NaPoWriMo #12: Dracoraptor

Dragon thief,
forbearer of the tyrant lizard king,
dredged from the cliffs
in a many-layered casket.

Feathered fiend
shore dweller,
red from head to tail-tip,
like the serpentine fire-breather
adorning the flag of its resting place.

Still growing
before the rocks entombed it,
yet still the oldest creature
from the era of the giants,
a tenacious herald
of the giants to come.

NaPoWriMo #29: Mesozoic Summer

In the Mesozoic forests
the summer lingers all year.
Ferns and conifers lush
and dripping with moisture,
the effect of a greenhouse planet.

The kings of the earth roam
unfettered.
Pteosaurus, leather-winged
masters of the sky
dart above the canopy
snatching dragonflies.

Coelurus, quick-footed, shrewd,
the nightmare of mammals
cowering under the leaf litter,
while a bullish Stegosuaurs
crashes through the underbrush,
its psychedelic plates
pulsating against the green.

Out on the plains, giants assert
their presence without effort.
Diplodocus steps shake the earth,
dainty heads on preposterous necks,
tails swishing like gargantuan eels.
They scan the forest edge for enemies,
the packs of therepods
lusting after the potential
of such a gigantic feast.

(This is a poem I've thought for a while about doing, and now I think I've found the right way to do it. Hard to believe I started twenty nine days ago but it seems we've gotten through NaPoWriMo for another year. Only one more to go, so I'll see you tomorrow when we're finishing NaPoWriMo in style!)

Therizinosaurus

'Scythe Lizard'

Twenty eight inch claws on enormous hands
dug up from the depths of the Gobi sands.
Flat, thin, like blades swung through fields of hay,
yet the beast they belonged to had no name.

A turtle perhaps would have need of these
claws to help sate its hunger for seaweed,
such a thing never seen on the earth before,
bigger than leatherbacks laying eggs ashore.

Then the arms emerged, as long as pythons,
what beast used them was undecided on.
Such weapons swordsmiths would envy,
such a brute would cause panic on entry.

Yet its teeth held a contradiction,
they proved the creature's valediction.
Not raptor knives like most expected,
but leaf-shaped pegs had the record corrected.

The neck of a swan, with a small deer-like head,
a pot-belly with the girth of a bulkhead,
and the scythes on its hands preceded it,
shredding leaves off branches in front of it.

Such was the nature of the strangest dinosaur,
an eccentric herbivore disguised as a carnivore.

NaPoWriMo #3: Microraptor

For day three of NaPoWriMo I'm attempting to push the boat out a bit. Today's poem centres on a tiny dinosaur discovered in China at the turn of the millennium. Anyone who's familiar with dinosaurs or indeed the work of James Gurney will recognise this animal.

Microraptor

A flat splayed skeleton,
a bird's long-lost grandfather,
a tiny skull, like a robin with teeth
and four feathery wings.

Spider fingers hooked with claws,
feet clutched like those of a crow,
a tail lined with wafer-thin plumage
and four feathery wings.

The transition is clear,
yet the differences clearer,
a creature of two lineages
with four feathery wings.