"Squeaky Clean"

Even in sobriety
Living in a hoarders paradise
Euphemism for my shithole
My flat is not my home
Refuge or Englishman's castle
Merely somewhere I sleep at night
If I can in this heat.
I have just read a poem
About poisoning rats
Under floorboards
and the stench rising.
A bit too close to home
Reminding me of
My own mice
A few years past.
No gas for them
Just good old fashioned
Wood and metal mousetrap
For less than ten bob a kill
Courtesy of Plough Homecraft.
"Can I help you, Sir?"
"Yes mate. Got a problem with mice"
"Would one like the most humane..."
"Just want the fuckers dead, to be honest"
Manners maketh the man.
"Sorry, we gotta ask,
You know what it's like round here..."
I had no problem being a murderer.
Not so much the aftermath.
Discovering skin and bone
Under a shelf or two
Where one or two went
To crawl and die
The clever ones who
Were not fooled by the traps
And tucked in to the trays of poison
For their victory meal.
The greedy bastards
Were no so clever after all!

Dulwich Poet 16th July 2013

( I read a poem called 'Left Behind', about a rat under the floorbards, by Alan Hardy, in the book 'I Went With Her'; published in 2007. I recently borrowed it to read from the Poetry Library. It reminded me of what a mess my own flat it, and how bad it was, when I had a problem with mice, in the past. )