
By Lyn Funnell
I can’t go out.
The street’s full of yellow dinosaurs.
Flippety-flump, parading past,
Tails beating a tattoo
On the tarmac.
Tyrannosaurus Rex is first;
Angry Mr T.
Head down, teeth clenched,
Like a commuter in a crowd;
Hurrying to the holocaust.
With a gasp, I step back.
He mustn’t see me!
Lumbering along comes the dozy diplodocus.
What a jokeus!
Vacant expression in tiny eyes.
He’s a millennium short of an era.
You have to be smart
To survive in this world.
He’s definitely doomed!
An iguanadon appears, arms sparring in front:
A Mesozoic heavyweight,
Dancing to defeat.
Behind is a brontosaurus;
His absolutely enormous body vibrates my house.
I can’t believe that such a gargantuan beast
Could live. And he couldn’t.
Here comes a stegosaurus
With bared teeth and long claw-us;
A child’s drawing on legs.
Bony plates form a thermostatic arch
Like the shuttle re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. But all in vain.
They couldn’t save him from destruction.
Eusthenopteron, Ouranosaurus,
Triceratops and Dimetrodon.
The enormous army marches on
Instinctively, to extinction
While overhead, with sardonic screams
Pterodactyls dip and soar
Like Kamikazi pilots.
And then – they’re gone. The silence shouts at me.
Hesitantly, I emerge. Was it a dream?
Oh, no. I see the cracks and clawmarks in the road.
And then with relief I hear
The angry blasting horns and snappy revs
Of engines. And I taste again
The CO2 cocktail of the civilised world.
Author bio
Lyn is the co-owner of Unknown Kent and Sussex. She lives in Sussex. Lyn has been writing for most of her life, both Fiction & Non-Fiction. She loves cookery & creating original recipes. She’s won a lot of prizes, including Good Housekeeping Millenium Menu & on BBC The One Show as a runner-up, making her Britain’s Spag Bol Queen! She has had nine books published so far. History, Travel & Restaurant Reviews are her main interests.