Living Nightmares

a swollen metallic dolphin

at least it sure looks like that
a blister of silver
in the winking sand
and gossiping foam

up close gray black wet
sickly nothing where fins
and tail were and aren’t
and quite heavy still

now swollen in my tub
sorry i sigh and snick
its rubbery flank
with a kitchen knife

mercury throbs
i check for a pulse on what
might be its neck as the trough
fills faster than it drains

the blade melts into
the handle melts into
my hand melts into
molten mirrors

i flail atop a sea
of reflections flipping
my silver fins and tail
and make my way for the shore

Beach Body

Naked on the sand, I stake my life on a roomier hermitage.

Crackling in cosmic radiation, it’s a scramble, shamble,
click-clack-claw toward gleaming spiral palace.

Curhck! Curhck! Defeat. Pried from Xanadu’s shore
by some overgrown villain, I skitter away and — PLHSH!
Mocking waves drag my old hovel seaward, seaward, gone.

Shell-less, homeless, cooked, I crawl and plead
for snarling wind and fizzing froth to just hurry it up.
Until crawling and pleading take too much.
I collapse into a prayer for a quick, decisive end.

Death comes on gray wing. The crimson blush
on her beak an omen of my copper-blue blood.
Pinched in wicked jaws and plucked skyward,
I swear it’s even hotter this itsy bit closer to the Sun.
If only I had eyelids to close.

But. Butt. My butt is stuck. Corkscrewed
into a keratin-coated quirk of bone.
The gull ca-ca-caws and jerks her murdermaw,
but I hold fast. Her dervish dance
only hastens asphyxiation. I creep then stride
then promenade, spreading new wings.

In my wake, a finely swept beach.
Pebbles and shell fragments accumulate.
A six-pack ring snags a stray foot.
Tug, tug, yank and I’m barreling forward,
towing spent mermaid purses and shriveled starfish.
Like a hungry magnet, I inhale debris.
I become we. And we keep growing.

We sprout bony fish and crustaceans.
Birds pluck treasures from our living morgue.
They tangle and join as ropes bind our limbs
with feathery crests and beaky blisters.
Our gills pucker with sea air.
Our plastic veins and arteries pump saline.
We rise on amalgam limbs above liminal shore.
Heads back, we consider the heavens.

ZWHAP! An arc of infinity scorches silica.
We fuse and ascend as a silicon pantheon of one.
I am. But who am I? My database ripples
with cloudy data. Adam? Golem? Beachemoth?!
Look. Skittering away. That overgrown villain
in his shiny new palace. Now a mere hors d’oeuvre.
I swallow his Shangri-La and burp righteous godhood.
But the stink of my own body stirs vestigial impulse.
I shamble forward seeking shelter.