What finds me when I speak?
I am regressed, and lost to laws,
my hands a pair of ragged claws,
my mouth a toothless beak.
And, far from being weak,
I fear that, should I venture speech
with sheepish eyes within my reach,
my voice would come too strong—
would sound to me a candid song
of humble hope and kindly sigh;
would seem to them that I
had gouged into an earthy grave,
exhumed a tentacle-infested corpse
all ichor-stained and bloated with disease
and, setting it upon my knees,
had dared to call it "Brother."
Oh, I would be the Other,
and they would see, but never hear.
Such is the way of fear;
there have been times when I have heard
the gently phrased, accepted words,
words of sweet and gilded peach;
to hear those words in proper speech
makes evident my lowly foetor,
for even should I take them to the letter
and make of them my sweetly song,
the meaning would not linger long;
my mandibles would smile
and coat the words in brownish bile
until they question my intent
and ask,
"Now, is this what you meant?"
and I say,
"No, that is not it at all."
And then my song will fall,
like apples on an autumn riverbank,
or apples hurled at an armored beetle's flank;
will drown by human voices in the sea,
and not a soul shall sing to me.
-x2A