Florida Armadillos

The invasion begins at the first frost
the scraper can’t eat through.
Scampering into the backyard they burrow
under your skin.
Blood pressure medicine sales boom
The sun doesn’t shine as brightly
Cars crash, they go splat, and you can’t
help that sly smirk as you view the carnage.

Because it’s an invasion
and you can feel them in the crowd
watching French acrobats.
See their bloated husks in the waves at the beach.

Slowly taking over.
Crawling their way through town.
Until there’s no choice but to appease
them.
Dress up restaurants for
them.
Keep ads kid-friendly for
them.
Overuse. Overkill. Over and over.

So they can air-mail sweaters and
taxidermied gator heads back to the arctic.

A trinket from their brief stay
in their natural habitat.

by Paul

--

So, uh, hi there everybody! Tod's computer has finally succumbed to the days of sunshine, rain, and spilled beer from the Fringe, locking in with it most of the remaining poems. So to keep things moving I, Paul, am going to indulge in a little self-interest and post some poems of my own until Tod frees the remaining works from the bondage of a bitchy laptop.

This one came from a lady who seemed absolutely tickled by the prospect of a custom poem, but then, as almost all the mighty customers did, lost that tickle and became lip-suckingly frustrated by word choices. We really need to create a list of, like, 1,000 words to help them along next year. At any rate, my mark went all alliterative and gave me acrobats, air-mail, and arctic.

Hopefully Tod will be back soon, but until then I'll poop out about one poem a day of mine until I run out (or the other poets send me theirs so I can post 'em).