We have here
rats the size of Nutria
running and hiding in the walls of history
Sometimes, I think I’ll see one
asking out Mary Jane Evans
or cruising in a Mustang
spinning in Caspian blue
black leather seats
pony wheels
At night,
the rodents sneak out
read Chaucer
shake it up a bit
We have
in this room
two flags:
the United States
hanging beside Spain
wrinkled ripples
crease the white
those bright-eyed stars
peering out from a blue sea
of division
We keep the cycles
of days
keep the neighborhood
from decay
take our microscopic spot
on a white star
sometimes we are
the most mammoth rats
in the chamber
our whiskers
in everybody’s business
Ha, ha! Now those are rats I never minded seeing!
I must say, they are some of the better rats, LOL 😀
Something about these lines… “At night / the rodents sneak out / read Chaucer / shake it up a bit” I giggled at the picture that formed in my head: Ol’ Chaucer letting his hair down, singing karaoke, doing shots with the rats. Also loved the ending, “our whiskers /
in everybody’s business.” You got that right. Nicely done, Lana. 🙂
Thanks so much, Joan. This poem originally started out when I was writing about a rat problem in a Spanish classroom, LOL. Then I didn’t finish it when I was on that train of thought, and ran across it much later after I had forgotten where I was going with it. So then, I had to go another direction. It works that way sometimes as you probably know. 😀
I like the metamorphosis in this poem… the way the rats start out as rats and change into the human variety. Very entertaining. <3
Thanks Diana. I got lucky on this one as it actually started out as one of those school poems and became something else as I had lost my train of thought before I could get back to it. 😀
It has great visuals. 🙂 I laughed until it got more serious!
So much to interpret here Lana. I love how you can juxtapose messages in your writing. 🙂 xx
Thanks so much, Debby. 😀