Why’d You Have To Give Him A Name?
I think this is definitely one of the most fun poems I’ve written for this series so far – a little bizarre, too, but when the idea came into my head while listening to this week’s song (‘Freaks to the Front’ by Amyl and The Sniffers) it seemed like too much fun to pass up, so I hope you enjoy this slightly chaotic poem, featuring a rather lost and inexplicable dinosaur called Dave.
First Poem In This Series: To Witness, To Behold, inspired by ‘Sowing The Seeds Of Love’ by Tears For Fears
Previous Poem In This Series: A Moment’s Show, inspired by ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)’ by Scott McKenzie
Why’d You Have To Give Him A Name?A palaeontologist called him Dave,
in the last breath of a joke
that was trapped in the room
when he left with his team that evening.
But inside, between computer screens
and carefully preserved remains,
two ears that did not exist
pricked up: he’d been waiting.
And now he had a name,
and with the name–inexplicably,
of course–he rose, fossil to bone,
drawing muscle particles from air.
Two ribs had been borrowed
from a close relative–
well, what is a million years
between scaled brethren?
Dave still formed, one of his toes
oddly missing, and leathery skin
not quite the same colour it had once
been–they suggested brown, and it stuck.
He saw himself in the shining,
recently sterilised countertop,
and two newly-materialised horns
cracked against the stainless steel.
With his name, Dave could fly–
not quite, but he tested the window
and found it rather smashable,
and his limbs were capable of jumping.
Landing was a different issue,
as it always is; he added some shrubbery
to the university’s damages bill,
and joined student life, evading campus security.
Even after an inconceivable period of leisure,
he took to breathing easily–this body
was a little shorter, a little slimmer,
than it had once been–but he did not remember.
No, his brain did not register such useless thoughts
as ‘remembering’ or ‘reminiscing’–he was up,
and he was moving, and his eyes took in old brick
and new concrete equally: he sought light.
Whether Dave’s somewhat mystical return to living
bypassed his predatory instincts, or whether
he was led by the scent of clumsy, two-legged prey,
cannot be said for certain–but he moved.
And somehow, perhaps continuing in his mimicry
of the university’s predominant population,
his clawed steps, unknowingly stealthy,
led Dave directly to two glistening double doors.
He had found, in his absent and infinite wisdom,
the entrance to the Student Union.
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