we are living in an age
of techno feudalism—
or as some might call
feudalism 2.0 — fuck…
the man, he says,
you will own nothing
and you WILL be happy
there was a time when
we actually did own nothing
and we were all content
with the blowing wind
and the water at our feet,
with the touch of the people
all around us, with the voices
of our ancestors, whispering…
with the images of our gods,
our saviors, our companions,
depicted in colorful dyes,
wet, dripping homemade paint
lining the walls of our caves…
we were friends with the flower-
people — the other versions of us…
but then we were somehow lied to,
told that they were not our friends,
but our enemies, because there
was not enough stuff to go around,
not enough of the world
for both kinds of us to thrive…
so we conquered them, we
blended into them, we cleared
narrative memory of them…but why?
they were the same as us
—not different at all, really…
they loved as we do
they wept for their dead as we do
they had fire in their eyes as we do
alas, their bones tell the story now,
their remnants express the truth
that there are other ways of being human
but sometimes those ways might fail…
we think we are doing well on this planet
we tell ourselves we have mastered all things
but beware…

Garbage Notes:

For years now I’ve had a fascination with the other species of human that existed on our planet—the neanderthals. Homo neanderthalensis shared the planet with us for several thousands of years.

This overlap is a period of mystery to many of us. Archaeologists, psychologists, and fiction writers alike, have all wondered about how the interactions between these two slightly different versions of us might have gone.

This isn’t the first poem I’ve written about the neanderthal. The Other Ones is a poem I wrote that focuses more on physical and technological differences between both peoples, speculating on the perceptions that each group might have had of the so-called “mysterious other".

There’s also Cave Lion Cubs, which focuses on the connection between early humans and the animal kingdom—the experience of being both predator and prey in a largely untamed world.

I think what intrigues me the most is the more private moments that these species might have shared. Sure, it’s easy to guess that there was great violence at that time. It’s very likely that they killed one another, went to war over land and resources—I mean, just look at how we’ve behaved in the modern world. But what would be more interesting to me would be moments of connection, possible friendships, or love.

Could these two versions of human beings have taught one another things about how to live? Could they have shared technology? Might they have interbred under peaceful circumstances? Even if it was a rarity—it’s these moments that contain the stories that interest me.

I’m currently writing a short speculative fiction story about a hypothetical neanderthal/sapiens interaction. I’ve been working on it for months and it’s been a struggle. Not so much because of the story itself, but because when you write about a topic that interests you so much, you start to worry about getting certain things right or wrong. You begin to fret about all sorts of narrative details. Hoping that you’re landing certain choices and that the story captures the same resonance in the subject matter that brought you to it in the first place.

In this poem I’ve referred to the neanderthal as the flower people. This is based on this one particular archeological finding back in the day that theorized that neanderthals buried their dead and placed flowers on the gravesite. It’s since been questioned—maybe even debunked. But the desire to portray neanderthals as perhaps more collaborative or empathetic (even more than we are now) still persists.

There’s evidence that they cared for their elders. Whether they cared more about the elderly than we have the capacity for, I can’t say. But it does show that there’s compassion, creativity, intersubjectivity, and perhaps even love. A love that can transcend arbitrary delineations of age, sex, physicality, genealogy, and even species.

The era of early hominids was probably a very scary time. As interesting as it seems to us now, I think we would most likely not want to go back to that kind of life. But what I do think is that there’s something about those simpler times that we long for.

We probably crave those quiet moments by the fire, telling stories at night. The connection to nature. The variety in our days. The adventure of spending weeks or months hunting, foraging, and generally living a more nomadic lifestyle.

Our world now is so hyper-planned, so centrally organized, and so full of control and surveillance, that it’s no wonder we yearn for an ancestral past that’s long gone.

Our brains and bodies still crave that freedom. The freedom to sleep and wake up where and when we desire. The freedom to be the agents of our own destiny. Where actual life and death hinged on the very real decisions of you and maybe the two or three people closest to you. Not some mysterious syndicate governing the lives of millions and pulling strings behind the scenes.

Anyway—I’ll stop there. This poem is about other ways of being human. There’s no one way. There’s no right way. We find our humanity in the simplest moments—the ones that enable us to feel completely free and totally ourselves.

Franco Amati 2025

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