Today I met a bug.
PART ONE :
Doing the best it could I thought I should keep quite, it was warisome.
Being armless and emotiveless it overwhelmed all my thoughts as it scrabbled for a teet.
Sadly for it and sadly for me a human bug, I could only squirm and decided it would not feed on me.
Avoidance I know, a bug cannot learn this and I envy it.
Better for it to not know Kafka, Proust or Dali. how can I compare my ignorance to it.
A bug deserves not a surname nor a misnomer, it cannot spell; alas I can.
My curse is apon me and I feel sorry for the bug without feelings and I feel sorry for me.
It does so accept ignorance, it does not know it's priority, it refuses to accept weakness.
Too stupid to be smart, too much of a heart beating only to breathe and no need to love.
Oh I envy that bug.
It seemed to be wearing sunglasses and stared within them but they were opaque to me and I wished it had the courage to confront me - on my terms.
And I wished to damn the little fucker to my devil's vocabulary.
The last I saw it, he was laughing at me. It could not have any fun, it was known.
My source as entertainment had reached expiry date and would never recover from my encountering.
I had no choice, destiny was imminent, death was fatal.
Benevolence was an option, though I did not take it lightly.
I have trouble sleeping - not like a bug.
It feeds and curls in it's shit, sleeps and is happy not knowing it's victim, oblivious to their pain, and quite content to snuggle within it's misery, sleep and dream buggedly and desire to awake with just a little more of something to chew on.
Alas, I feel unhuman, but not yet a parasite.
I am too insenitive and I must be as a bug. No feelings just instinct should rule me.
My bug said that I must not agree and submit to it's perception prior to my extermination.
Drugs offered the answer, but only if I was a bug and had spent time resisting the cuddling comfort of a mother cunt.
He reminded me then that I probably should not think.
On listening I'm still at a loss with these concepts even though I can spell and walk and talk and in debt to a bug that cannot.
And it said :
"Confusion is paramount, desire is secondary, wishes are dreams, violence is the only means the weak use to survive, and language and emotions are inconsolaby compatible.
I need to breathe and have no human rythym to survive on love but on envy. I cannot spell and have discarded the myths of compatabile embrace and succumed to the illusioray comfort of placating words, too scared to hug and too scared to embrace my vulnerability.
And so at once with an innocuos thought it subetly overruled my objections.
What
can we offer except love. What is more significant to us
burdened by atrocity when he is burdened only with four legs and a sweeping
tail and no heart".
Then it told me a story :
"There was a man as mad
as a terrier and as crafty as a parrot.
Only some of his peculiarities were on display, like a peacock
reluctant to show his inadequacies.
A
significant person of note and respect but seemingly immune to
ravages of his mind.
The
tiny steps he followed could not be of stone, life had become a weary
path on unsecure foundation.
Every
step every thought every moment challenged like a worn out sole.
His
history education experience and grief all swept away by a force stronger than he.
Occasionally
he stepped out of the house and hello-ed the birds and appreciated
their thanks for food.
It
become a pleasure to awake to their morning sun twirps and
companionship.
If the
sun was warming harder than a shine and his dog craved a kiss and just one
step encouraged his legs to try another, he only had to move
forwards as a move backwards confused his joints.
Some
things for him were difficult to accomplish, gravity
continually defied him and despite resistance it defined him as rooted to the ground.
He
found it difficult to pull off his socks and it was a challenge to
not injure himself with such a mundane habit. The
lingering smell of toe fat on his fingers was there regardless of efforts to not touch and the
strength he needed to control his knee not hitting his chin was
exhausting and challenged his perceptions.
He,
being fraught with memory of smell and little memory of hearing, considered this as abnormal.
A
difficulty he encountered as a magnificent deficit. Joy was not happiness but release from pain.
Memories
seemed to exist in an ether of reality and lessons.
Here
as it was, he could only feel to have bought a ticket to ride but
there was no destination or date included.
