THE FUNGOID

Endless hulking thing
Loathsome green and rotting,
Like vegetable mass,
A roiling mountain of slime
Hovering way overhead.

Suspended for hours
Then curling back and bunching
Up into itself,
A bloated mass of green slime
Like an ocean of jelly.

Pulsing and roiling
Like an animal, not plant
The fungoid growth churns,
Seething, writhing, and swirling
A moving mountain of slime.

Pustules like footballs
Cover the fungoid,
Splitting open suddenly,
Disgusting ichor pouring
In waves down the slime mountain.

Glistening wet mass
Of vegetable matter,
Amorphous fungus
Soars into the sky; ready
To drop on intended prey.

Mammoth pseudopods
Of fungus, weighing thousands,
Or millions of tonnes
Curl out in front of victims
Blocking off their escape path.

Other pseudopods
(Mounds of muck ten metres tall!)
Falling round its prey
Slickening with slimy fluid,
As great pustules burst open.

Flowing fungoid growth
Massive amoeboid monster,
Rising higher and higher,
Like a tsunami Rearing,
Readying to crash.

A green, fetid ooze
Pouring continually,
Down a slime mountain
Reabsorbed by the body,
Before it touches the ground.

Pseudopods rearing
Sentient (or at least with
tremendous instinct),
Lurching toward likely prey
Outmanoeuvring its victims.

Ever forming new fingers,
To replace old ones,
Fungal pseudopods
Slopping, sploshing, and squishing,
Swaying obscenely forward.

Oozing corrosives
Goo that can eat through metal,
More destructive than
An industrial acid,
Penetrating any wall.

The slime burns right through
Glass and metal, entering
Any hideaway,
Melting through brick and mortar
Plastic, even hardened steel.

Impervious to
Anything but fire,
Pulpy pseudopods of slime
Retreating from any flame,
Frying and dying in heat.

Sentient goo wavers
Flowing toward the flames,
To try dousing the fire,
Trembling at each fiery lick
Pustules bursting like balloons.

The pustules become
Pockmarks in the fungoid’s flesh,
Slimy muck blackens,
Smokes, withers and falls away
From the whooshing flame-throwers.

Fungus shrivelling
Under the flame-throwers’s heat,
Rising and falling
Like tides in an angry sea,
As the fungoid slowly dies.

THE END
© Copyright 2021 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia