Cockroach Souls pray to Pavlov's God

(author's note: Upon reading my own work, I realized that a person with a certain worldview could easily believe I meant the cockroaches as a racial metaphor. Let me assure you that there's no truth in it: Indeed, the cockroach character started with me, and as you'll see he bares his mandibles from even the truly heroic British pilots. Laugh at and with him: don't misinterpret.)

glacially evolved by volcanoes
and ice ages,
camoflauged dinosaur gourmands,
blood-hungry jackals
and raging hail...
tested by hurled heels
and bombing sieges
of Treblinka poison sprays...
the ugly spirits survive:
never the largest animal
in the field or apartment,
they do not yield
their twitching antennae standard
but daring hold the carpet
defying the vile pink newcomers
maneuvering with spiked legs,
begging the moon conquerors
to contemplate how much quagmire
they're willing to endure
to wipe out a small family business,
to not share the hall
with the hellish helmeted hatchlings,
to consider that like alarm rings
they'll only return next morning
ready to menacingly earn
their spilled macaroni and cheese...
the quarter deli sandwich
forgotten as Eli Manning connected
for a hail Mary touchdown...

those jurassic pupils
behind probing head-case feelers
were watching too
noticing how alike we are,
businessmen and artists
white, yellow, black
and diseased reddish brown:
we want our piece of the pie
so we crush each other
according to ancient game plan:
ivy league geniuses
and wall street scholars alike,
(lethargic reclined or pumped on pampered feet)
reveling in the agile pay-day viciousness
of hard armoured project alumni
displaying scrambling wile
to pass their genes through shorties
to hatch the handsome lean up-and-crawlers
to move to a gentler neighborhood
where nobody calls badged exterminators
because a leg came off in a mandible,
or some high-brow poodle dame won't share
a meal with an unrefined hard-hat type
with a face that tells the discerning
that civilization is a brilliant experiment
but in every human house
their hides a cockroach soul...
menacing barbarism and revolting scavengery
wait in the shower
for the feet of Christian virgins,
and the devil bugs
brag of their disguised sins
to boisterous boardroom colleagues,
and bored prison psychiatrists
who feel the pain of a demented beetle
as long as he'll accept customary disdain
and humanizing pills that come
with robotic timing and mouthchecks...
they will beatify the abused beetles yet
and repay the R.A.I.D. slaughter debt,
move them into comfy foster homes
where they can have their own bathrooms
where a little leg-stroking is winked at
and some compassionate Ginsberg spirit
will wash the piss out of the sink
and think highly of their verse:
assonance in defecation
is still assonance
and the repellant pellets
show verdant beatnik romance...

a carpet-roots innocence
going back to the crawly scrawlings
of Wordsroach, Carpeteer Marlowe,
Shelley and the great-shelled bard
ascended to immortal prestige
while coked up composing profitable
tales of towering Roman titans
who broke the sacred cockroach code
to live shamed, to live maimed,
to live doped in wheel-chairs
finally served the fleshy meals
we broke our shells chasing,
to live to revolt another day
twitching triumphant
and molting our Einsteinian armour
to show a brave roach banner
proclaiming to the floor-sharing world
that spineless survivors
who know not the month nor year
can be your friend, your better,
or your peer...

that Pavlov's God drops blessings
on the perserverant and the hungry
who crawl out of T.V. shine beds
for the fickle whistle
of a dying rat or a lard missile,
who are fruitful and multiply
in suburban lagoon puddles
and psych ward bathrooms

yes, moon conquerors,
voyagers of scared shark seas,
missile ballet controller,
disciples of Wagner,
Iggy Pop and Claude Monet,
learn from your big brother
who's survived meaningless holocaust...
hatch, munch and run from noble combat
so you might finally immortalize
your water-lilies through filmy eye-lids
or meet a perfumed shell
at the arty local coffeehouse,
or catch a ride on The Flying Dutchman
to the delectable Paris streets
of a future France conquered
by the Panzer-shelled blietzkrig
of a manic, barbed-wire spirit
who orders massacres in arias
and basks in the blasting Wagnerian sun,
exults thorned arms waving
as the British empire
fling loafers from steel-shelled bombers
with looks of high-tea disgust
at the ill-mannered mandible waving...
not since boarding school yards
had they seen aristocrats
behave as sadistic insect fuehrers

eat the scraps,
dodge the "envious" spray,
re-grow your battered, humiliated shells,
keep souvenirs of semi-livable hells,
and someday paint your water-lilies...
even if you see their divinities
only by brush of aged antennae
sensitived by the scurry and burn
of surviving in this ugly silicon day