If only the cockroach could talk.

I crossed paths with a cockroach
And asked him to my table
I bade him, “Tell me a story,
That is, if you are able.

“What sorts of things are discussed
Among your peers and the like
In the days and hours
Before the earthquake strikes?

“Do you seek out cockroach therapy
And pour out in words your angst?
To which the doctor says, ‘I understand;
That’s two hundred dollars, thanks.’

“Do you charge en masse headlong
Into leveraged speculations
That make you instant millionaires
Then bankrupt entire nations?

“Do you defraud, betray and brutalize
Your neighbors, kin, and babies
Do you lie, cheat, steal and manipulate
To pay for that Mercedes?

“Do you congregate in cults
Of unconscious dread
To deny the signs of earthquakes
And decry hurricanes instead?

“Do you rush more eager
Into mindless, brute distractions
and spin the simplest ideas
into intellectual abstractions?

“Do you, in other words
Live for ‘circuses and bread’
And submit with blind devotion
To the one who keeps you fed?

“Tell me, won’t you please
my shiny brown friend:
Do you all lose all your marbles
just before the end?"

Though attentive and robust
He gave me not a clue
So I smashed him with the Times
And flushed him down the loo.