Salmon Ladder Shuffle

Faster, faster,

iconoclast!

Sportscaster calling shots

drops the shady pastor

from the pedestal —

a bull's-eye from his plasma blaster.

And it'll happen all over again.

*

How many times must we

rise to the occasion

of the century?

Invasion of our sensory

sovereignty

prevents us from ignoring the cacophony

outside.

We turn up the telly,

draw our curtains closed,

but still, we cannot hide

from the nightmarish laughter

of our garish masters.

Small town and parish folks

will perish faster

than the big city boys and girls,

'cause it's a minnow-eat-minnow world.

And when the fish are frenzied,

friend, you know they can see

just a little bit straighter than a Tilt-A-Whirl.

*

The buffet is open

and anything goes.

Qu'est-ce que c'est, here's hopin'

you keep ten fingers and toes.

*

Somewhere in that whirlwind

of gluttony, cursed sin

and etiquette crimes,

there's a salmon determined —

oh, how it hurts him —

to swim upstream and defy the times.

He wriggles free from the current

of thought-deterrent

tribal psychosis,

leaps into the air!

He's done it at last,

little red iconoclast!

He breaks free of hypnosis,

into the mouth of a bear.