Choose Your Prey Judiciously

Two Great Old Ones shared a sardonic chuckle

Watching their sons playing their favorite war-sim game

Man vs man in mortally bloody bare-knuckles

The carnivores salivated with every scoreboard change

"I'm glad you programmed this for the kids"

Cthulhu exuberantly praised his divine missus

"Just getting them off Hannah Montana vids"

Hissed the multi-tentacled squid/dragon goddess

"Now our kids get to target what they abhor

There's real human fodder in every die they cast

Our progeny are only happy knee-deep in gore

Blood and guts their predominantly preferred repast"

" Big C, I applaud how you abashed that author Lovecraft

Describing how humans were never in command

How they never were free to choose their own path

They march and die whenever we demand"

"Telling  him their earthly tenure is ephemeral

Their lives subject to our programming whims

Equating them to insects, feral cats, cave-dwellers

Expendable when  our  interest in them wanes"

"That they exist only as our imagination warrants

Because we conceived their place on planet Earth

That they're mere pawns for our entertainment

Their suffering is titillation for our mirth"

"That in their dreams, we plant hate and deception

In nightly broadcasts from our sub-Pacific home

Their bloodlust derives from our sown misperceptions  

They're merely bit-players in a Twilight Zone"

Cthulhu acknowledged but said he'd been nonplussed

By Lovecraft's apparent refusal to be dismayed

Despite humanity's dire circumstances they'd discussed

Lovecraft acted as if he still had aces to be played

Lovecraft muttered a warning about underestimation

About how easy it is to misjudge a species

Based only on comparative size and mass calculations

"That's a good way to wind up neck-deep in feces"

He acknowledged Cthulhu might be big as a mountain

With strength and power to his size commensurate

But said "harder they fall" is a dictum that always pertains

Lots of bullies have found it embarrassingly accurate

Lovecraft cited examples of such judgemental errors

Humans had made to their ultimate dismay

Tarantula Hawk, Tasmanian Devil, and Honey Badger

All small in stature but vicious in any fray

The Tarantula Hawk is a medium-sized flying insect

It hunts and eats spiders as its daily diet

Its sting is painful beyond any human concept

No remedial medication exists to deny it

Tas Devils don't look like they'd be much in a fight

But they can turn into 20 pounds of maniacal rage

Pound for pound they possess nature's strongest bite

Been known to bite through metal trap and cage

And how could anything with honey in its name

Be regarded as nature's most fearless combatant   

Honey Badgers justly achieved  such fame

40-pound psychopaths that'll attack anything extant

Badgers will go after horses, buffalo, even humans

And eat anything their size including cobras

Been observed singly chasing a pride of lions

They're the Hannibal Lector of the African savannah

Cthulhu thought Lovecraft ended almost felicitously

Telling him he should stop meddling with hominids

Those predators who chose prey injudiciously

Sometimes wind up in the same position Goliath did