B-B-Birdman!
Seven-foot bipedal hominid
B-B-Bald, black-wingéd thing.
Got claws and talons…
Raise a ruckus on your rooftops,
shake yer urban trees.

I hith with a lisp and screech,
Parrot beak down power poles
Emit such a horrible reek
your eyes water to see me
kangaroo hop off the street.

Six seconds you see me, maybe,
and you wanna blunderbuss, Gus?
What?! You ain’t glad to see me?
Whazzup wid dat, Henry?
You think I can’t be a friendly?

Gotta knock off a knuckle,
Send it to the lab to ID.
Gotta zap map our chromosomes,
Give us a phylum of our own.
Like we need a motel room

in you town, bub. Dig the spread
Of these wings, baby. Ain’t no nos
or mebbes. I’m off this pop stand,
Cruisin’ a new altitude to
the first portal outta here!

Done with 3D on yer TV screens.
I’m back to another dimension
beyond yer real estate days,
yer monstrous acquisitive phase.
Through a portal. No mo’ Bo Peep!

Got hours to go, appopintments to keep.
Ain’t so fleet or indiscrete
I need to flee your reality, dude;
I just don’t like your attitude.
Got lift and a breeze, weary knees.

B-B-Birdman, o cheep!
True, I’d as soon rip yer heads off
As greet you again. In my worst mood.
Sorry, you ain’t gonna grab me
by the collar, squeeze out my DNA.

Gotta am-scray, baby. Gotta fly.
I’m wanted deep in an abandoned
coal mine shaft, out of yer daftness
and into the dark and the dank.
Sorry I stank up yer atmosphere!

Birdman of Madisonville…
You know, I’ve kinda had my fill
of yer flightless, fickle/wicked ways.
Gonna am-scray, baby. Later, gator…
Anudder time; anuuder place…

Zetetic separator

—Richard Stevenson retired from a thirty-year gig teaching at Lethbridge College in 2015 and now writes full-time. He and his wife, Gepke, will be moving to their retirement home in Nanaimo when she retires in a year or so. His most recent books (both forthcoming in 2017) are Rock, Scissors, Paper: the Clifford Olson Murders (a long poem sequence) and A Gaggle of Geese (haikai poems and sequences).

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