My cousin was just another rangy brat who had seen Jurassic Park and got hooked on dinosaurs, A serious drug for an eleven year old.
Orange County wasn’t too similar to Isla Nublar.
You could pretend that the palm trees
Visible through the window were foliage for the Brachiosaurus herds.
Reality was the lizards flitting through flowers at the base of tree trunks

The next best thing to an archeological dig
Is a home computer.

We could get down and dirty
In the MUDs and chat networks,
To learn about the culture that came before.

The basis of Crichton’s techno-thriller settings was something my engineer dad knew
And his banker father could comprehend.
So we asked to be informed.
An agora out of an abyss
Was the place for worlds to be.
Rather than a present of Aquinas,
I think it’s obvious.
For media
We are Remus and Romulus

Then, when
Trespasser dropped
and he copped it
it // it
It corresponded so well
with our own inelegant bodies.
Though we laughed
To hide dismay
And a driving anger,
And instilled
Within me, these expectations for savior games
That come by decades
To wring out their message
And leave it on the level sands
For us to decipher what might have been
And what we shall create.

Idiom lives in Los Angeles and likes it as much as Harlan Ellison does; unlike Ellison, he has a twitter account: @idiom666