LAMBKIN

Poor old Lambkin built a ship 

with timbers from his mother’s lip 

and tar squeezed out of fairy tales 

and TV shows and such. 

The sails were woven out of guff 

from magazines and horoscopes, 

the ropes spun out of grandma’s hopes, 

the mast a looking glass. 

Out to the Sea of Love he sailed, 

and as at last he sank the land 

behind that slender, frail stern, 

the plan he’d planned got out of hand: 

not another sail to see, 

but creatures risen from the deep, 

deformed, lopsided, overbearing, 

scaly buggers, monstrous beaks. 

Some enraged at lovers past 

spat caustic bile upon the mast; 

others cowed by vicious exes 

screamed down from their crucifixes. 

Frigid monsters (icy breath) 

did huff and puff to speed his death, 

and horny ones with virus loins 

rained warts the size of cannon balls. 

Lambkin bravely fought the fight, 

the sea got savage, day got night; 

a crimson crash of menstrual blood 

had caused the hold to fill and flood, 

and when a blast of steroid cream 

did rent his vessel down the beam, 

he plunged into the murky still, 

already thirty and quite ill.