Poems for Peculiar Children

Boil

Waiting, never watching, not this pot
Want to look but scared to find
Scritch, scritch, scritch . . . it's getting hot, hot, hot.
Nails inside the dry, hollow rind,
Something striving, a cat stuck in the wall
Trembling like a ballooning spider in the mind
Don't get close, your glance might fall
The liquid pearls rising, morphing into boil
Toxic! Warning! Danger always starts small
The velvet fern of a seedling claws through ill soil
Hotter, hotter, hotter. . . and the ruby rush
Emerges; the rapid plip, plipping of the water toils,
Reaches the tempestuous point ! ! ! ʰweeeeeeesh!