The Emphysemic Dinosaur
Some sixty million years ago,
in a prehistoric town,
where flakes of hot, volcanic ash
forever tumbled down,
there lived a gruff tyrannosaur
whose claws were tinted brown.
This emphysemic dinosaur
was always blowing smoke
in spite of much admonishment
from fellow dino-folk.
“Keep lightin’ up like that,” they’d say,
“and, soon enough, you’ll croak!”
But, undeterred, he’d load his pipe
with aromatic stuff
and sit beside a lava stream
and puff and puff and puff…
Then, when his pipe had fizzled out,
he’d pack his snout with snuff
and torch the very best cigars
his vendors could import,
plus pack-on-pack of cigarettes
of every size and sort,
although he never rolled his own
(his arms were just too short).
A touchy pterodactyl once
swooped low enough to shriek:
“My flightpath is completely blocked
with filthy clouds that reek!”
“Perhaps,” the dinosaur replied,
“you ought to pinch your beak.”
One day, a Karenopterix
approached him, shrill and bold—
his wretched, cancerous demise
she gruesomely foretold.
“Go lay an egg!” he roared. “It seems
you need someone to scold.”
Then, when a bratty proto-chimp
suggested he should vape,
the dinosaur devoured him
before he could escape
and sparked a dart and scoffed: “You should
evolve, ya dirty ape!”
Yearly, his physician would
depress his scaly tongue
and diagnose an early death
from tar-pits in the lung.
“Oh well,” he’d shrug. “At least they’ll find
my fossil looking young.”
But, unbeknownst to him, one night
his final smoke he lit,
and sighed and said: “Perhaps they’re right.
Perhaps it’s time I quit.
Or, at the very least, I guess,
I could cut back a bit…”
He snuffed his stubby stogie out
and turned his gaze to space.
Perplexed, he noticed something there
that seemed quite out-of-place.
Then, as you know, an asteroid
exploded in his face.