Remembering Dick Duck


 Tick, tick tock. Dick Duck woke up.
Almost at once, the old violence set in,
The set of guidelines consigned to hindsight.
What was awful to admit, tho in no sense sacrosanct,
Was the element of fence-building,

As some say, "tail-spinning," that kept things corrupt
In the man-sized, twenty-pup, ill hex he'd sought.
Knick knacks meant diddly-squat to this math whiz. No luck
With the "scene," either. That was his litmus, his ur-slippage.
Predictably, the shopworn topic of collective posturing
Crept up. Dick Duck, duck! You-know-what's
Gone all splat from not bothering
to "tone up" so much.

"That dimestore dick? He couldn't pinch a flea."

"She checked her face
in the mirror.
It looked like spiders had been crawling on it."

"'Go ahead, shoot me in the face—
see if I care."