I scurry around the kitchen floor
Picking up the crumbs I find.
This is not the life we asked for,
But the 'adults' play deaf, dumb and blind.

I am afraid that this is my home,
Though, I know you do not want me here,
But where else do I have to roam?
Outside gets cold this time of year.

So I scuttle from the kitchen to my room,
Hot in the knowledge that I am disgusting.
Society would have the streets, my tomb
To spend eternity in entropy, rusting.

Like the Cockroach
We are victims of circumstance,
But we know our enemy and wait
For a call to arms, for our chance.

killing a butterfly
is easier from far away
colors meshed into brown
is just another cockroach

half asleep i carefully place
lemon slices on top of all the walls and sprinkle
tea tree oil around the door
i read it wards off
sadness
or cockroaches

my roommate complains of a familiar smell
and we discuss the insurgence of nostalgia
against the monarchy of the endless march of time

the way the what could have been gilts
the grass we walk through with guilt
towards happiness

i’m singing “off with the heads
of the things i can’t forget”
tiny feet in the passage whisper

“no one has crossed a meadow
& emerged with clean feet”

i remember cursing dew as a child
for dirtying my shoes as i walked to the car
and slowing me at the start
of races i was never going to win

out in the corridor i encounter the king who
doesn’t move as i raise my foot
only laughs and says

“a cockroach can survive a week
without its head
and a memory much longer”

afraid of nothing
fly swatter at the ready-
the cockroach has wings

Since 1922

When roaches sense the coming winter
Into your palace, house, or flat they enter

Remember this, as each critter encroaches:
If you have a clean house you’ll have clean roaches

But…

They’ll eat your books, your food, your shoes, your clothes
Give them a chance and they’ll bite off your nose!

They’ll eat your cat, your hat, your baby brother -
They are even pleased to eat each other!

Unless you give them a taste of the Harris
Roaches – oh, ick! - might devour all of Paris

So serve them with Harris, and watch them die
With their quivering feet straight up to the sky

It’s up to you…

No queen, no king, no president, no pope
Need ever think about some cockroach dope

But you do



(I have no connection with the fine folks of Harris Famous Roach Tablets; however, my short-lived household roaches do.)

Cockroach,  Cockroach , what are you doing in my soup,
In the kitchen I was playing hoop la hoop,
And I fell in you soup mister,
It's hot and I am getting blisters,
Scoop me with your spoon,
Before I swoon.
Please don't shout or scream,
I will be thrown out of the kitchen of my dream,
Filthy and messy,
With rotten fish, slimy and smelly,
Red meat in blood,
And fungi on sauces and salads with mould,
Never scrubbed,the kitchen,
For thousands of us it's heaven.
Be a pal,
Go away with your gal,
At least I did you a favour,
Not eating in this yucky place forever.
25/6/2019

Bottles of cheap bliss
drown out lugubrious sadness
replaced with bottles of ****
in this festering den of madness

at least there’s paradise in my poems
at least there’s a clean bed in my dreams
at least in those spaces I’m in your arms
at least I’m happy bathing in the moonbeam

surround by a fetid smell
with a lack of care for myself,
is my hunger even quelled
when there’s no food left on the shelf?

a roach skitters across a pile of clothes
my temporary friend that I confide in
he speaks, “Here is what I propose.
Stop thinking that you are a has been

get off your *** and clean this mess
unless you want more of my kin
stop ******* at the bottle is what I suggest
and have a little victory, a little win

you don’t have to live”

Squish

“Funny how you can survive a nuke
but not my tiny bare foot,
well you pest, there’s my rebuke
how’s it feel to be ground to soot?”

“What am I doing with my life?
Maybe the cockroach was right.”

Watching a giant cockroach was I,
pushing across a ball of dust
he seemed satisfied to trace,
a path between the table and door,
but soon he turned and jogged in crooked rings,
and flipping over to scratch his back-
as if a victim of a mild
panic attack.
After a while of climbing open shelf's,
he looked uncertain where to go.
I don't know what he was thinking,
but I knew I recognized myself so.

there’s nothing original about my writing.
I just listen to everyone I’ve ever met
in my life who converse it all away
and have the guts to write it down
with my own eccentricities added
like finding a baby in a dumpster,
a cockroach in the dishwasher,
your car keyed and tires slashed,
a bird maimed on the sidewalk,
a worm in the apple,
your woman gone the next morning