The (Donald) Duck Test

If it looks like an ageing affogato, its bright garnish unruffled by blustering winds chasing about pristine lawns where trees disappear like international relations, relegated to oddly capitalised ejaculations, twittering thumbs pecking out kindergarten epigrams, plaudits coming from such gilded places as Ma’s Texas basement or a boiler room in Moscow,

If it swims like an iceberg sheared from a dwindling glacier, oblivious to the retreating snowline vanishing over the horizon like a septuagenarian’s suspect hair, honing in on great ocean liners, old iconic vessels named Hope for the Future & Equality for Women, bound for the ocean floor where concrete boots clasp the clay feet of all our old gods, & reason,

If it quacks like a giant man-baby, still nappied and breast-fed, grabbing hands flexing & clenching as it stumbles along, like a booze-addled fratboy newly peeled off the morning sidewalk, an antique heatseeking missile skimming the daisy tops, overseeing another failure to launch but now beyond shame or humility or even basic human understanding,

then it probably is what we never knew to dread – too late, too late! Now the trumpets sing a new refrain: slide your wig down that orange mess – we’re running out of face masks.