Giant SquiD

I’ve been drawn to cephalopods for as long as I remember—squids, nautili, octopuses, cuttlefish, and others. I used to pore over my elementary school’s books on cryptids, one of which was the mythical kraken—a squid or octopus exaggerated to sublime proportions, a figure of terror formed by literature like Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or films like Pirates of the Caribbean. I wondered if the cephalopod’s allure and repulsion to humans was this defiance of logic, for even the largest squid holds no threat. Cephalopods can be surprising: their skin changes color; they fit through impossibly narrow spaces; they solve problems. When I hear stories—like how New Zealand’s Inky the Octopus famously escaped its aquarium and found the ocean through a drainpipe—I draw parallels to my own mental process and desires: freedom, liberation, home. How can such a familiar line of thought come from something so mystifying?

In “Kraken” I explore what it might mean to discard or transform the human form, to escape. As the narrator in the poem transcends their human form, they give themselves up to the sea. This is about leaving the land to embrace the whole, not maintaining planetary divides or species distinctions. Everything in that pre-exploded, prefigured big bang is here, and when the dark matter and dark energy of the universe finishes its acceleration and begins to pull everything back, we will be there, albeit in different form. The final lines, “I am you now, you are me,” maintain that when people give up their solipsism, they can see the full picture of the universe.

Below are lyrics to “Kraken,” a song on my upcoming album. You can hear the song late Summer 2022, but in the meantime, I invite you to read this poem about becoming-Octopus.