The hanky he was sobbing into was crusty,
*****, unwashed, unclean; yet strangely comforting to a little boy,
as he cried he made his way to a culvert behind the school,
some place the other kids couldn’t see him crying,
it was more comfortable being near rocks
-next to that watershed for some reason?

He looked down at his antagonist,
the scaly-green feet,
they made him cry harder,
he lamented…

“Why have I been tormented so?”

“Who gave me these feet? Who made me this way, lizardly, scaly, an animal no?”

“What class am I, what species? Are those toenails, claws or a disease?”

“The way I’m treated makes me sad. Where is my mommy, where is my dad?

“Did I come from an egg? Didn’t we all? Why do they pick on me, make me feel so small?”

“My feet are reptilian even I can see that!”

“Am I part lizard? Are there horns on my back?”

“I can’t hide in sneakers ‘cause the claws tear them apart.”

“Not great at math, language or art.”

“They always pickin’ on me, today it’s in the schoolyard.”

“That is why I sit here on the rocks crying with my ugly feet and sullen heart,”

“Cannot run fast so no baseball, basketball or soccer…”

“The other kids tried to stuff me in my own locker…”

“One mean little girl even threw a dead mouse at me!”

“But I’m only part lizard as far as I can see?”

“My English teacher says that my words are like a bird song”

“If I talk like a birdie along with monster’s feet, no wonder I don’t belong!”

“Even still, to be so mean to me, I know that it is wrong…”

“ONE DAY I WILL SHOW THEM ALL, THESE FEET THEY HAVE A PURPOSE!”

“MY WORDS OF SONG AND FEET OF MAGIC COMBINE A COSMIC CIRCUS!”

“I am no freak of nature, no forest Pan or Satyr…”

“It is not the way I look, my clothes or feet that matter…”

“It is what is in my heart and mind, the things I do that truly count…”

“For those things that make us different, for they are tantamount…”

“Seven heads, seven stages, seven fables, seven sages”

“Seven stars and seven wonders and seven heavens that we’re under…”

“And all those things they say are great and marvelous about us…”

“Will one day be written in the book by Great Old Uncle Taautus!”

Pocket watch, I tick well.
The streets are lizardly crevices
Sheer-sided, with holes where to hide.
It is best to meet in a cul-de-sac,

A palace of velvet
With windows of mirrors.
There one is safe,
There are no family photographs,

No rings through the nose, no cries.
Bright fish hooks, the smiles of women
Gulp at my bulk
And I, in my snazzy blacks,

Mill a litter of ******* like jellyfish.
To nourish
The cellos of moans I eat eggs --
Eggs and fish, the essentials,

The aphrodisiac squid.
My mouth sags,
The mouth of Christ
When my engine reaches the end of it.

The tattle of my
Gold joints, my way of turning
******* to ripples of silver
Rolls out a carpet, a hush.

And there is no end, no end of it.
I shall never grow old. New oysters
Shriek in the sea and I
Glitter like Fontainebleu

Gratified,
All the fall of water an eye
Over whose pool I tenderly
Lean and see me.

Had nice thoughts of Florida
'till a 'gator ate a man
So morbida

I had a dream.
There was a dachshund
sitting in front of me,
not just a dachshund
but also my family.
Looking, laughing, celebrating
me.
That's never happened before,
you see.

I had a dream.
There was a man,
no, two. Maybe three,
they kept lizardly eyeing me.
I knew they wanted to hurt
me,
but not hurt

me
That has happened before,
you see.

I had a...

Dream?
There was a dachshund
sitting in front of me,
yet eagerly running away
from my family.
Running towards the men,
not two, but three,
running to show me,
these men,
they came for me,
yet the dachshund stays.
That protection has never happened before,
you see.

I had a dream.
The pale-scaled men,
racing for the dachshund at my speed.
Trembling hands,
my family still celebrates,
but the main event's running away,
I leap,
jump
fall
to save the dachshund
as the gun crawls
out of their hand,
bullet seeping away from the barrel.
I wish this had happened,
you see.
As the men disappeared,
dachshund in tow,
the silver hit me.

I felt it all rush through my
fingers,
from that preppy piano recital,
to my non-existent prom suit.
dogs now silenced
to pens finally capped.
Muted I-do's
to the stage lights finally dimmed.
and I could call this ocean
that swept through my
fingers,
nothing but relief.

Yet waking up,
I can find no better words for it
than a dream.

In the morning I wake like taxidermy.
Like I’m born on my birthday,
all foam footed,
hugged in hide,
navelless and novel.

Bearing my chicken neck to the people and their human picked pockets.
Cold blooded, warm blooded,
beige blooded hourglass.
Shook up by tantrumed hands.
Stood in sandy sandals on sanded steps,
growing a calloused ground on eggshelled feet.

Toddler drawn curtains over my human hindsight.
A vampiric tendency to avoid the hissy fitted sun.
Its firmenting nature—
a parasite light, out to put a side to symbiosis.
Reveal the sidewalk cracks,
break my mother’s back
and sprout purple-flowered weeds of superstition from it.

But the sun is out.
Only out to spoil the ignorance of bliss.
Turn my apple pulped corneas to wine,
send its stains sprinting out my nose.
Cross my eyes with the sight of it.
Ill behaved as a tongue chasing its tip.

An ancient offer.
A tongue for a tongue.
Not for an eye, not for I.
Not for a mouse in the stomach of reptilian shame,
stretched too thick against thin walls,
snakey tastes of its naked tail.

Not for elephants in ivory rooms,
not even elephants in elephant rooms.
Not for owls who ask why.
Not for lizardly love basked on smashed tortoise shell steps.
Always the case.
But not, but never for the cannibal animals.

A vulture’s talloned talent in waiting.
In line for a hopscotch drawn on my blistered back.
Lying on the trampoline floor,
barking up this tree trunk torso.
Twisted ankles crutched on the enemy’s armpit.
Caught by the smell of orange ****,
skin of yellow teeth.
Caught in acts.

Today I woke on the morning’s wall.
Sighted and sensed and stuffed.
Suited in ill-suited skin.
Colon full of semi colons,
breathing a furnaced breath.

Petted flatly with the day’s open hand.
Like the first touch of petroleum,
the health of the dead
pumped out of this crude cruel invention.
Softly, mechanically drooled about.
Today I woke,
unpreserved.