A Day at the Beach

Down among the hermit crabs and limpets
of a Mendocino tidepool,
a starfish with a human head

unnerved me with a sputtering “Halloo!”
I lost my grip on the bucket of abalone
and the day’s catch went clattering

into the drink. “Son of a bitch!” I snarled, 
“You pointless abortions are always 
sneaking up on people when they least 

expect it.” It waggled its tube feet 
in supplication, a monster of genetic 
engineering, of officially condoned insanity,

another refugee from the gene labs
where monkeys are spliced with jellyfish
and mice grow human ears.

“‘Every man and every woman is a star,’”
said the starfish, quoting Aleister Crowley.
But Crowley never dreamed 

of human-starfish hybrids,
and the worst misdeeds
of the “Wickedest Man in the World”

would pale to peccadillos
compared to the shrieking horrors
perpetrated by the gene labs.

My nuisance had found an abalone
and was busily prying it from the top
of a barnacle-encrusted boulder,

grinning at my misfortune. It shoved a gobbet 
of savory black flesh into its toothless mouth
and belched with satisfaction.

“Take this, you bastard!” I hurled the bucket
as hard as I could, but the starfish 
ducked and chortled, gurgling.

I ignored its muttered obscenities
as I clambered away over the rocks
in search of a place more conducive

to quiet contemplation. I lowered 
my stinging tentacles into the water, 
hoping to catch a few fish for dinner.