The inauguration

Just as the toffs are putting away their tuxes for another four years, I’m stuffing brillo pads into the tiny wall holes underneath my sink.  And just as they’re congratulating themselves on getting their ‘man’ in for another four, I’m counting the four new spaces that have appeared this winter in my home.  The wall holes that need to be stuffed so that the mice stay on their side of the line and me on mine.  And just as they gather their women and souvenirs and head back to their respective ranches, I slide out to the hardware store for something called anchor cement to make sure my artistry holds.

Now it’s not that these folks don’t know about vermin… their brims are so wide,  they just can’t see them.  To question their intelligence is unfair … they’re obviously smart enough for the demands of their particular value system, but not smart enough to see beyond what they have decided is reality.  They can’t see or they don’t want to.  A rat can play all kinds of tricks on the eye – you think you see something and then it disappears and it’s only a shadow.  If it happens often enough,  you begin doubting your visual acuity – you’re thinking your nerves are shot and you’re just making it up.  But then after time, you start to find odd traces of something icky, evil even… pellets of shit where only beauty should be… stains of excrement where life was once flourishing.

To be fair, a rat, or even a mouse, doesn’t know it’s that.  It has accepted the identity biology has given it and acts in accordance.  It scurries around searching for food to maintain it’s weight …sometimes it gorges, forgetting that a slimmer body slips through holes easier.  It’s said the rat is intelligent -- certainly bright enough for the demands of its job.  But it’s hard not to associate it with death and misery. It would not be the first animal invited to the tea party.  When the Pied Piper fails as did Kerry, to rid the village of the rat,  the rat gets even cockier about its role in our lives and can be told nothing.  So discourse ends and the only thing to do is to shut it out.. with foam, with brillo, turning down the sound, whatever one can do to maintain a life despite its presence.  For those big hatted folks who have yet to see its tail, it’s only a matter of time.  The swish of its backside will stir up such a breeze around their narrow   windows that their blinds will rattle fiercely against this wind, twisting and bending and finally opening up a crack.  Then slowly the light will pour in. The rest of us will just have to wait.