Bullfrog Tadpoles
What’s this pond coming to—
The survival of the dimmest?
An orphanage for a bunch of retards,
In the eyes of the bluegill.
Even the crayfish are appalled
By these aimless imbeciles,
These goofballs—these big boneless babies!
Poster children for moron control.
Try not to laugh
At the bullfrog tadpoles.
***
Look at them, will you?
These gargantuan pollywogs
In army-surplus fatigues,
The commas that ate the world,
Propellering over the drowned leaffall
Till your approach of the shore
Sends them squirming into the silt.
And motionless for a moment
They honestly forget they’re alive,
Their only life
The life to come,
Till it’s Curly
Starring as Lazarus
And they’re streaking
To the surface for air,
A stolen gulp of fifty-proof air
That leaves them stuporous,
Sinking inertly to the pond floor,
Piling onto each other
Like featherweight boulders:
A sleeping bee
Of insomniac dirigibles,
Of terrified grenades.
Those jowly faces of morbid obesity,
And that thumb-sucker’s mouth
Always pumping away—
Who stole all the pacifiers?
It’s a cheek-to-stuffed-cheek
Handel chorus of autistic mutes.
They’re vegan and they’re gaga,
But those who presume they’re an easy meal
Will savor the delights of food poisoning.
***
Ah, but these idiots:
They are idiot savants,
With absolute genius
In the field of Becoming.
The pond is the womb
Of these locked-in mystics
And they’re conducting a thousand
Physiology experiments at once.
Look again:
The spectral eye,
The pale mottled belly,
Wait a minute—
Aren’t those…
Yeah,
That solar-throated
All-Pro linebacker
Hulking in the cattails:
Papa,
In the Hereafter.
They will sprout
A first little spinach
Of rear legs.
They will fall
On their gelatinous swords.
Their eyes will roll
To the tops of their heads.
They will shatter the glass ceiling,
Leaving the bluegill speechless.
Then they will dope
And pump iron
And devour
Whatever moves
And is swallowable.
And when you see
That super-athletic
Stutter of splashes,
When you hear
That voluminous roar,
When they couldn’t be further
From their salad days,
Be amazed,
Then more amazed—
I mean, really man:
You were a tadpole too.