The Secret Life of Beetles

very nice

Oh no, they go down without any sort of fight. :) (Yes, I kill insects when they crawl into my bedroom. But here I've paid my tribute to the dead.) Their trick is that they always manage to send another, even in the dead of winter. I don't know how, or from where. Thanks as always for reading, Raven.

Quite a gem, James: "a throat lozenge perched on a plate/ Of mashed potatoes." I'm certain you're aware of the sacred nature of the scarab, ancient Egypt's sacred dung beetle; actually the embodiment of a god which became the sun god which became the one god, etc.

Turning the sacred into the profane is a mean trick and you pulled it off with a twist of humor for balance. Of course they return as the sun returns. No?

I especially thought of this when you put the dun(g?) beetle in the ceiling. I nailed it with Nile mud which is thick and ready to form bricks in those conical ovens.

This is actually quite brilliant and it gains in my esteem as I read it again. Thank you!

The title is both wittily disarming in its disingenuous allure (there have been so many ¨secret life of titles lately in books and film, of.....plants, machines, trees, bees, lobsters, the brain!) as well as its evocativeness in locating this this ´lilliputian will¨ in a man--insect conflict that is instantly understandable and comical.

You use your poetic skills very well to cite other poems--the rhetorical question in the third stanza both harkens back to Yeats´question in Slouching Toward Bethlehem, as well as references Dylan Thomas´ Nilotic mud queries of his own morphogenetic origins in a tongue-in-cheek way--and this both deflates their original lofty poetic tasks as well as providing the humor for your satirical foray here.

The image of the beetle as phoenix is pretty damned funny, James, especially the way you set it up, as if it your duty to kill them.

All in all, a delightful postmodern romp that achieves a maximalist comic effect with its skilled tactile use of grotesque imagery--¨a throat lozenge perched on a plate of mashed potatoes--¨ a stylized form of using erstwhile literary strategies in novel ways, and the levity with which you practice a sort of cool cruelty of the imagination.

Like Erasmus himself, you look down on the human being, measure of all things, and just by comparing us with the bugs we must annihilate, find a clever way to find us utterly undeserving of our pompous self-regard.

Observe the tiny ant
Through magnifying glass
It caught the solar slant
In smoke to death did pass

James, I loved the journey to the fibrous jungle of your carpet and mourned the loss of inky stinky scarab. My bedroom spies are spiders.

Wow. Umar, John, Jan... you're better readers than I deserve. Thank you all so much!

You know, the Egyptian mythology of the scarab hadn't occurred to me until you mentioned it, Umar, but it does fit here. I was referring to the ancient (and discredited) theory of spontaneous generation, of which the supposedly asexual "birth" of vermin from the mud of the receding Nile river was often cited as an example. (This is where Dylan Thomas gets the notion; a more commonplace example would be the sudden "appearance" of maggots in rotting meat.)

That said, the idea of spontaneous generation does add to the aptness of the scarab as a symbol for the sun that "dies" every night and is "reborn" every morning. And the fact that the beetles in my bedroom-- I have yet to identify them-- behave, mythologically speaking, just as the scarab beetles do, suggests to me that life closely observed anywhere will direct one towards the spiritual resonances of nature.

Such fruitful comments you all have given me! Thanks again. :)

You're such an inspiration, James. You see things, and keep them, and share them, in a way I can only envy.

You flatter me, Corinna; you know how much I enjoy and admire your work. :) You certainly don't need any inspiration from me. Still, your good opinion means the world to me. Thank you, as always, for reading.

James: Now its even richer. I stumbled into a connected room and found gems scattered about like so many jeweled scarabs. Now I have an entire other set of thoughts to play with. I'm feeling pretty rich right now. Thanks.

Likewise, Umar. Your comment set the poem in a new light for me, and helped me to realize something about the mythology surrounding the scarab. I'm pleased to have you as a reader. :)

Thank you for reading, Rose! For what it's worth, I think lady beetles are cute, too. And I /do/ have a genuine respect for the buggers in my bedroom; I've given them sufficient thought to write a poem about them. There is a deep enmity between man and insect; we represent different modes of survival. But if they're alien, they're also fascinating. And in this case, they've helped me to feel something about the human life-urge, too. :)

If those beetles are ever in a position of power we are in big trouble, James.
I grieve in the summer when I must rid roses of Japanese beetles.

Besides being clever and interesting your poem is a story in itself, on us and the others.
...Admirable writing.

Biologically speaking, we're already in big trouble. In terms of the survival of species, I would say that insects have the edge. :) Thank you for reading, Barbary; I appreciate it.

How did I miss this? Wow. Like the best of these paintings that mix "fur flesh and faeces" with sharp vision, historical feeling and startling colors. I love this.

Thanks for stopping by, John. I believe that nothing is essentially unpoetic, except perhaps for Michael J. Fox. :)

Great imagery