Kamikaze

[Hawkman]

Parakeets and mynah birds
macaws and cockatoos,
they’ve all been taught to self-destruct
by someone just like you.

Released into the city where they
proudly strut their stuff
singing, “here, kitty-kitty,”
calling every feline’s bluff.

A ring of furry faces,
teeth all gleaming in the dusk,
soon surrounds our feathered friends;
their fate’s to bite the dust.

Then cats with feathered maws
contrive to smile at bloodied paws,
the parts of birds they didn’t like
congealing by our doors.

[tailor STATELY]

Lol, more like karmakaze.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[Buh4Bee]

A humorous tale of the domesticated creatures of the wild urban setting.

[Haunted]

Hawk, are you on some kind of war path? :D From WWI in the postcard poem to WWII here....

The mention of you is disturbing, it fills my mind with the real horror of those fighters. That feels disjointed side by side the cartoony sketches but which I did enjoy very much:

A ring of furry faces,
teeth all gleaming in the dusk,
soon surrounds our feathered friends;
their fate’s to bite the dust.

[Buh4Bee]

No kidding, it must be a personal theme.

The psychology of the kamikaze fighter is very difficult to understand.

[Hawkman]

tS: Many thanks for stopping by and taking the time to chuckle at my chunterings. Bad karma indeed to be eaten by a kitty. :D

B4B: Certainly the humour is intentional but it's a little more than just comic doggerel...There is subversive literary precident for the idea of the self-destruct mynah bird, I just extemporised on the theme ;)

Haunted: Actually this war is much later than WWII, a post Vietnam, drug-fuelled fantasy of conspiracy and urban myth :D I agree the You does give the poem a loading which focuses attention where I would not necessarily wish it to be drawn, (at least when taken out of the context of the literary text from which it drew inspiration) but it also rhymes. :D

The WWII "Kamikaze" were prgrammed by cultural imperative and desperately misgueded military thinking in a time of dire need. They were largely volunteers who knew the consequences though. The talking birds have been trained to parrot a phrase and are oblivious to the the probable outcome. The result is just as futile, but the subversive nature of the perversity would be shocking.

For the geneisis of the idea see: The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy

It made me laugh when I was 17 and it still does ;)

Live and be well - H

[AuntShecky]

Very witty scenario of what happens when well-meaning urban dwellers take the risk of owning a pet bird. When the feathered adoptees don't die at home, sometimes the pet owner get buyers' remorse or figure that the bird is more trouble than it's worth. Maybe, with the same thoughtlessness as flushing a baby alligator down the sewer, they release them into the "urban wild." Sadly,and more often than not, the feathered adoptees expire of natural causes, maybe more often than those who fall to feline predators. (Yet those humorous myths --dogs chase cats, cats chase mice and birds-- kept animation studios in the black for decades.)

Low maintenance pets may be the way to go, but even tropical fish require cleaning the
tanks and other routine tasks for their upkeep. I don't know why I remember this, but
years ago I was watching a late night talk show in which one of the guests was Gail
Parent, an author and the headwriter for "The Carol Burnett Show." Gail Parent said how
when she was a little girl, she went to the five-and-dime store (we still had 'em in those
days) and brought home a goldfish. Her mother took one look at it and said," Just what
we need. Another mouth to feed!"

[Hawkman]

Hi Auntie, and thanks for sparing an eye for this little offering. However, there's a little more going on here than just unloading an unwanted pet. These tweeties have been set loose, and trained to summon their own executioners! As an act of psychological terrorsim it lacks the impact of Tom Sharpe's exploding ostriches, which had been fed dynamite and time fuses (wrapped up in condoms) then released from the zoo to wander the streets. (see, Indecent Exposure).

Still, I enjoyed your anecdote vis the goldfish. If she'd fed it explosives, she'd only have had to feed it once :D

Live and be well - H