Darned my socks, dammed the pots and pans.
Tinkered around the garage. Puttered into the kitchen.
Fixed a stew. Vomited into the sink.
Shit in the wastebasket.
Beheaded the doorknob with an icepick.
Pumped the shotgun with buckshot. Ducked out front,
mowed down the lawn. Emptied the garbage
on top of the slaughter. Dumped in the empty can
the handful of rats the arsenic finally took to a better life.
Raised the can high overhead. Crashed it down
like the Great Depression.
Out flew rats, bounced off the apple tree,
ricocheted over the swingset, like stiff acolytes grinning.
Dented the galvanized can,
till it took an edge keen as a guillotine.
Chopped off rat heads, teased out teeth.
Scratched across the walls outside
how deliberate a butcher I demanded being known to be.
Then hungrily hung myself from the apple tree.
But the limb snapped,
and I fell choking atop smashed grass and beheaded rats,
to continue one more week to die the life of a working stiff.
Willie Smith
aiurea press 