard hats and fluorescent overalls brush

against grey argillaceous rock cut to carry a blend of nuclear

waste and glass poured into steel casks inside of steel barrels

pushed by robots down alveoli and sealed for a century left to seep

at a slower rate against marks made by stone to cut and scrape flesh

from large animals to access bone marrow more than three million years ago.