It all begins with pounding fists
against my door, and men with guns
and yellow tape, and me afraid,
I’m on the floor and crawling toward
the front room drapes to peak outside,
oh what in the world have I done?

A bit relieved, I find out why
a regiment is in my yard,
they say the man that lived next door
has turned up dead behind his shed,
they said he died an awful way,
with eyes ****** out by who knows
what, or why, but either way a
nasty death; poor guy.

The landscape man called 911,
but what he saw he wouldn’t say,
was so surprised to find him dead,
he swallowed his tongue, his face all red,
and there they lie both side by side
the one alive, the other dead.

The EMTs revived the one,
the older guy had long since died,
the guy who lived, they took away
to where? don’t know, they didn’t say,-
but rumor is a padded cell
where all he does both day and night
is moan and drool, he just ain’t right
from what he saw that spooked him.

Within a week I notice things
around the house (not his, but mine)
the porch out back, the wet wood stack,
the shifting earth, the sticking doors,
disgusting insects on the floor,
the pungent stench from underneath
the house, the vents that weep a
sickly brown and soupy ****,  I
must confess in ignorance,
I didn’t know a house could bleed.
I try some bleach, some cleaning spray,
but just can’t scrub the **** away,
it just gets worse, and just when I
can take no more a chasm cracks
behind the stack of sticky wood,
and from the hole a flying horde
of Satan’s pawns and slugs and prawns
and beasts of sorts I swear I’ve never
seen before come shrieking out and
flock about so loud the sound is
deafening.

And now I know what mute man saw,
he saw what’s left, the face of stone
when people die at home alone,
the rigor mortis, gouged out eyes
when killed by things that men despise,
those beasts that creep and crawl and fly
about as Satan’s pawns or slugs
or prawns or whatever else might
make them cry or swallow their tongue.

I really don’t know what the big
deal is -  good god
its only BUGS.

I guess I’ll call an exterminator.