poetry
APEX
Sauropod raking and hoovering
delectibles from the lakebed
making waves
Ceratops snipping timbers
like copper cables - the sound
like a wrecking galleon,
like 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.
Downwind, rapt by design,
tri-talon feet
march in silent place,
waiting for the light to change,
waiting for the go.
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
tarsals pushing 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?
ODE TO A PRIMORDIAL SEA
This sea at the shore of seas,
Where other seas begin,
Where is conceived the great Pangaea of seas
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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