| Cockroach I killed my first cockroach the other night It wasn't the battle I'd been anticipating for all these years I really expected more from evolutions master bug Maybe it was because he was a lagger A weak one The outer fringe of the heard always get it, y'know I used to see that on The Mutual Of Omaha's Wild Kingdom The young and the weak always got it Carl Perkins should have been narrating in my boarding house room that night Maybe not Probably wouldn't have made for good TV No blood No thrill of the chase Nothing special, really Returning home I turned on the light Went over to the sink Saw the little bugger Scurrying around as if to be saying 'Hey! Where'd you all go? What's going- HOLY SHIT!' And he made a break for it In an obvious panic he decided the best plan of action was to try to scale the wall This slowed his escape some And, in a blinding fit of ambivolance I reached under the sink Grabbed a bottle of Clorox All Purpose Bleach Cleaner And sprayed the little guy. He fell off the wall and started sputtering around As if he was saying 'Ow, ohhh that hurts. Y'got me pal! I'm a gonner! Sure as rain, I'm a gonner!' Having heard cockroaches being compared to Keith Richard I wasn't to be duped 'Yeah, yeah� nice little act there buggy!' I roared Thinking that these little creatures Didn't get their reputation for being the only things to survive an atomic blast for nothing 'He's playing me for the fool!' I thought. 'Go on� keep up the Oscar performance there, Crusty! I got my eye on you!' � I live alone� I talk to things a lot. But sure enough As the hours rolled on His 'laying-on-his-back-pretending-to-be-dying' routine became more and more credible As a matter of fact His little legs stopped moving long before I cautiously backed out of the scene 'Bleach?' I thought, 'regular, run of the mill Bleach? Huh!' It was that simple I check back on him from time to time Just to make sure, y'know And Unless he's a really good actor He's dead Dead as a door nail My reign as Supreme Creature of Room #306 remains intact But as I write these final words A spider has crawled through my peripheral� The battle rages on� �If this is my last poem, the spider won. |
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