Be Monster

All mouth. Out of  orbit

due to an insatiable need to be

orbited. At some point there are clouds

or waves filled with the foul kelp

of cornering questions. Like a black hole

yeeting a star through space, it was real

when monster queried, Why do you think you carry

a small stack of  books with you?  Out of orbit

is perhaps a phantasmagoria of blankness.

It was real when the foolishness I was

meant to feel oozed from the kelp instead.

What I carried out of my own need was

innocuous enough. It felt how pages smelled

as I turned them. Like Don Quixote made

a helmet, I wanted to make the books,

with their sturdy covers, a shield. I succeeded

almost. Almost, except an impulse rose

as I walked starrily away from monster.

Almost, except it is impossible to protect

what I was protecting indefinitely. Naivety

that is ready to crumble does. When it crumbles

its pieces fall into a womb where the thing

most feared gestates. All mouth. All hunger.

All claw. All tooth. All stirrer of disorder

I now will be. Hidden and large. Large. Large

as the thick-haired ocean of  space.