P.N.ZOYTLOW

Editor’s Note:  Several readers have advised him (PNZ) not to attempt poetry since his talents are near-exhaustion with such prose as he has offered on this blog. (And, for what it is worth, he despises the word “blog” since, as he says, it “cheapens us all.”) He thanked me for my concerns and went ahead and bade me post a few of his poems, some recent, some not. He agreed to label them “minor,” which he called a “concession” which (he said) this editor, DGB, would regret.

Rats and Fleas and Germs  

[2018]

Rats are the fall-guys for the Plague

Fleas are the fall-guys for the Plague

Germs are the fall-guys for the Plague

But who owns the Plague?

The First Part: The Rat Speaks 

I caused this?

Did I know what was happening?

A hundred million putrescent human corpses!

And they say I’ve done it! Me?

Well, they never liked me anyway:

Was it the leaping out of grain bins?

The scurrying in the rafters? In the nursery?

 My naked tail? Gnawed wires?

And those droppings! (heh-heh)

And who remembers that rats (tons of us!)

died along with people (by the generation!)

rat’s ass, rat pack, rat race, rug rat, sinking ship rats

to rat on someone, cry like a rat eating onions

Dirty Sneaky Vicious Ugly. 

Sewer rats, Wharf rats, Roof rats.

Swung by the tail, pitched into the fire,

Sizzled crisp, the wages of sin.

Innocent fall-guys! Let me just say–

We did not do it.

The Second Part: The Flea Speaks

Here’s what I think, and here is what I 

Have to say: Microbe!

Not my idea to get a hitchhiker. 

I’m small, and the hitchhiker is smaller.

Folks see rats. We do too. Bite the hell out of ’em and ride along.

Rats die? So jump on people!

Folks, in my opinion, are just bigger rats, 

And I bite ’em and vomit

in the bite and then, the main act: my germiness. 

Love the way rats are blamed. Funny.

You human hosts, you laugh at us. 

Imagine a flea circus, a flea market, 

a flea pit filled with fleabags. 

Never a kind word!

On the whole, except for the insults, it was a good deal. 

Bite a rat, move on, bite a kid, move on!  

It’s a short healthy life; ours is. 

The Third Part The Word from Yersinia herself

What do you mean, herself? 

So very human, this business of gender. 

Why bother?

I am. That’s it. Keep it simple.

And the name is Yersinia pestis!

I earned the latter part, thank you.

That’s all.

It’s a busy enough life.

Keep the ball rolling. 

Yes, I infect. 

It’s my job, my sacred duty

To redress the imbalances. 

And you’ve got to go! So sorry it can’t be 

Tidier, but those are the methods I know.

Fever, lumps, necrotic flesh.  

No forethought. Doin’ the job.

Whose idea, anyway: I mean the Plague?

I had a good run. Everyone blaming 

Rats, Fleas, the Devil,  

Sinners, Cats, Jews, and so on. 

Then Yersin found me. Named me.

Antibiotics? Wheee..!

Bet I can beat them, too,

 I am around. God is on my side. 

Don’t I know it! That’s all.

_________________________________

It’s in the News

n.d.

In a bedroom rank with sweat and tabak,

olive anarchists adjust the little clock.

Obscured beneath the padded lady-seat,

Precise, shielded against cold, wet, and heat.

The frame: fuse, primers, powders nails within.

Tires crammed and sealed with paraffin.

Wheeled to the plaza and soon detonated.

That fearful flash. Innocents eviscerated!

A day away in a sunny breakfast hour

The Consul drinks espresso and basks in power.

Wife, children, kittens, maids, eggs, and toast.

Such days are tranquil and loved the most.

Alas! He drops the News and loses his aplomb,

“So now they have perfected the bicycle bomb!”

_____________________________

And to think

2020

Folks resent a quarantina. Yes, Quarantina!

Forty days!  More or less. The Old Venetians were thinking Forty.

Got plague on board?  Stay out of the harbor for 40 days!

But the Dalmations in Dubrovnik thought a trentina might work out, too.

****

Less for a kid with measles in the Forties— Posted that 

old yellowy paper sign on the front door: 

QUARANTINE ! DO NOT ENTER!  MEASLES!

Seven days:  A septina?

*****

Sicilians. Lots of ‘em! Ellis Island, 1891.

“Here’s one! Rheumy eye.”

Lady! Signora!  Per favore! Over there!

No, there, wait there. Stay in Quarantine.

Quarantina!

Chalk mark on your sleeve.

******

Leviticus 13:45

 “Then the priest shall command that they wash the thing wherein the plague is, and he shall shut it up seven days more: “[H]is clothes shall be rent, his head shall be left bare, and he shall cover over his upper lip; and he shall call out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’” 

*******

Meanwhile St Simeon Stylite sat atop a pillar for just years and years, Self-quarantine for no medical reason. Just plain old mortification. 2X per diem he stood and spoke to crowds that gathered. There is no record of what he said. The height of the pillar was increased from time to time. No one got near him. He refused to even look at his Old Mother. 

******

And another self-quarantiner: The Unabomber in his Montana shack!! 

Also refused to see his Mother.  Like St. Simeon, a deep thinker.

*****

Advice to the Fourth Graders fearing Josef Stalin, 1952.

“Shelter in Place, O ye Milliions!  Do not emerge lest the radiation 

befoul thee. Yes, kid, you there! In the bomb shelter!

*****

The Trump, trapped in the Peoples House watching himself on Cable, gorging on Behemoth Macs and Salted Fries. Great Friend to Ketchup.  A quarantined man in a foolish time. Unclean, unclean!

And to think.