Neal Romanek - words/worlds » Paleo-poems

Apex

Neal Romanek — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 07:29:00 +0000

APEX

Sauropod raking and hoovering
delectibles from the lakebed
making waves

Ceratops snipping sappy timbers
like copper cables – the sound
like a wrecked galleon’s
masts cracking, knees popping.

Flatting Ptero knee-deep
draws hissing fry up
by the shoal. Sifts ‘em dry.
Gullets ‘em.
Would preen if it could.

And downwind, rapt by design,
two tri-talon feet
march in silent place
waiting for the light to change,
waiting for the go.

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CSI: Hell Creek

Neal Romanek — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 11:10:00 +0000

CSI: HELL CREEK

Cracked bones – long shanks – emerge from rust-strapped earth
like a revelation by Nemesis,
recalling hasty-covered violence.

Who witnessed the killer
slamming home through the ribcage,
shoveling the four tonne turkey
up and over
bloody tumbling
talons kicking sky
meat-cleaving jaw clashing a sirocco agony?

Who saw the killer figure eight its horns
loosening the armored neck,
for a locomotive coup de grace?

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Ode To The Primordial Sea

Neal Romanek — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:42:00 +0000

Ode To The Primordial Sea

This sea at the shore of seas,
Where other seas begin,
Where is conceived the great Pangaea of seas. Panthalassa!
that stretch three quarters of the way into the future,

This sea,
pubescent,
Horny and tempestuous
And desiring increase at every level,
Ingenious and bursting at the seams,
Throwing up all kinds of mad ideas,
Shimmying, shimmering with milky life,
Not yet self-conscious, unshy,
reckless
Grand-roiling stinking-green and then some,

What joyful
possibilities and probabilities
You had, before rhythm and the seasons
And the practice of five hundred million years
And filling the forms
And seeking your own level
And overthinking it

Brought you to
that staid middle age
In which the best trick
You can conjure
Is a mere blue whale.

—

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Ichthyosaurs Feeding

Neal Romanek — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 16:35:00 +0000

I offer you the only – and I feel quite confident in saying this – the only poem in existence about a pod of feeding Ichthyosauri.

It appears in the Aug./Sept. 2005 Issue (#73) of “Prehistoric Times”, the world’s best magazine by and for paleontology enthusiasts (not just paleontologists – I mean ENTHUSIASTS!). Many thanks to editor Mike Fredericks for producing a venue where a guy can get his prehistoric nature poems published.

ICHTHYOSAURS FEEDING

An Ichthyosaur cow and her pod have cornered
a lagooning school of silver-scaled fish.
Agitating outboard tails, they cut loose,
the spiral cloud
smashing.

With a nod, the cow’s snout swings wide,
toothy arc squared by jaw length,
chopsticking a glittering fish.
A shake -
as if to shake it dry,
as if to shake the eyes out -
and down it goes,
and she crows with a grand outside loop,
shooting into the milky blue

- making way for the rest to deftly plunder -

zooms back in to further undo,
snapping down another one, or two,
then pops to the mercury ceiling,
and there draws down a lungful of oh-too-rich air,
then from her reflection
recoils, acrobatic,
and knocks fish this way, that,
happily extracting bright bounty at will.

Upcoast currents deport the silver school at last -
amnesiac to its decimation.

Sun lulls the pod, fish-drunk, to spend
the day wrapped in gibbous lagoon.

The cow parries dopey, double-belly suitors,
diverting them to sisters, then
finally flaunting ventral white,
selects -
cheloniate paddles slapping,
broadcasting satisfaction over the sunny bed.

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