Sunday, July 31, 2011

The Death of Bacardi (a true American)

Last day of April, Bacardi
the alligator that ate the toy turtle
the size of a cookie cutter
turned up dead in Big Pine Key
Turtle jammed the valve
between Bacardi’s stomach and intestine
This nine foot natural couldn't digest
Lost seventy two pounds
They also found a toy
plastic soldier in his gut

Why everybody knew Bacardi
Icon gator with 151 rum tail tag
The local swamp guy
The guy next door with wife and six kids
The guy growing rice in India
with an eye peeled for Texmati
The regular at Max’s Diner
The elephant who reads from memory
that he will soon be shot
The Monarch butterfly in waylaid flight
Bacardi of low water and muck
or so he thought, if he thought
when the plastic turtle got chomped

Why old Bacardi, he just went along
He sat there in the swamp that was him
until somebody with a look alike turtle
Maybe a flag he was supposed
to recognize, a food, say a potato chip or a Coke
passed around the neighborhood that day
Hadn’t he hung in the park for X years?
But a turtle, what surprise in this wise
Day and age, a plastic animal
One of the ones you find in the back of trees in Somalia
Or say, Nepal, a make believe something to eat
which if the alligator had watched his Youtube
or his CNN, he’d have known
not to eat the plastic soldier in the first place
but Bacardi just lay there in his scales
Grabbed what came along,
Showed up ferocious at the movies
Snorted, snapped, whipped the tail
Got caught in another bomb or a flick
for the tourists and the news.
while the turtle seemed to grow real
in his belly and the soldier, well
what did one expect from an eternal march?
A Victory? A solid meal?

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