If
there had been some comfort, it was from curling in bed and feeling every
part that hurt ".
But
that did not help his inner soulful turmoil, it was temporary comfort disturbed by reality.
There had been a plague to which he had succumbed and he was infected.
Too
stupid or too out of tune with the current song, it took some
strength to not run naked through the streets knifing anything at
hand. But
later at home comfortable in his slippers, slurping on hot milk and honey he thought with wonder about what it is that bees
need.
It
wasn't much to them but a lot to him, so he looked closer, overwhelmed by the obnoxious odour.
He
was bigger than all of them and my heart felt smaller than his - if he had. If
oxygen was less he certainly needed to be breathing more, his lungs were
larger but most of his sucking was wasted.
PART TWO :
Rolling
on his back was impossible for me to resist, I had to help.
Maybe
I should prod him with a cotton bud, which I did but maybe at the
wrong moment.
He
instantly recognised the soft bud as his mothers tongue and it was
too comforting.
His
mother had died shortly after his birth and he was left with no more
than a cuddle and a promise that he would die before he was
significant.
But
curling there practising paracitimy he felt an uncomforting pressure
on his back.
Having
no limbs but only urges he wished for a knife to severe this reality.
I
would not be of assistance, it was inhuman and he was ugly, I was amazed that he could probably only entertain but not perform his act of suicide.
That
was not human to him and neither was he. Moral incursions into his
soul would be wasted; the poor thing had no heritage, no attitude, no sense, no compassion, no sweat glands, only impulses to eat and shit and breed.
I
watched him rolling and prodded him gently from a distance, he scared
me with
his dimuity and protective repulsiveness but he could certainly move quickly.
An
instinctive skill to survive and even if beaten he has only a shell
as a remnant.
He left a trail, of shit but to others of his ilk it smells like a
trail of discovery.
There
is a legacy of note that he was here and left a warning to those who are
weaker to only let the brave pass here.
His
only mission was to be happy but the fate of a bugged idiot is clouded in
confusion.
For
many nights he accommodated himself in bedsocks, a heater and a mug
of warm milk. Sufficiently it was insufficient.
Dreams had become nightmares and his version of
reality was a den of demons.
This
was worse than being a parasite, at least they had a meaning, a continuous bug-mare all night, every night flashing warnings about a
useful life, so much easier than being
born a maggot.
The
more I prodded his little curling buggedness the more he liked my
attention.
My
attention, and only that, not food not love but just activity
mobilised him.
Which
bothered me. That really represents me. Oh there must be joy being a
thinking sperm, of
which I do not wish for.
But
I am only a splash of ego in a fertile slash of cleared growth on the
mons venuris.
Like
a leaf attached to a tree I never felt its roots but had faith that
its limbs would support me ignorant of my plight for independence.
My
maggot friend can sleep, he is not concerned with his death, he just
keeps feeding. He has no defense mechanism but relies on family to
covet him.
It's
fortunate he cannot remember his history and its fortunate for him
that neither can his family.
He
will never endure moralist discussions of mortality and love, he will
never get a cuddle, he will never feel pain, his only threshold is
death.
Parasites
can not feel love but only the pain of rejection. To a feeder that is
satisfying, to a provider that is debilitating.
A
pig can eat anything except its offspring. It will wallow in mud all
it's life and keep itself remarkably clean. Walking in his own shit
his hooves do not smell of his progress. And yet his nose is bigger
than his brain.
His
nose does not have receptors or interpretors, every whiff of life
goes direct to his head. There is no processing necessary, he relies
on feelings of either fear or love.
I'm
glad that I seem not so simple, but feel complicated, and yet I'm
burdened with knowledge and not what I smell.
My
dog smells at me when he appears to me to be happy and yet he has
already rolled in shit. Not his shit, it stinks, he knows that and
yet he knows that others relish rolling in it.
He
pokes at me wanting to share his smells, and I know mine are so much
more insignificant.
But
his friends who are not dog are parasites and they snitch at his arse.