Extinction
Reality is ruined; there is nothing more to fear.
– Phil Ochs
I looked up dire wolf on Google,
but it didn't say how big they were
just that there were thousands of them
in the La Brea tar pits, broken ribs, legs,
scapulas, they hunted in packs. Somewhere
else it said they were 6 feet tall at the shoulder,
quadripedal. I still miss them. And I've always
been the kind of person who had an interest
in paleontology, who could watch sabertooth
tigers eviscerate and dismember their prey
for hours, the juicy crunching audible
even in the imagination, and wonder
what it'd be like to fuck one of those.But we make do with what's available,
and anyway, you get used to what you've
been dealt, existence conforming to reality
like a mass of entrails politely moving over
to accommodate a large malignant tumor,
which I don't have. Don't have any reality
to speak of, either; that's easily disposed of
with a joint the size of a donkey's dong,
or a sea-cucumber, if you prefer a simile
lower on the evolutionary scale. We could
go further back; ginkoes, trilobites, ferns,
diatoms, bluegreen algae, but I don't think
anything happens when you smoke that shit,
except a funny smell lingering in the ruined room.
©2003 F.J. Bergmann"Extinction" appeared on GetUnderground.com