.
Hatching
A gelid mass of wings that seethed and surged—
A squeamish sight that caught me by surprise—
A swarming hatch of termites had emerged
A host of queens to mount and fertilize.
They sprang from cracks where wood and concrete meet,
Where my garage door and my driveway kiss.
New neighbors I had no desire to greet;
Unwelcome guests I’d sooner hit than miss.
As like a Plague of Egypt, on they came
Like fetid flies on Satan’s bristled beard;
A horde not even Moses’ staff could tame;
And yet, within one hour they disappeared.
Though evil may be out of sight, I find
It’s never quite completely out of mind.
.
.
Tropic Spawn
Hawaii, where the Trade Wind echoes
__Morning, noon and night,
The roaches, spiders, ants, and geckoes
__Were a daily sight.
We often found them creepy-crawling
__Outside on our lawn
With Cane Toads, centipedes—appalling!
__Nature’s Tropic spawn.
But often, though, they came inside like
__Rent-paying residents.
While in our home they lived (and died) like
__White House presidents.
We saw them scurrying around, e-
__nough to make us cringe.
With flattened geckoes often found be-
__tween a doorway hinge.
We knew this home invasion wasn’t
__Easy to defy.
But though we were outnumbered doesn’t
__Mean we didn’t try.
We neither let them win the war nor
__Gave up in defeat.
We simply threw them out the door or
__Squashed them with our feet.
.
.
The Reek in Review
My septic tanks reek worse than rotten eggs,
More foul than fetid decomposing rats.
The fumes from moldy, rancid wine cask dregs
Smell sweet, compared to my twin sewage vats.
As if to make things worse, mosquitoes breed
Beneath the lids that cover up those tanks.
At night the buggers bite—I scratch and bleed.
Of hell’s worst smells, flushed fecal matter ranks.
The good-news-bad-news is the leach field turns
My lawn into a lovely emerald green,
But makes unwanted dandelions and ferns
Appear where I’d prefer they’d never been.
Desfartes spoke true, “I stink, therefore I am.”
But frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
.
.
James A. Tweedie is a retired pastor living in Long Beach, Washington. He has written and published six novels, one collection of short stories, and three collections of poetry including Mostly Sonnets, all with Dunecrest Press. His poems have been published nationally and internationally in The Lyric, Poetry Salzburg (Austria) Review, California Quarterly, Asses of Parnassus, Lighten Up Online, Better than Starbucks, Dwell Time, Light, Deronda Review, The Road Not Taken, Fevers of the Mind, Sparks of Calliope, Dancing Poetry, WestWard Quarterly, Society of Classical Poets, and The Chained Muse. He was honored with being chosen as the winner of the 2021 SCP International Poetry Competition.
Oh, James, I read your poems with great delight…I stink, therefor I am!! was especially appreciated.
Hey, these three are great! They show that even unpleasant and distasteful subject matter can be turned into something delightful by poetic skill.
Nature crawls with nauseating things like insects and lizards and masses of decomposition. One question: when you saw that swarm of termites, why photograph them? Wouldn’t the best thing be to douse the entire plague with a strong insecticide, and thereby prevent the queens from flying away and reproducing?
“The Reek in Review” is absolutely perfect. And the final line quoting the famous quip by Rhett Butler is unexpected and striking.
Lol. Good question. I took the pic and then sprayed the area with an insecticide. I have to be careful because my wife has a high-risk sensitivity to such products, so I had to tell her to stay inside the house fo several hours. I also had a local eradication specialist come in and drill under that corner of the house since they were ground termite and, while they eat wood, they nest underground. I also replaced all of the trim and some of the framing around my garage door due to hidden termite damage.
I had an even larger termite swarm in the house I rented for many years in Hawaii which required our landlord to pay for us to stay at a hotel for several days while our entire house was tented and fumed.
Lovely creatures, no? I also sent Evan a short video clip of the swarm which is somewhat creepy to watch.
And, yes, I had fun juxtaposing the revised Descartes quote with Rhett Butler’s. Serendipitous. Glad you liked it.
These three clever creations are wonderful humor that made me shiver as I read them. Like the plagues on Egypt is both an apt and terrifying thought. I never thought Hawaii could be so infested as you described in your second humorous masterpiece. “The Reek in Review” is an overwhelmingly brilliant title for your third poem.
Those ants in the picture are what we generically call ‘flying ants’ in the UK, and swarm once a year. When I was a kid, my parents would clean the house carpets once a year. The carpets were out in the garden one year, all soaped up and…. you guessed it, the flying ants swarmed, hundreds of them sticking to the carpets.
Thanks for three vivid creepy-crawly poems, James.
Jim, this is the stuff of nightmares. I felt my skin crawling with every laugh out loud line. I love “residents” with “Presidents.” To catalogue such unpleasantness into great poetry takes real skill and you have proved, once again, that there are no flies on you. Brilliant!!!
The final couplet of “The Reek in Review,” is wonderfully clever. I enjoyed reading these poems this evening very much. Thank you.
These should have come with an advisory: do not read immediately before or after taking a meal. My own personal nemesis of the Class Insecta is the stinkbug. I found one on my bedroom floor a few months ago and almost picked it up, thinking it was a piece of fuzz. I dread it during autumn when they try (and too many times succeed) to make their way inside the window. If you smash them, they stink – ergo, the name. Yuk.
Since you mentioned stink bugs, Cheryl, I thought I should tell you about a close relative (in the Order Hemiptera) we had in Arizona, called kissing bugs. They would come to your bedsheets at night and begin sucking the tissue beneath your skin, leaving big painful welts. Most of this order feed on plants.
Well, there go any thoughts I may have had of ever moving to AZ.
Not many poets could make disgusting things fun! Thanks, James!