Mike Crowl

I seldom wax lyrical, being more inclined to a querulous gripe, but there are times when the elegiac muse, (as it might be called), soars over some subject irresistable.
Everywhere I turn of late I'm inspired to step off into some form of peevish iambic pentameter - or its postmodern equivalent - because one certain subject assails my doggerelling noddle at every point.
The subject? Dinosaurs, those micro-brained ancestors of the more respectably-sized modern lizard. Dinosaurs, those creatures raised to a semi-mythical status who've ousted witches (thank goodness) as the current educational flavour for teaching everything from potty-training to algebra.
If dinosaurs ever had any nobility or grandeur, it's been reduced to a pipsqueak place by the 90s emphasis on dinosaurs as the be all and end all of the prehistoric world.
Dinosaurs have almost replaced rubgy as the national pastime, and since the excess of one is as tedious as the sufeit of the other, I propose a few lines in dishonour of the former.

I'm up to here with dinosaurs,
Including hadrosaurs.
Dinos, I think, must rank amongst the
Guinness Greatest Bores.
This Spielberg chap, I blame him,
Him and all his Park,
They're barking up a tree
Up which I don't want to bark.
Who cares about some fifty tons of
Hefty Brontosaurus?
Pushing his weight around, and asking,
"Don't you adore us?"
Who wants to meet and greet some
Rampant Iguanodon,
Marketing his lizard look
Until I feel quite put upon.
Who gives a hoot about a coot called
Rex Tyrannosaurus,
And whether on his nastier days he'd
Gouge and rip and gore us?
Pooh! dinosaurs, poor dinosaurs, you
Denizens long gone.
Scarce good it did you, lumpy brutes, being
Weighed up by the tonne.
Euparkeria, Hypsilophodon, your
Names trip off my tongue - (I don't think)
Triceratops, Coelophysis, your
Praises they ain't sung;
Compsognathus, Dimorphodon, you
Thought you ruled the land;
Sorry, boys, you're children's toys - I
Wish you all were banned.
Reptilian monsters, you
Had your day so many days long past,
And now there aren't too many movies
That need a Dino cast.
Go back where you belonged, you lot, in your
Dim Cretaceous time,
And let me try and end this rot with a
Non-Jurassic rhyme.

Fourth Column and
What constitutes a Taxman'sColumn
On Artists' responsibilities
On Books or Graphology
On Beards or Clothes
On Dinosaurs
On Vicars and belief/doubt - and Nuns
On Exercise
On Being a Techno-Freak

Columns on Words and Word play:-
Bafflegab
Cant is my Wont!
Flabbergastation, Generation X (and a
few other generations)
Ickle-Uckle
Large Bird Mangled with a Weapon
Short course in new Maori

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