Bedbug Blues

Monday, January 12, 2009

BEDBUG BLUES

By Philip Cairns

Copyright 2009 by Philip Cairns

What a way to start the New Year!

Bedbugs are the scourge of the planet.

Just when I got my place all nice and cozy,

Tchochkas all over,

My collection of miniature high heels, crystals and angels sitting happily

All over the apartment.

Now the evil sprayers have to come and kill the little shits.

Those hideous bugs crawl all over you when you’re in bed.

Suck my blood.

They shit in my clean sheets.

All I’ve been doing is laundry, laundry for weeks,

It seems,

Trying to kill those ugly, wicked bed bugs.

Now I have to dismantle my ordered life

To let the Pest Control people

Enter my den of iniquity to spread poison all around.

I itch and scratch and scream inside my head,

So freaked out by these tiny beasts.

My mind spinning,

My life in turmoil.

The jacks thrown into the air and nothing has landed

Except bedbugs crawling and creeping over me

In the dark.

I’m afraid to go to sleep.

Don’t know what to do.

The blood is being sucked out of me.

I have no pills to overdose on.

No money for a new bed.

Nowhere to go to hide.

A giant bedbug held me down and raped me.

Bit off my cock and ate it for lunch.

I feel like the mother corpse in “Psycho”

Sitting lifeless and rotting in a fruit cellar.

I need order and serenity.

I love peace.

A place for everything and everything in its place.

This is not where I want to be expending my energy.

Take me away to my house by the sea.

With no money worries.

Shooting movies in Chile and living off the land.

I read a book where a bourgeois woman from the States

Went to live with Native People in the South American rain forest.

Everyone had lice, including her.

How hideous, I thought.

Little critters crawling all over your body.

Biting your skin.

Sucking the life out of your veins.

One day, this will be over, I hope.

No more upheaval or chaos.

Despair rushing down to the earth,

Like a lanced wound draining pus out of the bowels of my brains.

This is not the way to begin a New Year.

I’ve fallen into a David Cronenberg film,

With Alfred Hitchcock as my advisor

And Stephen King as my mentor.

I love listening to Bessie Smith sing,

“Mean Old Bedbug Blues”.

Little did I realize that one day I would live

Smack dab in the middle of that lowdown Dirty Thirties blues song.
Give me a pig foot and a bottle of beer

‘Cause nobody knows you when you’re down and out.

Bessie, honey, I got them lowdown, no good,

Mean old bedbug blues,

Just like you.

Bitter bugs aging me.

Putting dried up wrinkles onto my actor’s headshot.

Away!

My bedbugs are Olympic champions.

They jump off the towel rack into the bathtub

And sprint across the wide expanse.

They run relay races across the carpet

When I sleep on the floor to avoid the horrors.

I even saw one do a back flip, after a particularly sumptuous meal.

But my favourite was the one in pink satin drag

Wearing “come fuck me” pumps.

His wig was blonde and crooked

And made of my pubic hairs.

Yes, they can get very industrious while you sleep.

I also saw a Bedbug Awards ceremony

One tawny, sleepless night.

The top prize was “Best Bite” won by a waddling, blood engorged old pro.

He farted out blood at the podium

And his peers exploded with applause.

Seeing a bedbug in a beaded Armani gown on the red carpet

Is quite the dazzling sight, I must say.

But what I want to know is this:

What purpose do they serve,

In the scheme of things?

Except maybe to make people miserable

And to disrupt our domestic lives.

I’d rather be bunted by a playful dolphin

In the warm Pacific Ocean at sunset

On a mystical day in Paradise.