[Critique Group 2] Leonard's submission for critique

[Tuchyner5 at aol.com]

Hi All,   
this is my submission for  our crique group. 
The below 85 line poem  can be considered a memoir. I say that with tongue 
in cheek, but it is a rue  
story. 
Finny  Society of Waterdown 
by 
Leonard Tuchyner 
Deep in a cellar, on an old oaken desk, 
many lives have thrived and died  
in the seventy-gallon town of Waterdown. 
There was a time when black mollies 
plied the town like black trolleys. 
But something in the water altered, 
and this thriving tribe began to die.  
A chapter in Waterdown was over. 
The epoch of mini snails approached, 
when tiny black dots of life exploded  
out of every rocky ridge and crevice, 
from behind the most piddling little stone, 
and gushed out of every broken shell, 
quickly infiltrating pumps and filters,  
portending death of gasping citizens. 
To wit, 
An eight-inch snaky, brownish placo -- 
a.k.a. Sir Suckey. 
A sleek, black, sharkey catfish -- 
a.k.a. Mack The Knife -- 
Two surviving, elderly mollies -- 
a.k.a. Molly and Polly.  
What to do? What to do? What to do? 
As Waterdown Warden, I wanted to know. 
With much consultation with Mrs. Warden, 
I employed a highly recommended Miss Clooney, 
a young, but voracious, snail-eating  clownfish, 
to clear the glut of marauding snails. 
Miss Clooney took to her job expeditiously, 
cleansing Waterdown of its fouling scourge,  
alarmingly increasing her size and girth. 
Mrs. Warden also employed a young 
pretty, tear-shaped, orange-blushed cichlid, 
to add class and color to the décor. 
She called him Lolli Lolli Lollipop. 
Without snails, the algae ran rampant, 
smearing every surface with slimy green, 
quite too much for Sir Sucky to clean up.  
Frustrated, Mack ate Molly and Polly. 
Then he went after Lolli Lolli Lollipop, 
but the little tear-drop was too quick and  cunning. 
Besides, he was getting too big to eat. 
So I hired another, smaller sucker fish 
to be an apprentice to Sir Sucky, 
but he was reclusive to the extremus  
and a no-account, worthless stick-in the-mud, 
too lazy to even eat, grow or show. 
Despite the slime, the citizens flourished. 
Mack and Lolli reached an accommodation. 
Clooney took up dwelling in an old conch  shell. 
Regardless of the fact that she had grown quite  fat, 
she managed to squeeze herself snugly 
into its curly, pearly coils, 
though often her wiggling tail protruded. 
She quite intended it to be a tell-tail, 
‘cause other times she vanished completely, tail and  all. 
Miss Clooney had her girly, wily reasons, 
and Mack became her intimate companion. 
He is often seen sneaking out of her home. 
No one really knows what scandal goes on. 
It is touching to see him rush to her shell  
and inform Miss Clooney when dinner time  arrives. 
She emerges to gobble up the fare 
in an astonishingly expeditious manner, 
then returns to her happy, safe haven, 
where one can imagine a cozy hearth fire 
there to warm her and her dashing dark suitor, 
leaving Lolli to swim and shake his head  
with curious disturbing suspicions   
of the unnatural collusion between the two,   
right there in seventy-gallon Waterdown.  
As for me and Mrs. Warden, 
What to do? What to do? What to do? -- 
about the green slimy algae, that is. 
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