Hydra

New Poem.

Monster! Look out,
a Monster
built just right
to make us smile
before it eats us —
Hydra!
Hydra — 
the right words
cooing peace
in five mouths,
slobber and fangs
in five others,
all its eyes 
focused on the eating
and no peripheral vision
in any head and we know
if we pull its teeth we get
Soldiers
but we have to kill
all the many heads first,
use Fire 
to seal their necks
against comebacks.

Monster! Monster,
look out there’s a 
Monster coming to 
make us Monsters too —
not by picking us off
one by one
till we are memory;
instead swallowing us
into itself, making
More — Hydra!
Hydra yearning
for more heads,
all the heads,
which is why
we slash at
the ones we see
even when they are
in mirrors and 
though it agonizes we
must burn open necks
shut.

Monster! Hey, 
Monster coming for
the once again and
always will be —
comes in shape of
a machine
or a form
or a schoolroom
or a prison door
and sometimes
all the same, all the same —
Monster!
Hey, Hydra! Hydra makes 
for the last exit ahead of us and
cuts us off but 
we weren’t planning on leaving.

Hydra, Monster, 
biter of Dream,
thief of Song,
scrape-shoe shitty
shapeshifter, claw
of Reason, too many heads
we thought we loved, rope-necked
dank bag full of consumed Hope,
what we do with you
is try not to die
when we come cutting,
swinging hard,
burning all of you clean
when we know
all of you
is all dead

and then, we’ll be
watching to see 
that it all stays burned
and all stays dead
because we know
how often
we’ve been wrong
about that.