Duck Diaries Part II

It's amazing how fragile a duck's clutch of eggs is. The laying process takes a week to ten days, the incubation process another 25 or so days, and then there's the perilous existence of the hatchlings, which, after surviving birth and the subsequent threat of predation, they have to follow their mother on the journey to her chosen wetland area where they will learn to feed and swim and survive. We've had a couple of close calls where we thought the mama duck was scared off and would not return. One time, she was gone the whole night while some racoons (a mama and her young ones) were prowling about. She returned shortly after sunrise.

Nevertheless, I'm not sure how she and her eggs will survive the constant visits of curious children and adults, as well the animals of the small forest in front of our townhouse.

It's amazing how tati and i have become so attached to this duck and her clutch. I've gotten into the habit of urinating around our house to "mark territory" because I read somewhere that it would deter predators from snooping around. Of course someone always tends to appear when I'm doing it and so I get flustered and try to explain what I'm doing. One time I was concentrating deeply on marking territory when I happened to look up and directly to my left, a relative of my neighbor is smoking a cigarette. He's Korean, and I don't know how much he understands me but he says, "yeah yeah yeah" like he does--apparently unfazed by the need to mark territory for whatever reason.

Today there was a rough storm but Mariposa (the mama) handled it with the calm and aplomb of a professional egg incubator. There were reports that hail might come through the area but fortunately that didn't happen. Life's delicate strength abides.

Haiku Elegy

For Richard Rorty
it matters not. believe this:
it matters not...NOT!

duck diaries; aka mariposa butterfly mama manuscript

A brown duck decided to lay her eggs and nest in the small strip of dirt in front of our apartment that family housing calls a garden, and which many a family--with much care and stewardship--actually makes into one. Our family doesn't. We let the weeds grow and in the fall when they turn brown, with any luck, Tati puts on her dishwashing gloves, grabs a small implement associated with gardening and hacks the weeds into mulch. In the spring and summer they grow back again--taller and more stubbornly rooted in than before.

This spring-summer term, as we were arriving home, Camila (in a pissy mood at the time) commented on how nice our neighbor's garden was, adding offhandedly that ours was less than beautiful-- or hideous or something close to that. It was late, or I would have gotten out our small, futile gardening implements and asked her to do something about it. Instead, as Tati and I were smoking outside later, I suggested we buy some toy or inflatable dinosaurs that we could put in our garden so that our weeds would seem like exotic prehistoric food instead of a family housing eyesore and a cosgrove-calixto-pena embarassment.

But just when you think your grass is not greener, along comes a little new life to make worrying about the relative color of your grass seem irrelevant. Welcome "mariposa butterfly," who has chosen our hideous little garden to hatch a family. More in the next installment of the duckie diaries.

Bad Poetry Theater

"Abstinence is not sobriety."

want the addled iteration
the simple razor action
of one more beer:
to let fake sobriety alone
to set addiction back upright

--but of course--
addiction could be drink,
could be drugs,
could be the unchecked shame
of checking msgs. again and again,
it's all the samesize stomp
to prone irish bugs

--and yet--
as long as the
addiction is the promise of time
lost
time
lost in the moment of getting lost.
And lost, stringing everything along--
the pokergameboxscores
/sexypornopictures/24/blockbusternights
deathwishes/love'slore etc...
over all those smooth saint walter mitty beads
fingers run amok,
strung up or strung out
(-hee hee--
DON’T GIVE A FUCK!)
the way polanski runs 'round with his little thieves
seizing on every balletic dodge with voracious
framing fingers

--just so--
pretend to invent your name
that point in the cosmos of "you" and "me"
(but there's no "you" in that old saw cruelty)
nothing crude
nothing bonedusty
--in fact--
the teeth may break off against
tender honest skin.

--in that case--
put the broken pieces in your pocket
and use them like new words
to curse the world with--addiction in solution, a cure.

---

pls. feel free to post poetry on this blog, but only if you can honestly, in your truest of hearts, say to yourself: "This is bad, or probably bad (i.e., I wish someone of considerable taste and influence would tell me it isn't), but in the end, at the end of the day, when all is said and done (or when any such cliches become exhausted) I don't give a fuck, I want to post it."

four keys to life...?

something to do
someone to love
something (a goal) to work for
something to believe in


I have two, but the last one makes it hard to do the next to last one, which makes it very hard to do the first one which is one of the two (the second being the other of which i have). Advice? Please post, but since good advice comes in haiku, please observe the form:

e.g., hee hee one two
three, life's meaning trembles
as child's fingers count

autobiography

Si, tengo cara de "no fui" (Yes, I have the look that says "it wasn't me"). And when I begin to sweat, you can detect the scent of chanel no. 3. But it ain't me, babe, naw it ain't me. It's the smell of paint. If your kids aren't smeared with the same paint, it's time to call my realtor. Masks are must haves to keep it real.

misterioso

This man has a biography somewhere on wikipedia, but imagine, it's full of half-truths and urban legends. If you were this man, I'd ask you to write your autobiography in 99 words or less amending what your wikipedia biographers got wrong. What would you write?
(water, felipe, juli, please POST your answers rather than adding as comments-- I think I've given you clearance to post so plse do-- if you can't plse email me). I will post mine Sunday. hugs, gato