White Rat

Pile of trembling
white hair
in the corner of the room.

No one sees you.
No one watches you

chew through your tail
but I.

The people around me
have gone senseless.
Their eyes dart around
too fast for their brains.

Their teeth grind
furiously, mechanically,
as if the factory were not dead at all.
They are killers.

White rat,
it is only by watching you
that I can breath steady
even as you unfurl

and scurry clumsily away
from your mutilated remnant
matted with blood
and filth.

And yet you are still
less repulsive
than the other occupants
in this hell.

And small enough to escape it.

Puppets on her fingers

She only spoke to me
through the finger puppets
that she wore on her hands
like jewelry.

Their tiny faces were bruised
from the keys of her piano,
and none of them seemed in the mood
to chat.

In fact,
they, like a gang
of felt pigmies,
held my head under the dish-water

until I slumped unconscious
to the floor
with wet bits of food
in my beard and hair.