thousands <br />secretly alive <br />in walls and closets and bookrooms <br />but even in daylight <br />a bold one would race across my shoes <br />seeking some mysterious delight <br />at the other end of the room <br />fear of humans <br />bred out of them. <br />Ziggy the newly installed head custodian <br />insisted on glue traps <br />indicating without subetly no cure existed <br />for the deadly Hunta virus <br />which floated freely into human lungs <br />from the dust of dry rodent feces. <br />At five o’clock in the afternoon <br />he placed eleven traps in my office <br />because he wanted me safe <br />saying I looked just like his older brother <br />who leaped from a roof in Warsaw <br />unable to find the perfect word <br />to conclude a poem <br />he’d worked on for six years. <br />As he plopped down the simple <br />mechanisms of death <br />he declared, “I am Ziggy the Terminator. <br />I will kill them all.” <br />All this said in <br />an Arnold Schwarzenegger Austrian voice <br />even though Ziggy came from Poland <br />and in the morning <br />eleven mice became stuck <br />though not dead <br />their bodies <br />twisted and misshapen in odd ways <br />searching this unimaginable torment <br />for a way home <br />but eventually all <br />became glued to eternity <br />then a phone call to Sonny the sweeper <br />who scooped the scraps <br />into an immense trash bag. <br />And this went on <br />the same routine <br />four days straight <br />until too much death <br />wore out even Ziggy’s lust for conquest. <br />And once more <br />mice ruled the night <br />but now <br />also daylight <br />the ferocious slaughter of life <br />coming to naught.<br /><br />Charles Wax<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/at-spinoza-hs-mice-ruled-the-night-2/
