Scabies Mites (the war goes on)

Microscopic devil mites:
blood is their bloody crop
and ages of farming
have made them adepts
and survivors:
able to survive skin droughts
and medicinal wild-fires.

As tenacious as the Viet-cong
and as imperial as Americans,
they hide between sandal straps
and in the missed corner of the carpet,

waiting to dive into fertile flesh
with the ferocity of a samurai,
to build lumpy skin-burrows
like parasitical mud-houses
in which to lay their eggs,
causing the human demonic itching,
burning, and ill-being

Hatched, they dwell on hands and scrotum:
as eager as B.P., M.T.V., or Toyota
to profit from any social bond,
to spare no child or elderly invalid
in the quest for blood market share

In my apartment, the war goes on:
insecticide clouds, blood-sucking, scabicide cream, high strategy, vacuum artillery, sulfur soap, trench-coat warfare

At the moment, I'm winning,
though as usual,
modern warfare is total and ugly:
a friendship severed, poems not written,
unknown acquaintances infected,
intriguing art-works sprayed,
and millions of lost brain-cells

Doubtless, the enemy is not broken,
but is re-grouping even now
(perhaps on this very key-board,)
walking on their satanic legs
and baring their titanic fangs,
salivating for blood

Inside and outside,
the war goes on:
in the court-room,
at the hospital and the cross-walk,
in sandy Iraq,
underneath the cross outside the shelter,
and in the neon shopping mall

In the Oregon woods,
the deer war against the grass
and coyotes and cougars
against each other.
And every deer carcass
is a great microscopic battle-field:
waves of bacterial warriors clashing,
spears thrusting, swords slashing,
and arrows falling.
The victors will feast on venison
and some will eat cougar,
riding on the fierce predator
and imposing a parasitical tax
on every bloody-fanged transaction

The war goes on

In prisons,
it's between gangs and races.
In uniform,
between flags and places.
On the streets,
it's a war of rags, tits, money, and faces

the war goes on,
the war goes on