The Ducks

by

Blaine Arcade

(shamelessly molded from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Bells)

I.

See the puddles with the ducks—
Piddly ducks!
Hear the hopes of clumsiness with quackery amuck!
How they muddle, muddle, muddle,
In their juvenile bliss!
The cotton balls escape their eggs,
Abreast on pairs of twiggy legs
Giving earth a sloppy kiss;
Ready slap, slap, slap,
Bringing fowlest thunderclap,
As a characterization of a wildlifer’s luck:
Marching ducks, ducks, ducks, ducks,
Ducks, ducks, ducks—
It’s the quacking and the smacking of the ducks.

II.

See the motley courting ducks,
Prancing ducks!
Hear the hopes of loneliness at mating season crux!
Suitor rules teach pairs and spins,
Side by side the duck that wins!
Even musty rusty birds,
When ripples clear,
Hear their flattened lover’s words,
Spousal welcome touching, yet sadly deferred,
In glassy mere!
Feathered masquerading clucks
Animally magnetize the bitches to the bucks!
Thus in flux,
Heart string plucks
On the bawdy harp of Puck
‘Til new families get stuck
By the skirting and the flirting
Of the ducks, ducks, ducks,
Of the ducks, ducks, ducks, ducks,
Ducks, ducks ducks—
It’s the lewding and the brooding of the ducks.

III.

See the raging rearing ducks—
Fury ducks!
Rally ’round the paradise that Momma Nature snuck!
When the farmers come to raid
Facing down a duck brigade
Birdies fly unto and clash
With rubber booty splash
Like a storm.
Omen dark and burdensome, the mouth of dirty flaxen sack,
Flies across from hand to hand, this demon shaped into a sack,
Crafting a lack, lack, lack,
Fam’ly never given back
To their bread-indebted waters,
Drowned—drowned in bloody slaughter
By the cry of the shock-rocked loon.
Oh the ducks, ducks, ducks!
Torches dwindle with their lux
On defeat!
Tens they take yet not one falls
In those hallowed ducky halls,
Kitchen barely stocked with grapes and grains to eat!
Yet carnivores take their feast,
For the tasting,
And the wasting,
Of the undeserving beast.
Leaving bloodied on their knucks,
From the grabbing,
And the scabbing,
Kisses practicing their sucks,
For the narrow of the marrow taken from the stolen ducks—
From the ducks—
From the ducks, ducks, ducks, ducks,
Ducks, ducks, ducks—
From the fighting and the flailing of the ducks!

IV.

Naked are the hanging ducks—
Ripened ducks!
Who were skewer-hooked above the daily catch and chuck!
In the hunger of the dawn,
How they near with moneys drawn
At the infusing scent of cardamom!
For even in these slums
Every cut gets saucy plumbs
With aplomb.
And the lookers— ah, the lookers—
They that wish to be the cookers
Come to bomb,
Many panting, panting, panting;
Every Harry, Dick, and Tom,
Clouds the windowpane with canting,
Pegs himself as Absalom—
They are neither friend nor foe—
They are as their stomachs go—
They are pawns:
Famine is their king who rants;
With his lance, lance, lance,
Lance
He skewers through the guts
And so makes them eat the rukhs
Fear has shrunken down to ducks!
And he tumbles, and he tucks;
Stoking growls, growls, growls,
Thus igniting peckish prowls,
To the dooming of the ducks—
Of the ducks:
Stoking growls, growls, growls,
Thus igniting peckish prowls,
To the selling of the ducks
Of the ducks, ducks, ducks—
To the smelling of the ducks;
Stoking growls, growls, growls,
As he plucks, plucks, plucks
In a happy peckish prowl,
To the roasting of the ducks—
Of the ducks, ducks, ducks:
To the toasting of the ducks,
Of the ducks, ducks, ducks, ducks—
Ducks, ducks, ducks—
To the hooking and the cooking of the ducks.