It's a Bug's life

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

"It's an insects life," said the Brother K, 
but don't you tell it to the chief-clerk,
"cause you don't exist, you ain't on his list, less you go
to work."
Everywhere around him, are doorways to a nightmare,
Because no men have all their se-cret fear, to get them
there,
Well I don't really care, if it's wrong or if it's right,
But until my rocket falls, I live night by night. 

Before we can get to the bugs and babies, we get the mad
poetry.

Gwenhidwy knows as Pointman cannot, that it's part of the
plan of the day to sit inside this mean room and cry into
the deafness-this is exorcism man, the poet singing back the
silence, adjuring the white riders, and Pointman is to play
his part-himself of course-uncomprehending.  

What doesn't he comprehend? What does he refuse to
understand? The POET? Or the paranoiac Dream?  Why is there
a gradient of wretchedness in London? The threat from the
East! Does that explain it? Or is Gwenhidwy very
paranoid?It's not economics, it's not demographics, it's not
even Politics.
Well, he thinks "perhaps the Ci-ty dreamed of another,
en-emy city, float-ing across the sea to invade
"  And
perhaps, in the City Paranoiac Dream, the Mother Continent
is sliding along the plates and planning to Pac-Man London?
Or some Female Saturn devouring her children? Or is the City
itself a tumor? A Neo-plasm, a protean thing, always
changing to meet exactly the changing shape of its very
worst, se-cret fears?   Or perhaps a Game of Chess-raggedy
pawns, disgraced bishops, cowardly knights, and finally it
was Known all along, known already, the rockets measured
out, plotted on Mexico's map, landing on the BUGS-the
prolific breeders of blitz-babies.
So even birth is following a Poison distribution. Baby boom,
boom, come on baby boom. "To the oddness of it
..Poor little
bastards," Pointy raising his glass to the poor bastards
born into this odd baby boom madness. 

So we get this rhythmic progression of images-a process of
generation. Pointman is fixed in an attitude, and Gwenhinwy
is mad. And the whole scene or poem is subjected to
concentrated pressure, as one metaphor gives symbolic birth
to another, revealing the derivation of its life as it
deflates and gives birth to its successor.  What sustains it
all? Suddenly a shift toward dusk and the enormous water
bugs of horror film emerge from the walls, and pregnant with
babies, they can be heard munching through Gwenhidy's paper
sack, heard at night, in the silence between fired and
falling rockets. And these bugs and their babies are agents
of unification, they pierce hard interfaces, for they are
Christmas Bugs.  So we go to Bethlehem and we become these
bugs-"down past YOU as you held on with all legs in that
constant tremble of golden stalks." Bugs, eating the
tenement world, and gnawing through some mysterious sheaf of
vectors (note). The crying of the infant reached YOU. Your
savior, you see


Note:  vec·tor (vµk"t
r) n. 1. Mathematics. a. A quantity,
such as velocity, completely specified by a magnitude and a
direction. b. A one-dimensional array. c. An element of a
vector space. 2. Pathology. An organism, such as a mosquito
or tick, that carries disease-causing microorganisms from
one host to another. 3. Genetics. A bacteriophage, a
plasmid, or another agent that transfers genetic material
from one location to another. 4. A force or an influence.
--vec·tor tr.v. vec·tored, vec·tor·ing, vec·tors. To guide
(a pilot or an aircraft, for example) by means of radio
communication according to vectors. [Latin, carrier, from
vehere, vect-, to carry. See wegh- below.] --vec·to"ri·al
(vµk-tôr"-
l, -t½r"-) adj.

"I am an Insect." 
Ivan K.