The Mythical Troutburger

That prickling stream that does so,

does so with fire

does so with underwire supports and trestles and—

oh my!—

but yardarms and tasty skeeter-bugs are slip-slithering about

on water viscosity

what a ride!

Cast your tangled net upon the waters

pull those fabled creatures loose—

nary a fabled creature but that doesn’t

but that hasn’t

but that wiln’t

be pulled from this winedark stream

chimaeras, gorgons, krakens and all–

catch those dangly strings in rushes and yarkled knobs and twisted pebbles.

Toss the junk away—

your serendipitous trash–toss it!

your boiled mittens

your scalloped and freezedried mustachios—

look! it’s Don Quixote floating in the slime!—

your cracked and burning hatchet wives

your misers and your dew-eyed orphans

your pennywinkles and

your gauzy nostril flares:

throw them all into that heaving bosom of a trickle of a stream:

where troutburgers dance their flipping way up

the cold old wet fishy trail—

as fires yoinkle those fishy loins—

to the headwaters, to the frothy

salacious pebble-strewn lustbeds

of their mothers

of their grandmothers

of their evermothers

and with great hooplah:

flowers and streamers and big-redded clowns

twirling bears on tumbling balls and peanut smells

candy weeping in the sun:

this hooplah

that hooplah

these hooplah:

the troutburgers expended, expire and die…

Mario, greengrocer, with tickergun

pencils stuffed in shirt

belly bubbling over belt

still-dripping mustachio crammed to lip

cold and withering eyes

sees expired troutburgers, tosses them into trash.

And he and all his groceries—

fuschia tiles and all

drilling muzak and finger-polish smells—

everything folds up and slides away downstream

trickling away into larger waters.

That’s not to say that we will miss him: Mario.

We won’t.

We can’t stand the spiny pustule’s greedy heart.

He took his pound of flesh from us—

we wanted those troutburgers!—

and tossed it in the gutter with no thought

for us, for quivering bellies and

shaking fingers

scattered nerves slipping through our bloodless hands.

But sigh not so! let them go.

For we shall yet feast upon the feast of gluttons,

drink from the liquored dreams of winos and

tearing women, those utter-mad-with-wine women.

Cast your holey net upon the stream:

who knows what we shall receive

but he who gives and takes.

Weep not, dear friends, into your empty plastic goblets,

stop your nibbling on forks of lead!

Though these troutburgers be gone,

lost to us forever,

yet we shall still eat!

(Completed sometime in 2000.)