Through the fly screen

Through the fly screen

Or was it the cleaner?

Anyway it was enormous

It looked a little dazed

It probably didn’t expect the lights

To be so bright.

The brown cockroaches I encountered

In Hackney,

Who invaded in their thousands

Like allies landing on a beach

In Normandy

Scattered wildly across the

Kitchen floor,

As the light came on,

I can hear the skitter of them even now,

Trying to escape before

The giant whirling dervish

With the rolled-up newspaper

Light sabre

Flattened them to the floor.

A hoard of them poured out

Of the spout of a coffee pot

As I ran it under the tap

The shock was so great

No more coffee did I drink

From that pot.

It was years before they were finally gone

The local council sprayed

All the flats in the block

Cleared them out

All the way to the boiler room

Where the 7th army, complete

With red ant commandoes

Was defeated

In a brutal last stand,

Cut down in their thousands

By a pyrethroid spray

So strong it could kill a dog

If it stood in its way.

The men wore safety suits

Like those guys in E.T.

Thank goodness there was just one

Of this guy

He was as big as a small mouse

I scooped him up

With a thin coaster,

Designed as a vinyl single

A piece of memorabilia

Picked up at a McCartney concert

Some time back,

I would have preferred to see Lennon,

Eight days a week,

But hey.

I flipped him out onto the deck

He landed on his back

He is out there still,

Waving his hind legs around

Either in surrender

Or as a reminder that it would

Take a direct hit

From an atomic bomb

To take him down.

Right now I can hear

Him say

“Ni, it’s only a scratch.”

I guess he is a Python fan

On a quest to find the Grail.