I do not shriek at bedtime, when the bad
cacciatore twitches in my belly,
and the mushrooms knock
a fearful tattoo at my throat.

Instead, I glide through the vestibule
of shadows that lies between
the bedroom door and the mattress
past the closet's maw - a crypt
from which I have exhumed many
a princess whose sweet caresses last
only long enough to cuff my trust
into terror; their butternut breath on my smooth
cheek scratching valleys down which my tears
may flow into my open mouth where
the salt tingles on my tongue as I cloak
my doom with the incantation of the innocent:
"If I should die before I wake...."

Gnats-eye lace scallops over
whisper-skin lady mounds as my free
range gaze, three thin sheets
to the wind, spies her midriff eye,
and tiny star-burst lines invite
tonight's tired sigh to imbibe life.

Hypotheses abound, regarding the extinction
of the reptilian hordes, those base or of distinction.
Some aver, and others vow, things must have gone this way
and when I hear such lofty speech, I clear my throat and say:

“It seems to me that when we speak with such calm certitude
we miss the possibility of death by attitude.
For when I look upon these bones of prehistoric herds
I catch a glimpse of simpler times, and then I see the “birds”

For while the stegosaurus trod with stoic steps so slow
I perceive he may have been arraigned as one below
the wild heights of soaring things, with pointed, cackling heads
who mocked him at his every turn (which stegosauri dread)

And so as this terrestrial life was bound to suffer so
The pterodactyls found great fun to drive them all to woe
They drove them off, by day and night, until they were defunct,
the primal victims of a craft; the first to e’er be punk’d”

He knew it would take muchos huevos to play,
but his game plan was good, and he’d be okay.
Cause his were as big as the black or the bay

patrolling with tabletop backs that were stacked
with corrupt, hairy pigs who loved to talk smack,
and who bristled with weapons to fend off attack.

And, though the opiners would say it was rash,
he never could stand it to sit on his ***.
So, he hurled his armored gelatinous mass

with a splurge of insouciance at all those legs.
The guards slung pejoratives – bent to fillet
his ovoid trajectory into a splay

of malfeasance – but their slashes only caught air
as he flew like a mortar past their stony glare
and that bold lettered sign he had read as a dare:

“Tis Forbidden To Sit On the Wall” -- the King