Something I wrote when I was 16. The things one finds in filing cabinets.
The Day I Ate My Dwarf Spleens
I
The day the sky rained egg
I reached so soft across
pulled from the setting sky
the raging Albatross.
“Release me now,” it roared at me
with snaking tails in its breath,
“release me now I tell you twice!”
and upon me down came death.
Out its mouth came a thousands holes
all with mouths of their very own
and tooth in tooth we all embraced
falling in dance of bone.
The bone in my grasp to the Albatross turned
“How nice – the sunset pinks this hour,”
the bird sneered, and the bone on spoke
“the sky, it sings like a flower.”
As the white bone ended his verse
perceived I that the wicked bird
had set upon me the evil curse:
left my life to seas lost.
I dropped harder and faster than falling hope,
faster and harder than broken faith,
racing a course to the absolute end,
racing a course to the ultimate fate.
II
‘Twas the merry man upon the raft
that saved the skin of mine paling corpse
kept to my life the burning ember
’twas the little man and his porpoise.
For deep into the sea had I plunged
three thousand leagues away the clouds
down and up and down I fell
into the arms of the man in shrouds.
And this is the song he sang unto me:
“Two monkeys by the ocean sea,
said the first monkey to the other:
‘Tonight we shall dine on wine and sloth soup!’
But regrettable…
unfortunately…
tragically…
they died.
“To heaven their souls flew white and soft
all knowing their God would be kind,
keep them sheltered beneath his wing,
pure joyful bliss both would they find.
“When God approached the two monkey souls
both they cried in shameless blasphemy,
for God was not what they had believed:
there feathered He stood – a canary.”
The short man turned to me
explained he was of dwarven species
plunged his hand into his belly
pulled out bloody his spleen.
That made all so clear to me…
III
The dwarven man with flowing beard,
shored me off his raft and onto land
mounted he his porpoise again
and left me clutching his spleen.
I stayed there on the barren beach
I cried out in paindrowning sorrow
I squeezed his spleen as if a leech
I collapsed under deepening woe.
That dwarf had faded from my life
left me all alone and cross
all I owned was inner strife
and the ache of the Albatross.
I looked left to my feathered foe
who had nested right by my side,
I looked to him with eyes of fury,
I looked to him with eyes that cried.
Had he cause my deep inner strife?
Had he cause my dwarf to leave?
Questions plagued me, puzzled me so
and answers I could not achieve.
The Albatross stared idly
it gazed at me as if void
lacking perception, discretion, and thought,
so I struck its stupid head.
I killed the dumb creature
and I cared not a bit.
I killed it.
IV
And there I stayed
grass in front, behind and right,
an albatross nest at my left
and the dead bird in my bite.
Hungrily I fed upon the meat,
the rawness of the bird’s blood,
the bulging of the dwarven spleen:
so much more I had to eat than could.