Be The Poisoned Gift (Instruction for the Prey)
You may not want to be what they desire,
A soft, sweet signal drawing hungry fire.
In nature’s book, survival writes in pain,
With venom, bitterness, and coded stain.
Study the frog with skin of burning gold,
Batrachotoxin in its cells unfolds.
A neurotoxin that locks the nerves in place,
Paralyzing hearts in a silent chase.
The blue-ringed octopus, small and deadly bright,
Carries tetrodotoxin in its bite.
No antidote, no plea can change the cost,
One taste, and every breath is lost.
The pufferfish, a delicacy, a trap,
Liver, roe, and skin hold death’s cold lap.
Amateur hands cut wrong, the toxin spreads,
And silence fills the room where laughter fed.
Amanita, the cap that looks so fair,
Amatoxins brew a silent, liver-snaring snare.
Hours pass before the pain takes hold,
Then organs fail, the story told.
Be what they learn to fear and not consume,
A walking warning in a living tomb.
Bright colors shout, “Do not bite me here,”
While hidden toxins chill the predator’s fear.
Be a parasite, a nightmare under skin,
Something they do not want to take within.
A writhing guest that turns their blood to clot,
A living curse no hunter wants to trust.
Something you do not want to ingest,
That coils inside and robs the hunter’s rest.
A hidden cost in every stolen bite,
That makes the meal a losing, lethal fight.
The cone snail sleeps in beauty’s painted shell,
But conotoxins weave a nerve-cell hell.
A single drop can still the strongest frame,
And erase the hunter from the game.
Jellyfish drift like ghosts in ocean night,
Nematocysts inject their burning light.
Heart and nerve cells falter, then give way,
To venom that was never meant to play.
Lionfish flare with spines like silver knives,
A warning written in the cost of lives.
Not poison in the flesh, but pain in touch,
Enough to make the hungry think too much.
Stonefish hide beneath the sand and stone,
Their venom turns the willing flesh to bone.
Not food, but lesson carved in salt and sting:
Some lives are not a gift, but warning.
So learn from nature how the weak survive,
By making sure the predator does not remain alive—
But chooses other meals, less dangerous prey,
And swims the other, safer, distant way.
If aliens come with hunger in their eyes,
Disguised as saviors, cloaked in angel lies,
Let them read your colors, taste your bitter skin,
And know the cost of trying to take you in.
Wear your toxins like a crown of fire,
A living, breathing, biochemical wire.
Let every cell speak death to those who bite,
And turn your body into endless night.
You may not stop the hunger in the dark,
But you can make the meal a fatal mark.
Survival is not strength, nor speed, nor size,
But poison, cunning, and the will to rise.
So when the hunters come from star to star,
Let them see the kind of life you are:
Not meat, not prize, not something to control,
But nature’s final, unforgiving soul.
DrummerDave26
