I turned lesser men to stone, snakes nipping idly at my dress:

I am monster, living incarceration of a profane affair.

I turned sacristy into brothel, my beauty was perverted to despair.

I am monster, grotesque face topped by a hissing nest.

As you approached, and I felt a grim shiver in my chest;

I glowered my petrifying glare,

But you were given hiding-cape', sword, winged sandals to wear,

And mirrored shield my powers to arrest.

My mask of potent shame was made:

Lips blood red and eyes of smoldering coal,

Around my face writhing serpents twist and roll.

I saw my eyes in your hand, I wailed a last serenade.

Gasping in the instant before – everything went stone cold.

I am weapon, crafting you a garden of entombed souls.

1Hades’ cap of invisibility

Dusk!

With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!

Bats!

Glowing red eyes and glistening fangs,

These unspeakable giant bugs drop into view.*

Fibrous wings furred like a moth,

Big ears are just a membranous extension of antennae.

Flying in search of a flower’s pollen laden froth,

Silent except for the hum and squeak of echolocation.

Trap bats in attics, butterflies in nets.

No rabies feared, no bedbug bites to itch.

Clawed feet ****** and grab like praying mantis pincers;

Bloated stomach slopes like a pudgy beetle.

Jaws manipulate like an ant, excise like scissors;

Soft hair rustles like a wooly caterpillar.

They live in darkness, centipedes do too,

Come out at night like cockroaches tend to.

Skittering through the night like daddy long-legs,

Noses snubbed like bumble bee faces.

Wind turbines endanger bats,

Like fans endanger lightning bugs.

Only one percent of bats are vampiric,

Like only a small percentage of spiders are poisonous.

Dawn!

With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!

Bats!

Bats are bugs, aren’t they?

Glistening through shafts of sunlight, I spy the silvery dragonfly,

Hovering above the clovered knoll,

Swaying like wheat in speckled sun.

Cantering up grassy hills, away from the stream,

The bleating goats exchange existential crises,

Brushing past the whispering tulips ablaze in the sunset.

Behind me,

In the shade of oaks, in spiraling dusts,

Decaying logs half buried in the windbreak

Rekindle and animate in the orange beams.

I stand up and sip my beer, as the stars blink and stutter.

A snowy owl whooshes past, wishing for rain.

Somebody loves me.