sd gross
10-03-2011, 11:04 PM
New York City is famous for its mighty triumvirate -
Great food, incomparable museums and immortal roaches.
You can't have one without the others.
:peepwall:MIDNIGHT OIL
by Stephen D. Gross
Brick piled on brick encrusted with grime
decay and mold writhing
the sweat of the minions
eighty families crowded within
Moles in a burrow withering
in the heat
five floors stacked above us
We're in apartment 1 - G
and our cockroaches
are the toughest, the meanest
the swiftest of all
We're watching Ed Sullivan
Then the Men from Texaco
And it's kitchen time
That's where lives the food
chips and pepperoni
string cheese and red jell-o
Tense and alive I head back there
pulling on first my shoes
on the light rests my finger
I steel my guts for the
brown crawling rush
It's Russian Roulette with
no chambers empty
Holding my breath
I pull the switch
Like black rain they explode
a turgid pool of filthy oil
smashed with a sledge
they streak the floor
defile the walls
drip like molasses down
the fridge door
skid greasily across the choppingboard
dive headlong for the sink drain
Then the loathesome horde freezes
Punky petulant bikers
in their hard shiny leathers
they lean back with defiance
feel the spring in taut, dark haunches
antennae twitching menacingly
mad meth freaks with switchblades
There was a time
when I'd stomp them
thin glassy shells cracking
dry twigs underfoot
toxic juices squirting,
spotting the yellowed stove
dappling the bleak walls
With boiling water
I'd try to burn them
flush them out of my life
like the Living Dead
they'd come creeping back
thoraxes shattered
dragging wracked roach bodies
full of blind, tortured hate
always, always in my direction
scurrying, they'd tap dance
past their dead and dying
staining our battlefield
of scarred, peeling linoleum
Soon only a few small ones remained
watching, oozing and twitching
I'd remember my Mission
grab my donuts and run
leave the death-filled arena
the horrible carnage
the slick, corpse littered plain -
Until the next commercial
when the nightmare that lay
shock-charged and
gut wrenching
would locked me
into its murderous loop
once again
Great food, incomparable museums and immortal roaches.
You can't have one without the others.
:peepwall:MIDNIGHT OIL
by Stephen D. Gross
Brick piled on brick encrusted with grime
decay and mold writhing
the sweat of the minions
eighty families crowded within
Moles in a burrow withering
in the heat
five floors stacked above us
We're in apartment 1 - G
and our cockroaches
are the toughest, the meanest
the swiftest of all
We're watching Ed Sullivan
Then the Men from Texaco
And it's kitchen time
That's where lives the food
chips and pepperoni
string cheese and red jell-o
Tense and alive I head back there
pulling on first my shoes
on the light rests my finger
I steel my guts for the
brown crawling rush
It's Russian Roulette with
no chambers empty
Holding my breath
I pull the switch
Like black rain they explode
a turgid pool of filthy oil
smashed with a sledge
they streak the floor
defile the walls
drip like molasses down
the fridge door
skid greasily across the choppingboard
dive headlong for the sink drain
Then the loathesome horde freezes
Punky petulant bikers
in their hard shiny leathers
they lean back with defiance
feel the spring in taut, dark haunches
antennae twitching menacingly
mad meth freaks with switchblades
There was a time
when I'd stomp them
thin glassy shells cracking
dry twigs underfoot
toxic juices squirting,
spotting the yellowed stove
dappling the bleak walls
With boiling water
I'd try to burn them
flush them out of my life
like the Living Dead
they'd come creeping back
thoraxes shattered
dragging wracked roach bodies
full of blind, tortured hate
always, always in my direction
scurrying, they'd tap dance
past their dead and dying
staining our battlefield
of scarred, peeling linoleum
Soon only a few small ones remained
watching, oozing and twitching
I'd remember my Mission
grab my donuts and run
leave the death-filled arena
the horrible carnage
the slick, corpse littered plain -
Until the next commercial
when the nightmare that lay
shock-charged and
gut wrenching
would locked me
into its murderous loop
once again