I ruined another butter-knife
On the irradiated marshmallow spread
I’m redirecting across this bread,
With all the precision
You could expect
From your Papa.
I must throw it out.
Now I’m in a bad mood.
And to top it off,
The coffee pot is teeming with mold…
But I never use it. Thank God.
I’ll leave it for my brother,
I know he’ll wince as I describe
How enthused I am by the miracle of this
Seemingly spontaneous generation.
And I know he’ll roll his eyes
When I tell him how disgusted I am
By the newborn race
That now proliferates in the paper filter
Of his last (negligent?) Intelligent Design…
I prefer to be the extraterrestrial cousin,
Much less a god-like uncle
Than they may have imagined me to have been…
It’s a minor psychosis…
There I go ranting again.
Let’s turn our attention to
The task at hand:
The process of creation.
I begin my evenings as a
Darkling Tadpole, the salamander larva
That shall be not named.
I can, by night’s end,
Be anything at all.
With the right hormones introduced,
Your Papa
May shapeshift a thousand times.
He may scratch from his head
A pound of lice,
And crawfish too,
To be dutifully consumed
With a watery bowl of couscous…
Yeah, that sounds nice.
This is to say that the monstrous growth
That you fatherless know
As your Papa…
Has many rows of teeth
Where his ribs are supposed to be,
And they grind his heart
Into potpourri.
If your home is where
Your heart is,
Does it claim all that it consumes?
Well, if so, all the world is my cavernous castle…
This passion for all things is raw and true.
So I’m always at home, even sealed in This Tomb…
Or for the time, what is otherwise Known
As Papa Duende’s Other Room.