Duck with a Bazooka, Meep-Meep

Luckily I woke up just in time

to start dying

by that I mean I was born

it was a fine day

partly bloody

partly screaming

someone left the refrigerator door open

& the veal chops

made a run for it

they made it halfway across the kitchen floor

before collapsing

good times

I, too, hit the ground running

I held a lettuce in my hands

like a prophetic head, glowing greenly,

not that I ever got the idea it had

the slightest idea where we were going

but what can you expect

I mean, in those days, I was a cartoon coyote

with a stick of TNT in each paw

I kept exploding at the end

of every scene

I didn’t understand the rationale

behind my own stupidity

until it was made clear to me

that exploding is what I was meant to do

oh now I get it, I said,

but I didn’t, not really

what I liked, I’ll admit, was how I’d hang there

suspended in mid-air

defying gravity

just for a second or two

the mere charred framework of myself

before falling softly to earth

in a neat little pile of ashes

push-broomed out of the frame

by some guy with a bushy handlebar mustache

I was a child then

I’m a child now
boom