18 POEMS ABOUT DUCKS.
© DB Fishman, 2010, 2011
“The ducks are not my friends” - My Wrongs #8245-8249 and 117 (Chris Morris, 2002)
+0
3
4
5
7
+4
8
10
+1
11
13
16
+3
17
+2
21
22
Dead Duck
I’m sure, like me, you’ve wondered why no one has ever written a collection of poetry that casts the common Wild Mallard as metaphysical, mechanical agents of disruption, portent and hysteria; observation and infinity - flying, feeding and fighting, their existence predicated on violence and rape. You can stop wondering.
DB Fishman, Oxford Canal towpath, 2011
+0
Crossing over the bridge
A sunny mood is tainted
A feeling of unease
becoming an awareness
All the ducks are traversing
the other way
At speed.
2011
#3
The ducks are in formation
Coathanger heads tearing through
the surface
As storm-grey ferments
in rising winds
& land clings to the waterline.
2010
#4
Like a living room wall
Brought to life; Bombers,
Darts in mid-flight, free
of target
Their incessant honking a
Rising demented chant
Reaching frantic flurrying pitch
In the red brick curvature
of sheltered underbridge
At sunset they trace
The true length of water
2010
#5
Their straining pull
Drops into a fall &
They sunder surface to
Two trailing ribbons of wake
With the satisfying, full
Sound of a child’s shoe
Plunging into gravel
Bulbous as a brandy glass
Like swollen balloons of buoyance
They jacknife, buckle-fold
In on themselves, imploding
Geometrically, angles carved of
Burnished green stone
Paperweights, with one beady eye.
2010
#7
Folding in upon its own being, reaching
For some buried discomfort, some
itch
Becoming sphere-like, self-contained, surrounded
by concentric circles, sitting
In the centre of the world
2010
#+4
Bending matter with their movement
Heading up stretches of ripples
They are force & effect, infinite
Undulation running on
Into eternities
Ducking in and pulling
Fluency over their head like
Some dispersing bedsheet
And sleeping, pulled in
Like knotted scarves
They stand solid, like
horizontal commas.
2011
#8
The spastic lazy lolling
Of a single orange flip
Steadily maintains the still
stasis
Of nothing but unblinking
potential:
Once and again, one circling,
Circumnavigating others’
Motion, turning everything
Into cross-confluence
Of disruption & velocity
Rising to a vertical stretch
Above & beating
Wings, battering things
Forward, commanding
Before dropping
dipping, bobbing
Up and through - tearing spaces &
Falling through surface.
2010
#10
A slick, smoothed shape
A droplet, a tear
Cut into space amidst the
Overlapping planes of fracture
Trailing a train of
Circular dissipations
Dark head ploughed, skewered
Into the flow, hunting
Thrashing it all up and
Shredding to froth that
Instantaneously returns
To unity.
2010
#+1
Heads of turquoise jade shading
To rich, regal purple
Beaks like broken woodwind
Seeking sustenance in murk
Rising from out the water, before
The shake, glimmering beads hang,
Gems bejewelling plush fabric before
Lateral motion restores normalcy.
2011
#11
Heads in line like
Novelty cane handles
Garnet eyes twinkling
In burnished jade
Texture feathered, intangibly
Fine, softly staticy &
Transient to the touch
Before footfalls launch them
From the water’s edge
One by one
In order.
2011
#13
Preening masculinity
Resplendent in its finery
The dowdy females sporting stripes
Like military ribbons
Upper limbs folded back, they
Have the air of inspecting generals
Resting back on their heels, poised
Pinpoint inkwells alert.
2011
#16
Flapping the full cathartic
Burn-off span of a yawn before
Lurching over broken ground
In the low-slung, stunted surges
Of a child’s remote control car
To a thrown launch,
Up over water, flying
Like already hanging in
A butcher’s window:
Neck ahead on the descent
Before landing into dispersal
With the sound of a
tin of spilled nails
And all the breadth
The entire length impacted
From a single action
Everything is ripple
2011
#+3
Forward propulsion – neither
Ground nor sky -
Through movement, like
Soaring bowling pins, they
Plot surrounding space, &
Descend like parachutes
Under duress & pull
Their contact cutting in curves
Pushing against surface’s
caught resistance
Drifting across the calms, heads
Elongated & droplike
as blown glass
Swivelling, beaks clapping
open-shut
In clockwork binary alarm
Before coming to rest
In a stare because
They think
You look like food.
2011
#17
Crumbs hit the surface of the murk
Like circuit connectors
Boatlike bodies snapping to motion
Like started dodgems
Wakes fanning out like
Slender solar wings
Spun gold behind
Wind chime jaws -
Snatching vicegrips pince, shaking,
Shredding in water and the wall-to-wall
Clamour of hungry calls; a
Double Ouroboros arising
Beaks clattering at tails
Wings rigid, battering at
Full span, a circular
Whirlpool tearing surface up skywards
Like a death struggle in Jaws
A churning engine of envy
& competition, starts & stops and
Through all, the body
Of the river remains
wholly unchanged.
2011
#+2
Followed by & outrunning
Their effects they set in motion
Untouched & moving on
The last light captured
from a failing sky
Flown only to return to
Their patrolling, gliding
On a stillness full of dusk
Pulling an unfurled wingspan
Of epic, reflected flame.
2011
#21
A form halfway between
A pinned moth and a crucifixion
They hold themselves vertical, backs to the sun
Beating - with all their force - against air.
2011
#22
Her neck gripped
In a snap, from behind
Forcing head down, under-
Water, and again, his
Weight above, pinning, in
Mid-morning broad daylight
A whole swathe of
Biological deviations entailed -
Here at the end
Of frantic flutter & grip
Is your answer to the right
Of what’s natural.
2011
Dead Duck
The arrival of death on the towpath
Electric jolt of primal recognition
His back to approach, at eye level
Holding on by his skull
Squeezed in the crux of two branches
Limbs hanging loose, as if
halted in flight
A little blood on the underside
like watercolour
Lifeless, left as omen,
a symbol
The abstract concept rendered fact
in deactivated flesh.
2011
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