The poem, I’ve always felt, is an opportunity for me to create an integrated whole from so many broken shards --Rafael Campo
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Saturday, February 16, 2013
Theory on Extinction
(or what happen to the dinosaurs? for my son, thomas)
By Kenneth Carroll
they were crushed by a gigantic meteor
they froze to death
they starved to death
they didn't wash their hands
they didn't brush their teeth
they got really bad report cards
they believed in gods that did not look like them
they evolved
they assimilated
they died waiting for john brown/jesus christ/& forty acres & a mule
they died fighting someone else's war
they didn't eat their vegetables
they used porcelana & faded to death
they overdosed on activator
they wanted to be white or arab or greek
they wanted to be anything but dinosaurs
they never read dinosaur history
they never read dinosaur literature
they read ebony and thought they had it made
they read jet and thought they had made it
they joined the republican party
they kept shooting at their own reflections
they got nose jobs/lip jobs/hip jobs
they would do anything for a job
they were scared of revolution
they thought malcolm x was a fashion statement
they stopped shouting in church
they were mis-educated
they pissed off the great dinosaur gods
they wanted to be like the people who despised them
they were, when they were here, a strange species
they are long gone son,
but you can see them
at the smithsonian
just ask for the
great
negrosaurus wrecks.
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