there was a lobster boy
with very lobster hands
should you look his way
you'd see the fabric of a man
he lived in any town
like all the rest
and smiled with his feelers
and laughed with the jest
but every night
before he went to sleep
in a boiling pot
of water, he would creep
to the edge
screaming out and
into the night
because lo--
this human world was not
is not
made for lobster boys
there were things we could've done
to welcome lobster hands
but we did not
do not-
despite our demands, and so
all of our wishes
of love for this boy,
our watching him
squirm about with joy--meant nothing
when night fell
(and it always fell)
because the screams
would go unreconciled
and his little lobster heart
which we told him to conceal
would shrivel like a prune
in spite of all his zeal
as he wrote his story
onto the air (of the night
not to inspire
or aide in the fight
but) to terrify
future lobster boys
as they lay awake
cascaded in noise-
the harpooned gasps
of a dying thing,
and a city looking
for another king.
