Recompression

Today I attended a writing workshop entitled "writing from the ugly." Somehow, this was the result.

I
Futuristic dinosaurs
puncturing
rusty metal, broken glass
crashing crosshatch.
It's a way out,
lifting boxes that dwarf us
lego bricks of giants
the stones in a corporate fort.

Fortitude; walls so high
we cannot know them.
Firewalls. Robocalls.

We are, perhaps, every one of us a fraud.
I often proofread to realize I've misspelled "privilege"
painted on a box
held aloft, then dropped
by futuristic dinosaurs.

II
Plastic dinosaurs; the
offspring, reincarnated
the devolution of evolution
figurines without revolution
stoic and immobilized
spectators of our fear.

III
If I dig,
perhaps I will find fossils under these lines
some formation of bones
to fracture the silence.
Fissures, scratched
in invisible ink.
Shining in sunlight,
white skin in ridges
upon white skin.

IV
Last week, I think, someone told me
that a triceratops was never real,
but simply a combination of disjointed bones
mistakenly reunited.
When they reconstruct our bodies
how will they weld together
the skeletons of survivors?

V
There are tales we tell
a land before time, that
sugarcoat the past.
The pink smiles of cartoons
buried in the sand
metamorphizing and jailed
in liquid crystals
that distort their screams.

VI
Deafeningly silent applause
of arms too short for action
a flailing distraction
from garburating jaws.

VII
Hollow plastic, bobbing
herbivorous heads
intermittently visible
perpetually vulnerable;
a neck so fine is always on the line.
A body too big to be hidden
whispers "no" like it's fierce
and forbidden.

VIII
One day,
will our compacted remains
and the detritus of our veins
be fossil fuels
historic tools
and lifeblood for the dinosaurs?