Table                                                                                                                                          

TRANSUBSTANTIATION
 





1.
Boys are willing to undergo
a great transformation
at a devastating cost,
getting lost in suppositions
about the adult world
they so long to be a part of.

EXPLOSIONS

top the list
of things loved best
a boy can do.

Copper pipes filled with match heads,
OOPS, NOT ENOUGH MATCH HEADS, well,
just hammer the pipe flat till it's
shorter, you know, sort of ... BLAM!

Do we need an ambulance here,
or maybe a shrink;
perhaps a lesson in physics, think so ?

"HUH?", say ingenious boys,
whiling away the hours
reinventing the blasting cap,
thinking up devices to make
firecrackers pale by comparison.

I suppose our teachers at assembly
warned us enough from the podium
about playing with dangerous
substances that might explode

of course, by then, we were making secret
purchases of pure, high grade SODIUM.

What we needed was an H-HOUR,
some TARGET or SUBSPECIES
ON WHICH TO UNLEASH THE POWER.

►


This is a tale of frogicide by children. The people who redeveloped this area would have killed the frogs anyway
...and not learned anything.
◄



2.
Down in the damp hollow
where the creek starts out
from a small pond,
the deep voices of bull frogs
still echo mental bassoons,

not fondly with memories
of a beautiful place doomed
like Dresden before the war,
more clinically and
left-brained than that,

but like a place purveyed by cool bipeds
or Wellsian visitors from Mars.

I know bad boys often start off mildly
with pranks and trash can fires
or tie something to the tail of a dog,

BUT WE HAD THOUGHTS OF GENOCIDE:

THE EXTERMINATION OF THE FROG.

What began with B-B guns
and skirmishes at the pond
developed head-long
into Manhattan Projects
and a kind of male bonding

ONLY MAD SCIENTISTS
AND TERRORISTS UNDERSTAND.

Saddam had no such boyhood as we,
getting retribution on demand,

performing vivisections
of ghastly, inhumane design,
then, moving right along
to a toy guillotine

 

and finally, with the aid of Rector Sets and train transformers,
defeating the built-in circuit breakers,

EXECUTING FROGS IN MINIATURE ELECTRIC CHAIRS.








▼

 


3.
How we kept this from our parents
without bed wetting, I'll never know.

It seems too gruesome to believe
that young boys who carry out
such horrors could survive

this mental torment
and then go on to become
THE MODEL AMERICAN CITIZEN
WRITING DOCTORATES
SYMPHONIES
BOOKS OF POEMS
SERVING ON JURIES

AND VOTING IN EACH ELECTION.

Some natural selection
plays a role too perverse to imagine
although it happens daily
with events in nature;
one factor takes it to the wall:

BOYS WHO DO AS PARENTS DO
WRECK VENGEANCE ON THE SMALL.

We crept to the hollow
with all the stealth
of military squadron
armed with a sodium bomb,

removed the lid
and threw it in the pond.

WITH A GLINT OF SOFT SILVER
AND A FLASH OF COMBINING MOLECULES,
A THUNDEROUS VOLLEY ECHOED
THROUGH THE TREES, HOUSES AND SCHOOLS

and after the smoke
which bubbled up for days
the frogs were gone for good

and we went our separate ways
because from that time forward

WE were the frogs.

.

ŠJimmy Warner 2010