COCKROACHES, 11/9/19

COCKROACHES, 11/9/19

Scott Stone

“Cockroaches, 11/9/19”

Grime shiny and skittering across dusty floors,

Skulking clumsily in forgotten corners,

Spindly limbs pathetically scraping snow-white baseboards.

Lazy trundling is the cockroaches’ gait,

Drunk on filth, woozy on refuse.

Bastions of prehistoric epochs.

Still, they are tenacious

And require comically colorful circus tents in

Sweat-drenched Florida for temporary decimation.

The click clackity-legged invasion fuels nightmares,

An evolutionary revulsion to decay,

Not just some quaint Cleaver-esque obsession with

The ornate presentation of pristine cleanliness.

Bottle-blonde soccer moms embrace a secret

Howard Hughes-ian pathologic fear of

The infected mucus-like mustard pus

Seeping out of cracked, creamy innards, curdling and sullying

Resplendent granite countertops

Or the soles of Italian loafers.

Even the German naming of such horror

Urges ancient elemental imagery,

The guttural ungeheures Ungeziefer^ and

Poor Gregor Samsa,

A rotting apple lodged in his aching back,

The true marksmanship of a furious father.

Remember the Apricot Autocrat* likening humans to vermin?

And the fascistic demonization of entire races?

Government sanctioned pogroms

Nights of shattering glass

Technological progress

Systematic efficiency

Atomic advancement.

Perhaps it is mankind with its mammalian arrogance and

Bipedal self-righteousness that

Disgusts the cockroaches.

Theirs is the long game,

Waiting for the inevitable moment when

They can move freely upon an inherited earth,

Safe from stomping feet or

The calculated attack of a

Shoulder-slung spray can.

^monstrous vermin

*courtesy of author Michael Harriot