The Return of the Son of the Creature from the Black Lagoon

 

(i)
I crawled from the primordial broth
(a stagnant pond in Smeeton Westerby)
in the almost dead of night.
I must have looked a proper sight
to the prying eyes
of Leicestershire Morlocks,
sequestered in gorse bushes.
I lit my way with a Flaming Sambuca
and ostentatiously used a walking stick
when I had absolutely no need of it.


(ii)
I tracked you down
to La Caravane du Désir;
out for the count and strung out
on Bolivian marching powder.
I excitedly climbed the ladder
to the top bunk where you lay.
Unwanted visions of Peter Sissons
swam before my eyes
as the trailer began to sway.
I read your spiritual aura,
like Quincy, M.E. poring over
a young woman's fractured fibulae.
I felt the braille of your goosebumps
under my webbèd fingers
and just as Lady Lust
had started to stir from within
the oubliette of my memories,
your father
(Detective Inspector Kirkby-Stephen)
showed up,
holding a heavy harpoon.


(iii)
On the day that they released me
from the sardine-stinking prison ship
I greeted Mr Magpie
with a muted salute.
That wingèd old bastard put me on a charge.
I went up before the beak
but they wouldn't let me speak.
They hung me out to sun-dry,
in an unshaded stockade I deep-fried
for three years or maybe four
(for the duration of the Magpie-Raven War),
exposed to evil seagulls and ridicule.

Oh daddy, why did you make me this way,
a cold fish, an amphibious fool?

B.R. 22/07/2015