Central Insect Agency
after Lawrence
What brings you in so quiet ?
why such bright banded citrine stripes ?
when did you smell the strawberries ?
Is it that you destabilize us
for kicks ?
You know that we know that you know,
that your sting is enough,
we cannot miss after all,
that flashing colour that ominous murmur,
how can it be that you plant so much fear
into those so many times your own size,
you hymenopterous chorus,
you jaundice jacket, you loner.
How do you sense
which of us dread you most
as you close in jagged bursts
testing our radar,
for whom are you working,
The Central Insect Academy ?
You segmented espion.
Fearless of highest echelon in animal chain,
you unlock the animal in us,
with your uninvited trespass,
trained in on our elevated airspace,
we grow intolerant of such harassments,
we know your game yet you will
to outwit, you alien.
What say you we arrive
on some common grass, is there a language ?
will shouting suffice ?
or can we charm you out of it,
a little insect dance of delicate persuasion
what is you poison
predation ?
Friend, did you not once give an impromptu
observation, of one of my classes
in Banco Centrale, Montevideo ?
Fie on you predacious scavenger,
you have come in for the take,
no stopping the clock’s instinct
driving on your double winged endeavours,
see us jump ousted from our plastic havens
as fiendish villain, you again reappear
devilish, from the thunder charged magnetic air
sucking a baby’s invisible vomit residue
from the hood of an old automobile,
you miser.
Puzzling, the prehistoric terror you strike,
trapped in the window ovens of our steel tigers,
how you crazed until the dying of the light,
before lying there, a dead husk in the fibres.
Martin Ferguson was born in West Yorkshire in 1968. After graduating with a degree in Social Science, he lived in the Tanzanian bush for 5 months, building health dispensaries for a British charity. He has worked as an English teacher in Istanbul, Montevideo, Lecce and France, where he teaches business English. An A to Z Art of Urban Survival, Following Diogenes of Sinope was published by Original Plus in January: samsmiththejournal/home/original-plus-chapbooks