Virtual Reality

As to plans for the summer, I just had to go
to a tropical wind-blown Pacific plateau.
It was somewhere past Tonga with coral no less;
yet despite sea-soft breezes, I underwent stress.

Understatement I offer concise and quite clear,
but in truth this said stress intermingled with fear.
There upon the plateau pterosaurs* did I see;
one swooped down in a frenzy to grab hold of me!

Oh, the great pointed wing and the razor-sharp maw;
rip the roar in a screech with a hanging hind claw.
Like the lords of the sky in a world time let slip;
sinewy wingspan leathery, pterosaur grip!

(This relax for the moment from dinosaur bird
  on a tropical island transcended absurd.
  Here I came to read Twain and discard current care,
  yet I found myself clawed by lord-beast of the air.)

I hung fastened in fear on a pterosaur hook
with my eyes clamped like vises disdaining a look.
Like great tarps in brisk gales did the wings blunt with brawn;
my insides were milkshake, an acid bouillon.

With my head spinning madly and spine in a seize,
I pried open my eyes to see myriad trees
passing quickly like green river turbulent churn
while the bleed in my calves and sore ankles were burn.

And the blood in my head stayed high pressure extant
as the caws from my pterosaur blared beyond rant.
My ears ached from high decibel dinosaur din
and I figured I was dinner, to my chagrin.

Underworld reeked the stench like a demon in rot;
(prehistoric the smell as intense afterthought.)
While I dangled much like a worm over the beach,
there appeared a new pterosaur soaring in screech.

‘Twas as if eon’s anger tensed waiting to surge
when the two pterosaurs hit with furious urge.
As I dropped like deposit, a palm slowed descent
and I plunked into sand, calf-torn bloody and bent.

But alive nonetheless to intake further breath!
Holiday a hiatus, yet I escaped death…

…this was virtual reality², all in my mind;
I used adventure software, the best I could find.


40 Lines
Anapestic Tetrameter
Writer’s Cramp Winner
5-30-20
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*Pterosaur (ˈter-ə-ˌsȯr)... any of an order of extinct flying reptiles existing from the Late Triassic
throughout the Jurassic and most of the Cretaceous and having a featherless wing membrane
extending from the side of the body along the arm to the end of the greatly elongated fourth digit.

²Virtual Reality (VR) is the use of computer technology to create a simulated environment.