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SING

My voice is high-pitched and soft.

I am singing.

My head is floating in the green liquid, and I have my beak open and I am singing:

“Red Rose, Red Rose, oh you immortal Red Rose,

I sing to you from the bottom of the claws on my toes!

Now please help me defeat this most hideous of foes!”

And as I am singing, I feel something stir in the green liquid. My long neck is reconstituting itself and growing back, lifting my scaly green head up out of the soup. There is something very spooky about this poem coming up out of me, but I can’t put my claw on exactly what it is. I continue singing:

“My name is Gork The Terrible and I’m a teenaged dragon fiend,

I have spent this entire day questing for my glorious Queen!

But my heart is too big and my horns are too small,

and when I see something scary I tend to faint and fall!”

My voice is still high-pitched but louder now. I am rising up out of the green liquid and it’s as if the power of the poem itself is blowing me up like a balloon, inflating me. There is something glorious about this poem. By now the top half of my body is solid and I can feel my hind legs forming as I continue to sing:

“I’m a bit of a fool and a weirdo too,

which is why I am asking for this miracle from you.

I thought luscious Runcita was to be my Queen but I was wrong,

because my best friend Fribby was my heart’s destiny all along!”

Dr. Terrible is studying me with this horrified look on his black beak. By now all of my scaly green body down to my knees has inflated itself back to normal. I see my red cape lying there on the ground. I already know I won’t pick the red cape up when I’m done singing, I will never wear it again.

“So my Queen is this boss robot named Fribby who lies over there,

she’s the only chick with whom I want to share the nest in my lair!

But as you can see I was melted into a pool of green goop,

which my deranged grandfather Dr. Terrible named Gork Soup!”

Dr. Terrible is clacking his fangs together now, spraying sparks. And a powerful dark wind is howling through the clearing all around us. The trees are bending this way and that in the wind, almost as if they’re going to be yanked out of the ground.

Strangely, two black ravens come flying down from the sky and alight on a nearby tree limb to watch the proceedings.

Now only my webbed feet still need to reconstitute themselves out of the green liquid, and so in order to raise myself all the way up, I sing the last bit:

“This dragon Dr. Terrible intended to lap me up with his forked tongue,

So I’m hoping you’ll crush him now that this poem has been sung.

Red Rose, Red Rose, oh you immortal Red Rose,

please help me defeat this most hideous of foes!”

And with that, two giant trees instantly lean over with their limbs and snatch Dr. Terrible up by each of his wings and lift him into the gusting dark wind.

And that’s when it hits me.

Now I realize what’s so spooky and glorious about the poem.

It’s mine.

I made it.

This is my very first poem.