Scabies Mites (the war goes on)

Microscopic devil mites:
blood is their bloody crop
and millennia of farming
have made them adepts
and survivors,

able to survive skin droughts
and medicinal wild-fires.

As tenacious as the Viet-cong,
they hide between sandal straps
or 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
and a general sense of ill-being,
to 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, sulfur soap,
and 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,
an intriguing art-work sprayed,
and millions of lost brain-cells

Doubtless, the enemy is not broken,
and is re-grouping even now
(perhaps on this very key-board.)

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

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