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.