April 14th - Ducks

Five of Spades - Ducks
16 - Beat Poem


My apologies. This one kind of got away from me.

No Title

Above:

pretentious placidity:

preening purposefully these petty piscivores wear white rings like silk neckties

and they pout and posture, proud of their purple-heads,

as the brown-breasted burden-bearing women bathe and buoy in men's wakes

all merry in their mere months of monogamy!

all fat in their fleeting flightlessness!

Below:

unseen horrors:

eviscerated fish, floating tendrils of shredded sargasso, ugly crooked warted webbed feet

But we only see half of it

Sitting close on that iron bench on Lloyd Lake

You say the ducklings are cute

And sure

But remember my love this is not who we are

We are falcons

We are razor-beaked raptors

We are daring duck hawks

We will snap the silk-tied necks of any malicious mallard

As it would gladly sever and swallow

The Froggie who a-wooing went.

You say sometimes you wish you were a duck but

We promised never to migrate

We promised never to moult

So death to the Indian runner! Death to the Khaki Campbell! Death to the Welsh Harlequin and the Abacot Ranger and the Dutch Hookbill! Death to that east coast fiend, that parasite from Peking - death to the Long Island Duck!

We are falcons

              not just for your rough and slender talon fingers

              not just for your skinny golden legs or your resplendent dappled breasts

              not just for my hooknosed Garuda face

              not just for our sinful thoughts and deeds

              not just for our unconverted gentility, our unconditioned genitality

We are motile!

We mate for life! We mate for a moment!

We soar, passing food between our mouths as falling falling falling falling we twist up in and around each other in purifying paroxysms!

For we are falcons!

Or at least eagles

For this is America, by God

For here we rest beside John Fitzgerald Kennedy Drive

In the great state of California

And you are crying kind of

And we are sick of each other kind of

And you say sometimes you wish you were a duck but

I refuse to be flightless

even here on this iron bench

squeezing your skinny leg

And though San Francisco's warm this winter

grasping desperately to your avian knee

even if only for a month or two

I refuse to be flightless

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