I let my tape player slowly die –
I no longer care to hear
The creaky faded craft that whine
Over the last filamentary gasps
Of wavelengths crusty and veteran . . .
They’ll soon be gone anyway;
Those chronic misfits who feed the machines,
Their body parts so chemical and divided –
Strewn across metropolises in mailboxes,
In old socks, rolled up and stuck
Behind beds of the semaphore newsboys,
Who wake up in malted mornings,
And go out and hawk the Daily Progress
of devourment;
of whole human vortexes sucked down . . .
They are the fuel . . .
Of the stalkers of scenes
And the shufflers of mounds
And the shredders of composite tiny lives –
All of the worms so pleased to feast
On swarms of leathern wonderbread limbs,
Which, decapitated and expelled,
Still kick and squirm.
Stirring up the moldy heirlooms,
Flinging the scrappy clippings
From nests of myriad hermit crabs
Grown meek from the green salty steroids
And caked with powdered Cains,
And sprinkled with Christmas locust leavening,
And sick from lucite cage wishes,
Or blinded by smarmy sunlight showdowns,
Or shivering in misty mackerel moonbeams . . .
Yea, these are the slowly slaughtered babies,
Also known as the hermit crabs,
So adapted, so sadly adapted
To this alien Netherworld,
Yet dying to crave to be tucked away
In the folds at the bottom of the sea
– Damon Norko
Baby Hermits on Board was originally published in The Annual #4!