Prancer Butterfly

Prancer Butterfly was born
Not goat, not pig, but unicorn,
But no one told his gut you see
And thereby hangs a tail

Most unicorns are known to feed
On no more than they really need
Never had one left a spoor
Among the leaves on forest floor
That orifice there at the back was mainly just for show

But Prancer's appetite was more
Than any that had come before
His mare-y mother he drank dry
Or nearly so, so lest she die
The famished foal and his mummy swift parted

Milkless then he sought to hunt
That which might his hunger blunt
With eager lips and teeth and tongue
He sampled what about him hung
And in disappointment spat them out unswallowed

Bitter were the stems and roots
Bitter were the bark and shoots
Bitter were the leaves and moss
Doubly bitter was his loss
Cursed by growing, growling emptiness and memories of milk

No unicorn was made to cry
And so he paced until his eye
fell square upon a thing quite new
A bed of roses laced with dew
At the first tender tentative taste he shamelessly squealed with unbridled delight

Roses first but far from last
Of the blossoms he amassed
Like leaves falling heavily in Autumn
In pinkish pit without bottom
Butterfly in name was he, but caterpillar appetite he bore

Fro and to the land he scoured
Glade, field and meadow he deflowered
Devouring in immortal haste
Those blooms that met his narrow taste
And where he passed no single stalk left standing.

To eat forever he'd intended
But with belly now distended
His stomach's delicate digestion
Resisted any new aggression
Saddled with a sudden, stubborn, unfamiliar, fullness he did pause

He puzzled and pondered in nauseous confusion
Just what to do with this gastric occlusion?
But his poor powers of equine deduction
Failed in the main to banish obstruction
And then per force nature intervened

His self-pitying sorrowful sense of revulsion
Was soon swept away by climactic convulsion
The ensuing emphatic ecstatic expulsion
Effected dramatic prismatic propulsion!

No common excreta, no, nothing so crass
The whole blinding spectrum sprayed forth from his ass
Prancer was lifted from green up to blue
By a colorful blast of every known hue
The circular valve had at last relented
Clouds now flew past as he joyously vented
The arc that he made as he flew 'cross the sky
Twinkled and sparkled in each awestruck eye

There he remains to this very day
By spectral thrusting carried away
From crest unto trough, from trough unto crest
Unable to sleep, unable to rest
Chasing down scattering storms to quench his parched throat in their rain