Whales With Legs

written for Orlando's Loose Lips reading, at the request of Tod Caviness

While I know that headlines mixed with apologies always come off as forced and insincere
I do want to apologize to Tod for agreeing to do this show tonight
 
I don’t watch or read the news anymore
so I am entirely unqualified to perform at this reading
 
I can’t fully blame it on the 2016 election
But that is the point when the mere mention of certain names
Not just one name
Certain names led me to thoughts that made me question my mental stability
So I stopped following headlines
apart from the inescapable ones
And even then
Rather than rub my hands together until some rageful Hadouken shot out of them
I would close whatever tab or feed had let me know about …
and try and find some weird animal story that calmed me down
 
In Egypt, for the second time in a decade
archeologists dug up the skeleton of a whale
with legs
 
We spent hundreds of years thinking birds were kaiju
Creative paleontologists frankensteining bones into creatures that didn’t precisely exist
so maybe there wasn’t a whale with legs
Maybe a whale-like aquatic blimp thing swallowed another animal
and like two lovers buried with their bodies intertwined
their skeleton fused into a beauty our world hasn’t earned yet
 
Or maybe whales used to have legs
 
Not manatee-like dolphins
or calm gray whales or smiling bottlenosed grampuses
Nasty Anubis headed predators who terrorized whatever sea dried up leaving Egypt behind
Whales that walked on land
dove into the water
and massacred Everything
Whales with legs

I was going to spend ten to fifteen minutes regaling you with weird little rumors
because there aren’t yet any facts about whales with legs
weird little rumors about their diet
how fast the moved
how they looked like some massive coyote and an enormous porpoise
fucked in some unimaginable position
How they probably used to have antlers
because currently scientists think that whales
with legs
evolved from ancient deer
which is not something I’d ever considered
 
I was going to just try and entertain you with these ridiculous rumors
but just after my plane landed in Orlando
my phone let me know that Todd Akin died

In 2012 Todd was a Republican nobody who decided to run for the US Senate
His complicit idiot family
would like America to remember him as a patriot
who dressed up like a minuteman on the 4th of July every year
and told stories about America’s evolution from British territory to Freedom Loving Paradise
 
But if anyone does remember Todd Akin at all
it’s because in a 2012 interview
he was asked about his stance on abortion
and Todd Akin said that
womens’ bodies have a way of avoiding pregnancy in the cases of legitimate rape
 
I didn’t know that whales evolved from deer cousins
Shed antlers and webbed toes to better fish
I don’t know quite how evolution worked in this scenario
I am not a scientist
And even the scientists don’t yet know how an herbivorous prancer
Became one of the fiercest aquatic predators of its era
But they do know
And have known for at least decades that humans have not yet evolved into the ability to instinctively prevent a pregnancy through force of will
Even shameful Republican senator wannabes
who walk back their remarks and apologize
claiming they were misquoted as though they had evolved a sense of shame
and learned that their misogynist
rape supporting propaganda was nothing but cruel and hurtful lies
fabled to stupid men and complicit women
 
Whales with legs would fuck up beachfront property rates
Mitch and Marjorie toasting the sunset
Hear a rustle from the garbage cans beneath the porch
and begin shouting the least creative slurs in The English language
at whatever seagull raccoon or member of their staff has disturbed their idyllic moment
but we know raccoons don’t venture this close to the coastline anymore
and seagulls have moved inland and become lakegulls
because wherever a beach full of plump tourists and unsuspecting aquatic life gather
is just an All You Can Devour Buffet to the ever-increasing army of Whales With Legs
These four legged splashing leviathans with two webbed feet and two hooves
that could swallow a family of four whole but choose to chew them instead
because they love the sound of the screaming
There is no escaping the platoons of oncoming apex predators
Whales. With. Legs.
 
In his 2014 memoir
“Firing Back”
written because his political career was over
because being called a nice man … authentic to his beliefs
by the woman who trounced him in the 2012 election
doesn’t undo being the decrepit face that first uttered the phrase
legitimate rape on camera
In the 2014 memoir Todd Akin rescinded his apology
and reiterated his chauvinistic fable about female anatomy
 
Whales with legs have heads like Anubis
A jackal decaying
Heart pumping embalming fluid
Whales with legs swallow apologies whole
Shred memoirs in their sharp beaks
 
I’m sorry
Further research has shown that the gulls and Republican senators
can return to the coastline
Whales with legs were strictly freshwater hunters
Descendants of deer who looked like dogs
but swam like hippos
Whales with legs ate rabbits and fish in equal measure
Maybe? Nobody was there to take notes
 
I’ve been told not to bring any science into this room
so I won’t mention that next month
NASA is enacting every 90s disaster movie
by sending out missiles to blow up a Pluto sized comet
that is only supposed to be heading kinda sorta near Earth
 
Todd Akins isn’t even close to the worst Republican
who ran for office in the 2010s
but he is the only one held accountable
His party offered him money to drop his stupid ass
out of the senate race
knowing he didn’t have a prayer of winning
but if he’d just waited until 2016
he could have felt the party violently swerve into his lane
and he could have been the president of the entire United Shithole States

Whales with legs drink the blood of Anubis
under the 4th of July moon
Dress as minutemen and shout about
the good old days before all the best rivers dried up
Shriveled up fish on withered land
Whales with legs stalk a world that’s moved beyond them
They gnash their dentures at smaller whales
with teeth Flail their tails
Thin out the herd at both ends of the age spectrum
until there is only one generation of whales left
with enough legs to stand on

I don’t know if
at this point in my life I’m qualified to judge
every piece of shit politician
from any party for speaking their ignorant
and/or hate filled propaganda
Sure I have no power over any laws or any person
and I outgrew downpunching edgy humor in my 20s
but I’ve said some regrettable things that I believed in at the time

Anubis weighs the hearts of the dead
on a scale with legs
that nobody can read
 
Scales with legs
are jackle headed gargantuans

Digging up old shit the earth wishes it could forget
Anubis the paleontologist whale finds
Anubis the jackal with fins
The Egyptian jackal whale Anubis
Holds all of our secrets
In his razorblade hooves
Sniffs the garland of clover from the deserts of our past
And flings us in or away from the directions of our beliefs
 
I don’t hope Todd Akins is burning in Hell
I don’t believe in an afterlife
but I hope consciousness fades just slow enough
for him to have realized his Heaven was unreachable
 
My coworkers in the retail hell
I’ve been suffering through for the last twenty years
enjoy the curses I bestow on the rudest loiterers (never customers)
When the mood assassins leave without buying anything
instead ranting about prices or Amazon or their general inability
to distinguish a specialty bookstore from a hardware store
I say I hope he trips while crossing the street in heavy traffic
But no car touches him
He gets up and crosses completely unharmed
but shits himself every time he sees a car
and he has to bike to a boat to travel to some
Gilligan’s Island where he lives out the rest of his life
donating all of the money he earned to charities
that help
unbeknownst to him
every retail worker he was ever rude to
and one day
when he is older and more in pain than my friends
he suddenly understands how awful he used to be
and decides to devote his life to undoing all the emotional turmoil he’s caused
and as he looks to the sky to thank
a completely absent higher power
an unmanned drone carrying a tractor trailer truck falls on his head and crushes him
 
Whales with legs carry grudges
like busy servers in chain restaurants carry plates and the fear of getting sick
without adequate healthcare
and this is why it’s so difficult for them to apologize
That’s the rumor anyway
Science doesn’t have the facts to back it up yet