Yesterday I read this poem, "Dinosaur Demolition Derby", at a memorial for the late Tom Kennedy. 

Tom was one of the leading proponents of the "Art Car" movement and had made many great sculptured vehicles, he was probably best known for his "Ripper the Shark Car". 

I had the privilege to befriend Tom during  a period of months during which I stayed with him in South San Francisco in late 2005 and early 2006.  We had many great conversations at that time, and often discussed art and art projects.  Tom told me about his concept for an art car performance called "Dinosaur Demolition Derby".  At the  time I thought it sounded familiar, but I could not place it.  Since I had only recently come back from several years sojourn overseas I was in the process of unpacking my effects, and one day, perusing a journal of my teenage years, I found a poem about a "Dinosaur Demolition Derby", and then I knew why it sounded familiar to me.  When I saw Tom again I mentioned this old poem of mine to him, and he was intrigued, and I had always meant to read it to him, but never did.  Times changed and our courses diverged, and I had not seen him in a couple of years when news of his untimely death reached me.  I decided to polish up the old juvenile poem and dedicate it to him.

Here is the poem I wrote:

"Dinosaur Demolition Derby"

-- Dedicated to the Memory of Tom Kennedy --

In nocturnal halls of natural history,
Free from the schoolboys' heckling boister,
Far from the scholars' pensive cloister,
In the dreams of drowsing docents,
By some magic, by some mystery,
Stir the fossils of the ancients.

Just beyond the velvet rope's confines
by the faint green light of exit signs
Mighty vertebrae undulate in turn,
Claws outstretch, ribs heave and churn.
In cacophony jaws open, snap and close!
Behold! petrifaction at last unfroze!

Discontent in endless slumber,
Great skeletons creak and lumber.
They awake to claim their fate,
So the dinosaurs transmutate
Out of their forms primordial
Into machines of chrome and steel.

Molten are the massive bones glowing
Red with sweeping contours flowing
outlined in chrome and fitted with glass,
Eyes form headlights, the skull a hood:
A gleaming Buick gluttonous for gas
Idles where Diplodocus once stood.

Where Tyrannosaurus Rex Roared,
it echoes through the piston stroke,
With burning oil and billowing smoke,
As a hopped up Deuce Coupe Ford
Growling, snarling revs its V-8 Engine
Like the hungry tyrant trapped within.

The hot rod and the vintage classic,
Both monsters of the age Jurassic,
Did they hear a prehistoric starting gun?
Fired long ago when life begun?
Why forsake the repose of extinction
To run a race of doom and demolition?

Their throttles suddenly open wide,
Tearing out of the Mesozoic atrium,
Buick straining, Ford in hot pursuit,
Racing through the deserted museum
Tires screeching as they crash and collide
with hapless exhibits of priceless loot!

Pity the Neanderthal clan made of wax,
Their spears are broken beneath the wheels
Buick tail spins to miss T-rex attacks.
The Ice Age hunt tableaux is scattered,
The deadly mammoth tusk all shattered
By the melee of battling automobiles.

Into the Golden Age they race top speed
To civilization's progress they pay no heed.
Bronze idols are all smashed and bent,
Prometheus at last unbound by accident!
His liver roasting on the radiator grill
As the jealous eagle cries forlorn and shrill.

Through renaissance portraits the cars careen
Popes and kings are humbled and set ablaze
Torn from the walls of this gilded maze.
Deuce Coupe gunning its screaming machine
While Buick's polished sauropodal girth
breaks old dogma and shakes the earth!

In the final stretch of their course,
Every age is destroyed without remorse,
They barrel down the path to modernity,
Naturally indulging antediluvian enmity
They reach their limit and crash in fire,
Predator and prey locked together to expire.

Insurance adjusters dread the scene
Patrons hysterically vent their spleen
Shocked curators believe their eyes not
To see such savage havoc oddly wrought!
What monster or machine could destroy so superbly?
It could only be a dinosaur demolition derby.

 - David Normal