Lazy folks design better mousetraps
Industrious folks bring them to market
Money-hungry promoters hawk ‘em
Insecure consumers gobble ‘em up
America lurches on its way
Two steps sideways
A step in the bucket
Trust turns to dust
The body-personal will be achieving little today.
Today is a too tight T-shirt.
Bloat and insomnia
have measured and found soft round toads
croaking in the swamp of being.
There are squawky
oral articulations in dry joints.
A fate has made its presence known
revealing pre-set mousetraps
strewn upon the path of well laid plans;
it warns obliquely of dentures mechanically
nibbling on stale cheese.
Knowing the hours will belch
and empty-out air that could have
breathed new life into words,
Perceiving that chattering mind-children
will cross the distracted mind
without a crossing guard,
be bowled over, squashed, spread
over neural highways,
their scant electric membranes
dissolving and denuded
leaving a sticky residue
over the body personal...
then that body
must retire and regroup
into a proto-cognizance,
a glow of phosphorescence
too primal to be snared,
yet able to predict
when it can get out of itself -
hopefully.
I set out mousetraps
Not expecting to catch a robber
But I did.
He was a big fellow, full grown
Nigh onto fifty probably.
Wore a mask.
Before I released him I asked him to take it off.
He refused,
And he was rude.
So I made him stay in the kitchen.
And I went back to bed.
Hoping he would change his mind.
By morning he was gone, took my mousetrap too.
Left my front door wide open.
Ruder than rude.
I was thinking this as I sat in my recliner
And reached for my remote.
It was gone, and my TV was gone too.
I hope to never catch that robber again!
I unearthed mouse turds in the silverware tray.
The little furry devils are back.
I bought some traps.
The little wooden snappy ones.
The kind my father wielded decades before.
They hadn't changed one bit throughout the years,
Why change deadly perfection, I guess.
I used to think my father was cruel.
Why couldn't he live-trap and release them in a nearby field?
Back then nobody questioned their father.
So, I'd loyally watch him load the business end of the trap.
With a dab of irresistible.
Come morning, I had the dirty task of checking the traps.
More often than not, they were sprung.
The tiny bulging-eyed victim screaming back at me.
With a final unanswered prayer hanging from its yellow teeth.
I'd quickly shake the mouse macabre into the trash.
Then proudly give the good news to daddy mousetrap.
Unlike my father, my children would never inherit this dirty task...
of resetting the mousetraps.
I prayed to God in the silent house,
In the quiet stillness, in came a mouse,
Yes, in scuttled Horatio the Mouse,
Sardonic God has sent me a mouse,
So, a little fur friend,
God's blessings don't end,
This mouse is way too hyperactive,
I ask, does this it come from a mouse collective?
Is Horatio pregnant? Think twice.
Shall I be plagued by furry mice?
I bought poison and mousetraps, too bad,
Is the mouse collective about to be sad?
Thus spake God, in the silent dark house,
"I shall send you a fur friend mouse?"
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