Climate Change Zoology
Dead elephants crumble like cubist mud.
Staghorn coral or antlers of a massive cull.
The last albatrosses rime like ancient mariners.
Tigers pace back and forth in cages of extinction.
Acoustic fossils croak, wetlands grow silent.
Mountain gorillas roar out our expiry
But we lack primal understanding.
Sea turtles bury eggs in books of quicksand.
Salmon suffocate in homeless waters.
Polar bears leap into the abyss like idiot men.
Whales breach from their blood with a groan.
Never have so many animals boarded
The ark of the sun with all their riches
Of honey and manna lost to the world.
Nature’s lease on capital is insolvent.
Cryptozoology
Our research points to terrifying conclusions,
Cryptids don’t exist, but we believe in them.
We spawn marine reptiles in our minds.
We descend like Andean wolves, into lower forests.
It might as well be that skunk-ape migrants
Of global warming indicate degrees in theology.
It might as well be that being is bizarre,
Monsters of the lector unsolved in the sermon.
It might as well be that Chupacabra
Are devil dogs stirring the furnace of souls.
Perhaps a pharmaceutical apocalypse
Creates the condition for a mutant menagerie.
All we can say beyond a reasonable doubt:
They are the varmint of the malcontent
Who have peopled else and are on the move.