DINOSAUR DUNG: My Original Poem over at GottaBook

Just in case you haven’t heard—Gregory Pincus is featuring 30 Poets in 30 Days over at his blog GottaBook during National Poetry Month again this year. Today, I’m the featured poet. I sent Gregory several poems from my unpublished collection titled Docile Fossil. He chose to post Dinosaur Dung, a humorous rhyming poem. I recommend you stop by for a visit at GottaBook and read all the previously unpublished poems written by many well-known poets. Here is a list of the authors whose poems have already been posted at GottaBook: Marilyn Singer, Janet Wong, Joseph Bruchac, Avis Harley, April Halprin Wayland, Graham Denton, George Ella Lyon, Tracie Vaughn Zimmer, Jaime Adoff, Susan Marie Swanson, and Douglas Florian.

Here are a few poems from my collection Docile Fossil that I posted previously at Wild Rose Reader. How Come? is a poem of address and Dragonfly and Pterodactyl’s Wish are mask poems.

How Come?

Woolly mammoth

Big
Behemoth
Prehistoric pachyderm,
What did you in,
You hairy hulk?
A teeny tiny
Infinitesimal
Microscopic
Deadly germ?
A miniscule bacterium?
Hmmm?

Elephant is still extant…

Hippo, rhino, tiny ant,
Kinkajou and caribou…
Gnat and gnu are living, too.

How come you
And mastodon
Are D-E-A-D
Dead and gone?

T. Rex: A Glutton for Punishment

Oh! T. Rex was a greedy beast.

Each and every day he’d feast
On steamy stegosaurus stew,
Toasted pterodactyl, two
Tons of brontosaurus steak
And slurp up nearly half a lake
With all its prehistoric fishes—
Which he considered most delicious.
No vegetarian dinosaur,
He ate his brother’s posterior.
Digestive track on overload,
And belly bulging, T. Rex strode.
He searched the forest, thunder-toed,
For allosaurus a la mode
With heaps of whipped triceratopping,
Which he gobbled up. Then flopping
Down beneath a tree to rest,
Groaned and moaned and beat his chest.
He had to pause and take a break
Because he had a tummy ache.

Dragonfly

Long, long ago

before dinosaurs
roamed the land
I flew through prehistoric skies,
my glassy wings glistening in sunlight.

Long, long ago

I printed my image
in mud,
then melted into Earth’s memory.

Now

you can see me
stenciled on the stony pages
of time.

Pterodactyl’s Wish

I’m pterodactyl. I’m extinct.

I’m just a fossil now…
A relic of Earth’s ancient past.
I wish that I knew how
To break these rocky bonds
Which keep me trapped in days of yore
So I could flap my stony wings
And fly again once more.

Wild Rose Reader National Poetry Month Posts with My Original Poems

MINNOW MUSIC: An Original Mask Poem (This post includes some of my other animal mask poems too.)

A Passel of Space Poems

GOING BUGGY!: Original Insect Poems

TWOSOMES: Love Poems from the Animal Kingdom…and Some Original Cuddly Creature Couplets

Rhyming Acrostics

Rhyming Acrostics

Every now and then, I like to challenge myself by writing acrostics that rhyme. Here are some of the rhyming acrostics that I’ve written to date:

Changes suits to suit

His locus. Abracadabra! Hocus-pocus! He’s

A clever

Master of disguise…a trickster who can fool the

Eyes! This

Lizard with a fashion flair takes his wardrobe

Everywhere. Predators don’t stop

Or stare.

No one even knows he’s there.

Fiery flowers bloom

In the night:

Roses, carnations…chrysanthemums, too,

Emerald green, red,

White, and blue. Silvery fountains spill

Out of the sky.

Rockets of gold sizzle and sigh.

Kaleidoscope colors cascading in space,

Showering glitter all over the place.

Cans of people,

Automobiles

Roaring down roads on

Silver-capped wheels.

Claw-handed critter

Races sideways, skitters

Across the sea-washed land…

Beachcombing in the sand.

Dawn, dressed in a bright blue robe

And golden slippers,

Yawns awake. Stars scurry away.

Breaking into song, birds

Rouse the sun,

Eager to start

A new day. Morning bounds out of bed with delight,

Kicking off the dark cover of night.

Silent sidekick, shape shifter who

Hides in the darkness…

A copycat mimicking everything you

Do. Sunny day playmate frolics in the light.

Oh, where, oh,

Where does it go at night?

Words

Hushed

In soft velvet

Sounds

Patter into your

Ear

Revealing deep secrets that no one

Should hear.

Here are two slightly different versions of a MARCH acrostic that I wrote recently:

Melting snow, mellower days,
A brighter sun with warmer rays,
Robins
Chirping. Beat the drum.
Hallelujah! Spring has come!

Melting snow, mellower days,
A brighter sun with warmer rays,
Robins
Chirping. Let’s all cheer.
Hallelujah! Spring is here!

Why not try writing a rhyming acrostic yourself? If you do, leave it in the comments and I’ll post it later this week.

FYI: I’ll be sharing the “twosomes” that people wrote and have submitted to Wild Rose Reader tomorrow.

Reminder: Wild Rose Reader’s poetry prize for the second week of National Poetry Month is Twosomes: Love Poems from the Animal Kingdom, which was written by Marilyn Singer and illustrated by Lee Wildish.

Click here to read my brief review of Twosomes—and some of my own “cuddle creature couplets.