Insects

Insects

1. Let’s not get technical here
   I’m talking anything gross.
   When you want to sleep at night.
   What you fear the most.
   Regardless of the number of legs;
   Six? A hundred? Eight?
   If you crawl into my bed at night,
   you’ll not be my mate.
2. Like the red and black millipedes
   that dropped down from the ceiling
   of our beach hut in Auroville.
   Can you imagine the feeling?
   Like torture lying awake at night
   waiting for the next to fall.
   Entirely not conducive
   of any kind of sleep at all.
   If you accidentally stand on one
   they release a toxic smell.
   Not a lot going for these guys,
   Maravattai are from hell.
   A lovely local lad down the beach
   said we’d not a lot to fear
   unless we forget our plugs
   and one crawls in our ear.

3.
I swear mosquitoes are clever
Much cleverer than you think
Conspiring new ways to prey on you
Your blood they want to drink
They pre-empt your moves
and eavesdrop on your chat
You can hear them thinking in the room
about where you’ll next be sat.
You sense them watching
for the right time to fly
You think you see one
in the corner of your eye
Right, ‘fuckoff’
You’re havin’ it now you twat
No mosquito can survive
The electrocution bat.

4.
As I write a team of ants work hard
to carry dinner from the yard
How the caterpillar died,I don’t know
But his funeral procession is slow
As a hundred back ants lift the dead
and march to spin life’s fragile thread
And when I die I’ll be a bugs dinner
Lucky for them, I’m not getting thinner!

images: featured image is me after finding  a maravattai in my fucking bed, weird tree beasts called Stainer Bugs apparently, collette builds a falling millipede shelter, maravattai in my fucking bed, a 2MP cartoon and one of our cockroach buddies.
butterfly after some monster attack.